Luck be a lady... now and then

Given my age, the cumulative effects of three cancer ops plus an occasional yearning to get smashed on some evening yet to be chosen, it’s not surprising I’m often in the mood to assess events since August 1935. After all, the end can’t be far off now. However, one thing journalism has taught me is it’s more fun – at least for writers – to chew over disasters than happiness. Summarised thus: happiness is self-rewarding whereas bad things continue to give greater interest. In writing that is.

But this is me. Would nearly a century of grief, disappointment, rejection, ignorance, self-condemnation – however wittily written – add up to anything other than a failed life? Heck, I’ve lived to ninety and that’s some kind of achievement. And along the way  lump sums of money have dropped into my lap.

Obviously I need a fresh angle. What about: How often have I been lucky? Mind you, luck demands a jot of qualification. It must be distinguished from rewards I’ve earned. Otherwise the work ethic becomes a bucket-load of shit.

▓▓ For one thing, VR (Veronica, my wife) has been the strongest positive influence on what I’ve become. We met on a blind-date foursome in London. She looked gorgeous - as others will testify - whereas I was only three months into a desperately loveless emigration from the West Riding of Yorkshire, suffering an adolescence which seemed to stretch out into middle age. Do such meetings qualify as good luck? Our shared interests and tendencies later had the inevitability of two jigsaw pieces but even after 65 years I find it impossible to claim I “earned” VR.

▓▓ The RAF forced me into an understanding of the theory, practice and application of electronics. Not to any great depth y’unnerstand, but in the same way a 600-page scholarly biography of Rembrandt might hint at why he’s the world’s greatest oil painter. Post National Service I’ve dipped continuously and enthusiastically into sources of science info of which I understand about 7%. Not much, you say. But much more than the international average.

▓▓ A horror that became a benison. Pursuing a larger salary, and for no other reason, I chose to become editor of two highly specialised magazines whose content I only dimly understood. Quickly I realised both were en route to financial extinction. Trying to escape I applied for a variety of jobs, most quite menial, but was rejected mainly because I was in my late forties and potential employers worried about the pay I would expect. Months passed and my terror grew.

Then, out of the blue, my ultimate boss, whom I’d always seen as a managerial dimwit, offered me the editorship of a magazine devoted to a subject I was very familiar with. And in which I subsequently enjoyed my greatest professional triumphs.

What strange deity had taken charge...?

▓▓ ...That deity reappeared eleven years later. My magazine was sold and my old employer thought I deserved compensation for losing a position which (secretly) I would have paid to occupy. More miraculously, I didn’t even lose the job and merely transferred to the new owner. The goodbye cheque was a biggie and was augmented by the receipt of a pension which started the day I left the previous owner.

▓▓ And the deity reappeared yet again on my retirement. My newish employer celebrated my departure with a shared 1945 bottle of burgundy priced at £546 ($714). Still a personal record.

A note en passant. Perhaps the three events above were “earned” rather than the outcome of pure luck. But their unexpectedness seemed more like the results of chance than of the daily grind.

▓▓ Finally... I only took up poetry comparatively recently. A year or two later, on an occasion unlikely ever again to be duplicated, I had a poem published.

▓▓ Finally plus… Is living to be ninety lucky?