Daydreaming

I've been sitting here, staring blankly at my screen, quaffing a glass of dry white and...daydreaming. It' s one of my favourite pastimes and one I can do while I'm working. Bonus! I find I take in the information and it bypasses my brain, coming out of my fingers and onto the screen.Daydreaming is a very important part of my life. Without it, I'd be just another Joe (or Jo) Blow working for the Man.

But in my dreams, I'm a successful writer, I live by the beach in a house with a lovely patio that looks over the water and where I have my coffee in the mornings. I have enough money to live the life I want, but not so much that I forget who I am. Sounds good, doesn't it? I think so, but I don't live in my daydream so much that I forget everything else. No, real life comes up and bites me on the bum - a reminder to get back to work because the gas or phone bill needs to be paid!

Still, it's fun while it lasts and actually, I can remember an occasion where the daydreams of that particular time came true. It was back in 1997. I had started up a Lotto syndicate where I worked and about a month after we had started playing our numbers, I had a dream that we won first division. Of course, when I told my work colleagues, I got laughed down.

Actually, I had the last laugh. In my dream, we had the big polystyrene cheque, the balloons, champagne and TV cameras. It took a few months, but it all happened just as I dreamt it.

My boss came in one day with a letter in his hand and shaking his head, saying, "There's no cheque here." I could see the Golden Casket logo and knew the letter had something to do with a win of some sort but said, "Don't worry, John, they don't send out cheques if the amount is over $500." The penny hadn't dropped. John then said, "Give them a ring." I replied, "You've got the letter. You ring them." So he did.

In the meantime, I sat there still not realising anything was out of the ordinary until I heard John say, "Aw, come on. Can't you give us some idea of the amount?" The penny dislodged slightly. Then John roared, "What!!! $400,000?" The penny landed with a resounding clang and I went into shock. I felt the blood drain from my face and the world started spinning.John hung up and looked at me, incredulous. I looked back at him feeling and looking, I guess, like a stunned mullett. He shot out the door and I suddenly came to my senses and yelled into the office next door. "We've won Lotto!" The place erupted and the chief pathologist stormed out of his office, demanding, "What the bloody hell is all that racket for?" We told him. He made more racket that all of us together.

All of us after our win - with the big cheque!

John had gone out into the lab and had obviously told staff out there, because we could hear yahooing and yelling. Well, that was the end of work for the day. Vets were ringing for their results and were told, sorry, we've won Lotto!

Why we hadn't realised on the Saturday night (this was the following Thursday) was because I forgot to check the numbers! Consequently Golden Casket wrote to us, explaining we may have won a major prize. Funnily enough, I had heard on the news that morning, as had several others that a first division winner hadn't come forward and that the ticket had been purchased from the Lotto outlet in the shopping village near where I was living at the time. It still didn't register until John made the phone call.

Me, with the big cheque and a couple of ecstatic staff members

Anyway, John and I took off down to the Golden Casket office, which was about a kilometre from the laboratory, and picked up the cheque and a case of champagne, compliments of Golden Casket. As I say, work went by the board for the day, we were delirious! Pretty soon the TV crews turned up and guess what...my dream had come true! So it was on the news that night. Of course, John was rapt at all the free publicity!

As there were 26 of us in the syndicate and the amount was actually closer to $500,000, we all got eighteen-and-a-half thousand dollars each. As someone said, not lifechanging but enough to have a good time. All this happened about a month before Christmas, so the timing was brilliant.

Moral of the story? Never stop daydreaming, who knows when your dreams may come true!