After I made the prompt post yesterday, the Hub and I had the following conversation:
Me: My favourite number is 134 million.
Hub: Why?
Me: Because that’s how much I’m going to win in Friday’s Euro Lottery Rollover.
Hub: My favourite number is £1.90
Me: Why?
Hub: Because that’s how much you need to scrape together if you want to add it to the kitty to have enough to buy a ticket.*
We don’t have a lot of money but we have a lot of laughs.
*The Euro Lottery costs £2
I am a little fat. I like food; what can I say? I have dull hair: mousey. I don’t wear much make-up and have no need of a dressing table. If I look like a bag lady, I chose my own clothes. If I look nice, the Hub picked them for me. Despite all this, I am a little vain. This photograph is from 2003. I had to go back that far to find one of me that I liked. But I don’t really care: my husband still thinks I’m beautiful and if he doesn’t, he loves me enough to lie about it. I’m lucky. I have two boys. They never lie to me. Still, you can't have everything.
The Laughing Housewife 
Well… I’m keeping my fingers crossed for you. 🙂
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Thanks 🙂
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I like your thinking, Tilly.
The euromilliona lottery costs 2 euros here, which is less than 2 pounds.
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That’s the EU trying to persuade us it’s better to be in than out 🙂
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They all want our dosh:
Though this might just be a spoof:
This is supposed to be a real reply from the UK Inland Revenue. The “Guardian” newspaper supposedly had to ask for special permission to print it. Perhaps the funniest part of it is imagining the content of the letter which prompted this reply!
Dear Mr Addison,
I am writing to you to express our thanks for your more than prompt reply to our latest communication, and also to answer some of the points you raise. I will address them, as ever, in order.
Firstly, I must take issue with your description of our last as a “begging letter”. It might perhaps more properly be referred to as a “tax demand”. This is how we at the Inland Revenue have always, for reasons of accuracy, traditionally referred to such documents.
Secondly, your frustration at our adding to the “endless stream of crapulent whining and panhandling vomited daily through the letterbox on to the doormat” has been noted. However, whilst I have naturally not seen the other letters to which you refer I would cautiously suggest that their being from “pauper councils, Lombardy pirate banking houses and pissant gas-mongerers” might indicate that your decision to “file them next to the toilet in case of emergencies” is at best a little ill-advised. In common with my own organisation, it is unlikely that the senders of these letters do see you as a “lackwit bumpkin” or, come to that, a “sodding charity”. More likely they see you as a citizen of Great Britain , with a responsibility to contribute to the upkeep of the nation as a whole.
Which brings me to my next point. Whilst there may be some spirit of truth in your assertion that the taxes you pay “go to shore up the canker-blighted, toppling folly that is the Public Services”, a moment’s rudimentary calculation ought to disabuse you of the notion that the government in any way expects you to “stump up for the whole damned party” yourself. The estimates you provide for the Chancellor’s disbursement of the funds levied by taxation, whilst colourful, are, in fairness, a little off the mark. Less than you seem to imagine is spent on “junkets for Bunterish lickspittles” and “dancing whores” whilst far more than you have accounted for is allocated to, for example, “that box-ticking facade of a university system.”
A couple of technical points arising from direct queries:
1. The reason we don’t simply write “Muggins” on the envelope has to do with the vagaries of the postal system;
2. You can rest assured that “sucking the very marrow of those with nothing else to give” has never been considered as a practice because even if the Personal Allowance didn’t render it irrelevant, the sheer medical logistics involved would make it financially unviable.
I trust this has helped. In the meantime, whilst I would not in any way wish to influence your decision one way or the other, I ought to point out that even if you did choose to “give the whole foul jamboree up and go and live in India ” you would still owe us the money.
Please send it to us by Friday.
Yours sincerely,
H J Lee
Customer Relations
Inland Revenue
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Best of luck, Tilly, you’ll have to come and visit me if you win 🙂
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I posted an inordinately long comment. Perhaps not the thing to do on a blog – so feel free to delete it, Linda.
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No, it’s funny, Harry, so it stays. Which it would, anyway, because the only thing I censor is bad language and blasphemy.
xx
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I’d seen it before, so it must be doing the rounds. I wish I’d written the letter that provoked this answer!
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You mean it wasn’t you? 🙂
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Now the truth comes out: you only want me for my money 🙂
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Love the cartoons…especially the last one since I taught at University.
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I’m finding out about you, one secret at a time 🙂
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That alligator cartoon is priceless!
You rock, Tilly Bud.
Good luck getting into and winning the lottery. And watch out for gun toting alligators.
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There’s a sentence I never expected to read 🙂 Will do.
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