George, who runs my local chippie, once said to me, “Good luck occurs when opportunity meets experience!”
Wise words, indeed.
But I didn’t take much notice of them at the time because I was paying him for a large cod and chips and anxious to get home before they got cold.
Next morning as I was shaving, I looked in the bathroom mirror and thought, on reflection, he was right.
Bad luck, however, tends to arrive unannounced.
Take last Thursday…
I was walking through Swansea city centre, minding my own business (I’d be foolish to waste my time minding someone else’s business when we’re still not out of the recession) and I came upon two of those blokes in red jackets who hang around town, asking people “Have you had an accident in the last two years?”
As one of them posed that very question to me, I turned my head to look in his direction, which broke both my concentration and my purposeful, manly stride*.
*Not to be confused with the moustachioed actor of 1940s British film comedies, the late Manley Stroud.
I then collided with their metal sign which was placed slam-bang in the middle of my path.
The momentum of this impact caused me to go base over apex, hit the ground, rip my trousers at the knee and graze my hands and face.
Falling over in public, injuring myself and ruining my trousers was bad enough, but as I was about to say “Yes, I’ve had an accident. I just collided with your metal sign which was placed slam-bang in the middle of my path” to the red-jacketed pair, they turned and looked the other way, engaged in what was obviously a hurriedly concocted conversation so they could deny that they’d been witnesses to my trip.
I couldn’t continue to walk around Swansea with ripped trousers and a bloody knee – it wasn’t a Friday night, after all.
So, gathering up my dignity and a dozen mint imperials that had fallen out of my pocket when I tripped, I limped away to a nearby charity shop to see if they had a cheap pair of trousers.
Not that the ones I’d ripped were cheap. I was wearing a suit which had cost me a lot, several years ago. Well it is traditional to look your very best when you’re walking up the aisle with your new bride.
I saw a pair of trousers in the charity shop window that almost matched my jacket, so I went inside and asked the lady behind the counter if I could try on the trousers in the window. But she said I’d have to try them on in the changing room.
They just about fitted me, so I kept them on, walked to the counter and paid the lady, who said “They’re a lovely fit. You’re a very lucky man!”
To which I replied “Madam. If I really was a lucky man, I wouldn’t have had to come in here to buy these flippin’ trousers!”