Early. Bleary-eyed. Rummaging through emails before work and there it is.
Now I have my fair share of luck like everyone else. I’m not swimming in lottery wins yet occasionally the cosmos chucks me a bone and a I manage a few numbers in the Chunderball. It’s a balancing act no doubt due to my years of annoying people and general sanctimonious behaviour. Yes, me. Look at me.
“Congratulations! You’re our Mastercard Competition WINNER!”
I’m your what the what now? This email sat in my inbox is telling me I’m a winner. It is praising me for winning more than anyone else. I am a winner. I have won a VIP trip for two adults to attend the UEFA Champions League Final Madrid 2019. I would rather stick my eye sockets in a paste of pepper and lemon juice than have anything to do with fucking football but even so, it does come with hotel accommodation and a £250.00 prepaid card so I can stick twos up at the final and go off to get hammered in some squalid Spanish bar, where the locals can pick my pocket when I am stumbling back to my hotel room around 7pm or however long it takes for me to get wasted these days.
This is pushed to one side by my acute distinct overwhelming sense of pessimism. “What do you think you’re doing? You actually believe you’ve won a competition? When did you enter this competition”
“I… I erm I don’t er… I didn’t?”
“Well done, genius! You didn’t. Why on earth would you have entered a competition to win tickets to the UEFA Champions League Final? It’s clearly a sham. It’s a fake. They’re trying to scam your sorry ass for a quick buck.”
Having checked the details, even though it looked like a genuine email I was inclined to agree with my pessimism that it was some hoodlums attempting swindle the last few pennies from my account. Like with all great phishing scandals, I sent a message to Zavvi saying that I had received an email that looked about as legitimate as a Smidge Manly Coco Loco advertisement from Spain, and asked them to verify if this was the case. I received a response a few hours later, two responses in fact. It seems as though a lot of people had received the same email I had because the first reply was a mass-produced email from Zavvi apologising for their error. This was further confirmed by the poor customer service adviser who had to message me back to say that I had not won the tickets, as well as several tweets from people on Twitter who had gone through the same highs and lows as I had.
So in one sense I have missed out on the chance of flying to Spain to live out a brief fantasy of downing alcohol in a foreign country. On the other hand though I have avoided a poxy holiday based around a shit game of football.
Hotter Otter out.
20 comments on “King for a Day”
You could still, if you wanted, go to Madrid and get pissed. That’s still a thing you could do. Why don’t you do that?
I could do that but only if someone else was paying. You seem to be offering; do you want my bank details to transfer the money?
I’ll give you a fiver if you can guarantee that my exact fiver will be put towards this, and only this purpose.
Your exact fiver is straight up the cash pipe directly into the safeingtons bankingtons. I hope this answers your question.
It does, perfectly. I’ll tie it to the back of a carrier pigeon and have it with you by Saturday.
What’s the pigeons favourite film in the ‘Police Academy’ series? This way, when he or she arrives, I know they are the legit pigeon.
Legiteon.
If he had to choose one, it’d be Police Academy 3. However he’s not really a fan and would rather watch old black and white movies. Tho ones where people fall down stairs in comedic ways after being knocked over by a plank.
Hang on, you wouldn’t send me a fiver, but you’re happy to bosh him five sheets on the basis that he said “safeingtons bankingtons”? You don’t even like things that end in “ingtons”.
Bosh him five sheets?
Who do you think you are, Vinnie Jones?
I’m pretty sure I’m Vinnie Jones, yes. I don’t see what is so unreasonable about that.
I have always suspected the mysterious middle part of your life where you disappeared for several years and came back in the 6th form with a steely eye and several supposedly “computer-based injuries”. A likely story.
Exactly. That period, in the years before I joined the sixth form, is when I… er… made my film debut in Guy Ritchie’s crime comedy Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels, in which I played a mob enforcer, Big Chris. That was a dead giveaway.
That almost sounds as though you were reading that off Wikipedia. I mean you can’t have actually seen the film because otherwise you would have exploded.
No no no. I am, apparently, Vinnie Jones, so I would not need to read parts of my own life on Wikipedia.
Why did you do a football and then try to do an act, Mr Jones?
Shut it, you slag, or I’ll batter you, probably.
Okay I’m convinced, you are Vinnie Jones. You can bosh out your five winds in a clean sheet all you want (what?).
Yeah, too right! Time to do a big goal and then headbutt someone or something!
You are a hotbed (?) of toxic masculinity, right there. I bet you’re smoking a steak right now, aren’t you? I bet you’re scrunching up a bottle of shampoo and throwing it at a pensioner.
You know me so well.
Bosh.