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Strange Coincidences?

escargot said:
If I play the lottery it's with Lucky Dips because my Inner Gambler whispers that if I choose numbers for more than one week and then stop, 'my' numbers WILL come up next...
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I was once in charge of a syndicate and one week when I went to buy the tickets all the machines in our town were down!!!! Frantically running from shop to shop cursing the persons who'd been late with their money so I'd not been able to purchase them the previous day I was totally and utterly convinced that one of our usual tickets was going to win! No doubt in my mind at all!

In a mega panic and wondering what form 'falling on my sword' would have to take I got a lift hoping that one of the villages along the main road out of town would have a working machine.

Phew they did and a long queue as well ... time was running out I was beside myself with anxiety!

Ching ching money handed over, tickets clasped in hot sweaty palms and in that exact moment .......

I knew for certain that as usual none of them would win!

Funny how the brain works. :hahazebs:

Camelot didn't offer lucky dips from the off which pissed me off greatly for the reason you mentioned Scargy. My fellow organiser and I didn't want any of the tickets to belong to one particular punter so we asked them all to contribute 6 numbers which we 'drew out of a hat' having put in all high numbers ourselves being aware of the share of prize issues. Some of the lines didn't look as random as we'd hoped but my friend who'd done a course on stats as part of her degree knew to ignore the temptation to adjust them!

Oh well I'm still not a millionaire. :(

Sollywos x
 
I think this may be how a 'problem' with gambling on the lottery can start.

You HAVE to play 'your' numbers every week, otherwise they will certainly win. It's like the customers who buy their scratchards in threes because 'every third one is a winner'. Magical thinking.

I'm not a fan of the lottery, but my hatred of scratchcards knows no bounds. You don't even need to scratch anything off, just the four digit number which is concealed somewhere on the front of the card. We scan the barcode, enter that four digit number and the machine knows whether the card is a winner or not. So there's not even any point in 'the fun of scratching off the numbers'.

Plus also no skill. Like that 'word search' game on the TV during daytime, where you have to ring in to say you've found the word given by the clue (something like) 'The name of the reigning monarch' with ELIZABETH in large letters across the middle of the grid.

Oh no, you have got me started now - I have to go for a nice long lie down....
 
Sollywos said:
I was once in charge of a syndicate and one week when I went to buy the tickets all the machines in our town were down!!!! Frantically running from shop to shop cursing the persons who'd been late with their money so I'd not been able to purchase them the previous day I was totally and utterly convinced that one of our usual tickets was going to win! No doubt in my mind at all!

In a mega panic and wondering what form 'falling on my sword' would have to take I got a lift hoping that one of the villages along the main road out of town would have a working machine.

Phew they did and a long queue as well ... time was running out I was beside myself with anxiety!

Ching ching money handed over, tickets clasped in hot sweaty palms and in that exact moment .......

I knew for certain that as usual none of them would win!

Funny how the brain works. :hahazebs:

Camelot didn't offer lucky dips from the off which pissed me off greatly for the reason you mentioned Scargy. My fellow organiser and I didn't want any of the tickets to belong to one particular punter so we asked them all to contribute 6 numbers which we 'drew out of a hat' having put in all high numbers ourselves being aware of the share of prize issues. Some of the lines didn't look as random as we'd hoped but my friend who'd done a course on stats as part of her degree knew to ignore the temptation to adjust them!

Oh well I'm still not a millionaire. :(

Sollywos x
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The syndicate I ran for colleagues had enough small wins to more or less pay for itself over the few years l worked there. All on lucky dips.

Collecting the money was the worst part. I did get the full amount each time as I warned that nobody would be paid out if we came up after they'd defaulted.

The participants knew I could do this as it had happened in our home town. A syndicate in a local bakery that won several million pounds refused to pay out to a member who'd missed her subs.

I have the impression that as she'd often got behind with it and been carried by the better payers she was excluded from the celebrations with great glee!

One of the winners was the daughter of a neighbour who told me all about it. Daughter was able to make her mother comfortable in her old age!
 
Yesterday after work I bought an axe at a hardware store. When I got home, I was quite sleepy and I ended up sleeping 12 hours or so.
In the morning a friend showed me that a store in our small town was robbed by a man with an axe last night. I wonder if I sleepwalk.
 
Sollywos said:
I was once in charge of a syndicate and one week when I went to buy the tickets all the machines in our town were down!!!! Frantically running from shop to shop cursing the persons who'd been late with their money so I'd not been able to purchase them the previous day I was totally and utterly convinced that one of our usual tickets was going to win! No doubt in my mind at all!

In a mega panic and wondering what form 'falling on my sword' would have to take I got a lift hoping that one of the villages along the main road out of town would have a working machine.

Phew they did and a long queue as well ... time was running out I was beside myself with anxiety!

Ching ching money handed over, tickets clasped in hot sweaty palms and in that exact moment .......

I knew for certain that as usual none of them would win!

Funny how the brain works. :hahazebs:

Camelot didn't offer lucky dips from the off which pissed me off greatly for the reason you mentioned Scargy. My fellow organiser and I didn't want any of the tickets to belong to one particular punter so we asked them all to contribute 6 numbers which we 'drew out of a hat' having put in all high numbers ourselves being aware of the share of prize issues. Some of the lines didn't look as random as we'd hoped but my friend who'd done a course on stats as part of her degree knew to ignore the temptation to adjust them!

Oh well I'm still not a millionaire. :(

Sollywos x
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I have been buying them for some months for work. . Recently handed it over to someone else...the relief ! ...know just what you mean when in a queue etc ...sometimes got them by the skin of my teeth. I'm still not a millionaire either.
 
Ger said:
I have been buying them for some months for work. . Recently handed it over to someone else...the relief ! ...know just what you mean when in a queue etc ...sometimes got them by the skin of my teeth. I'm still not a millionaire either.
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Sorry ! That was meant to follow a post about buying Lotto tickets ?!
 
Well, maybe you meant to post about buying Lotto tickets, but the rest of us know that buying axes for months on end, whether for work or not (chop wood for heat in case your electricity is cut off—who can afford to pay bills during a pandemic?), is a good investment, and, when handled (im)properly, can lead to sudden riches! :axem:
 
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I've been feeling a bit fed up today so was delighted instead because an old friend from Cromer who's moved to Birmingham (my home town) has just contacted me to ask me if I'll join him on a ghost investigation mission tomorrow night at a local church because he's back in Cromer at the moment. He's the ex boyfriend of the woman I usually go on ghost investigations with, she's been pissing me around lately but he doesn't know that and I'm not going to tell him. His new Birmingham girlfriend said "Ask Swifty!" so it's game on :) .. the weird coincidence is that I sent her UB40's 'Rat In My Kitchen' music as a thank you for cheering me up because they are a Birmingham band and me and her are Brummies ..

.. and then I came back on this forum and someone had given me a 'like' for something .. it was WeeScottishLassie and she was laughing about a joke me and Frideswide had shared ages ago on this forum about UB40's 'Rat In My Kitchen' song. What are the odds?.

edit:
Family Find Baked Snake With Their Pizza | Page 2 | The Forteana Forums

 
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Well that's a different story altogether!
 
catseye said:
I think this may be how a 'problem' with gambling on the lottery can start.

You HAVE to play 'your' numbers every week, otherwise they will certainly win. It's like the customers who buy their scratchards in threes because 'every third one is a winner'. Magical thinking.

I'm not a fan of the lottery, but my hatred of scratchcards knows no bounds. You don't even need to scratch anything off, just the four digit number which is concealed somewhere on the front of the card. We scan the barcode, enter that four digit number and the machine knows whether the card is a winner or not. So there's not even any point in 'the fun of scratching off the numbers'.

Plus also no skill. Like that 'word search' game on the TV during daytime, where you have to ring in to say you've found the word given by the clue (something like) 'The name of the reigning monarch' with ELIZABETH in large letters across the middle of the grid.

Oh no, you have got me started now - I have to go for a nice long lie down....
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I'm crap at maths but think I once saw some maths person on TV saying you have better odds of winning if you keep changing the numbers, or some numbers. I forget. Also, people often pick birthdays - so you up your chances of winning a higher amount if you pick a number above 31...

Someone once won big on the lottery buying a ticket in our local Co-op (a village one).

My 18 year old won an accumulator £1 free bet last week - won £200. He bets on the footie. The second to last game they scored the winning goal in the 90 somethingth minute. I was sat with him when they asked him if he wanted to cash out for £18, one game from the end, and we persuaded him to stay in it as it had been a free bet so technically he only would lose a quid. That wasn't even his quid. My other son put on a free bet acca the day he was 18 and I was praying he'd lose, to put him off betting. He also won! That was over £200.
 
t'other day I was stuck in a traffic jam listening to Radio 4 on t'wireless. A programme started up that I didn't like so I bobbed the CD player on instead, thinking 'Let's 'ave a spot of Rainbow!'
When I looked back at the road I noticed I was next to a sign for a business called Rainbow, ooer!

The song was Since You've Been Gone, which I played a few times because I like it. I was soon home, humming away, and on TV was the Inside Number 9 episode with the karaoke featuring... Since You've Been Gone. Yow.
 
As a teenager, I wasn't doing drugs. A waste of youth, I know.
I ended up moving to Amsterdam for work so of course that had to change. I was invited to a get together and there was hash cakes. So I'm sitting eating those, for the first time, when weirdly I see what looks like a fireball moving across the sky. None of the others knew what I was talking about, so I wondered if that stuff had made me hallucinate.
It wasn't untill about a week later I saw an article in the paper about a meteorite that had been seen going across Europe.
 
I've never actually seen a rat in any of my kitchens, but knew someone who had a rat hole in the children's bedroom that the landlord wouldn't take care of. I only had little slugs and a big banana slug come up out of the drains. Oh, and giant cockroaches, but everyone has them! :wink2:
 
Xanatic* said:
As a teenager, I wasn't doing drugs. A waste of youth, I know.
I ended up moving to Amsterdam for work so of course that had to change. I was invited to a get together and there was hash cakes. So I'm sitting eating those, for the first time, when weirdly I see what looks like a fireball moving across the sky. None of the others knew what I was talking about, so I wondered if that stuff had made me hallucinate.
It wasn't untill about a week later I saw an article in the paper about a meteorite that had been seen going across Europe.
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Reminds me of when I was a kid of about 8 with a broken arm, visiting the local fracture clinic. There was a circus nearby and their baby elephant, called Tania, was brought to visit the children's ward.

All the kids in the place were rounded up to see Tania. She was beautiful and impeccably behaved; none that Blue Peter nonsense*, thank you very much. We were enthralled.

I didn't tell anyone because I didn't think I'd be believed. An elephant? In a hospital? Back then, kids weren't taken seriously about anything much.

However, the next week our local paper did a feature on the visit. I took it into school to prove it was true and I'd seen Tania!

*Crapping and weeing on the studio floor on live children's television, standing on John Noakes' foot and then dragging the keeper through the mess on his backside. TOP entertainment.
 
IbisNibs said:
I've never actually seen a rat in any of my kitchens, but knew someone who had a rat hole in the children's bedroom that the landlord wouldn't take care of. I only had little slugs and a big banana slug come up out of the drains. Oh, and giant cockroaches, but everyone has them! :wink2:
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I don't mind rats, kept them as pets but currently have a very quick and lively terrier, so no worries about wild ones in the house. Oddly enough I'm more frightened of cockroaches.
 
We had rats in our attic in a different house. The builders had failed to provide the garage with proper foundations, so the wee buggers burrowed underneath and climbed up through the insulating gap.

We got the exterminators in and they laid poison. About the same time, the in-laws' dog came to stay for a week or so. I was sleepwalking out of the house to take him for a walk at about 6am, and came round the corner to find a dead rat in the side alley. Luckily the dog was so excited about walkies that he completely ignored it. When I told the husband on our return, he volunteered me to dispose of the corpse; I gave it a damn good kick before I shuffled it into a plastic bag,I can tell you.
 
bugmum said:
came round the corner to find a dead rat in the side alley.
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You were lucky both to find the dead one outside and for the dog to have ignored it. :)

A year or two back I kept hearing noises like a scampering across the flat roof of the kitchen. Too fast to be birds and I although I had seen a rat scurring past the kitchen window en route to next doors hens for some reason I didn't put the blame on it. Just thought 'air in pipes' or something and resolved to tell the landlord when I came back after Christmas.

Arrived back after a long tiring train journey to be greeted by the most horrible overpowering stink in my kitchen. Bloody hell I thought I emptied the bins and thoroughly cleaned the sink ...check yes I had. Fridge likewise clean checked everywhere in between going outside for gasps of air.

Got the landlord the next day and at first he was as puzzled as me. Eventually he found a tiny little gap in the felt roof where he hadn't sealed it down properly. Poor old ratty must have squeezed through and had been stuck in there for a while till he expired. Even if I'd realised what it was sooner there wasn't much that could be done without damaging the roof so conscience clean on that one. However it meant I just had to put up with the smell until it went.

I became pretty good at cooking easy meals while holding my breath! Not that the smell was doing my appetite any good.

I know there are rats everywhere but I'd prefer them to keep out of my way. Yes I can see they are quite darling in their way, cute little faces, respect for fellow creatures an' all that ... but y'know .....

Sollywos x
 
Just a teeny tiny one. I am watching Britain's Greatest Christmas adverts whike scrolling Facebook and its talking about Toys R us. Just as they are talking about the local radio DJ who did his broadcast outside the Coventry store in protest of it closing (no names mentioned). That very DJ appeared on my FB feed!
 
This is a very, very small coincidence but hey...

A few nights ago I had a dream in which 'Honshu' was very prominent. The next day there was a question on The Chase that required the name of a Japanese Island. Ordinarily I'd go for Hokkaido but went for Honshu, which – cue X-Files theme – was the correct answer.
 
Sollywos said:
I know there are rats everywhere but I'd prefer them to keep out of my way.
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As I was saying ......

Logged off after writing the above and picked up my book (well actually a kindle) and what do you know but l turned the page and :=

'A mouse or rat was shuffling in the corner and a cockroach scuttled round the chair legs'

:hahazebs::hahazebs::hahazebs:

Sollywos
 
One of my cats brought in a rat last night. Much horror and disruption followed. I had to dispose of the barely alive rat at 4.00 am, put a box over it, picked a random magazine from a messy great pile of mixed reading matter to slide underneath...This is what I picked up.
 

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Could someone please delete my post about the axe robbery? There is currently 3 cop cars parked outside my window. :oops:
 
Xanatic* said:
Could someone please delete my post about the axe robbery? There is currently 3 cop cars parked outside my window. :oops:
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Done.

However ... If you were joking I can resurrect it, provided you are suitably apologetic ... :omr:
 
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