Open Writing

It might be a daft question, but I would hazard a guess that almost everyone everywhere has pondered the benefits that could come from being a millionaire, and I include myself in the count.

Naturally, my musings on this theme are wholly speculative since I have never been rich, but my imagination suggests that all those difficulties I have faced in life due to being a penny short and a day late would not have arisen, like mighty Poseidon from the deep, to present an overwhelming obstacle to my peace of mind had I been wealthy.

I have been poor. The simple fact is that I was born poor, but not impoverished, and have lived poor all my life, and only infrequently impoverished. I do know what it is like not to know where the next meal was coming from, nor where I would rest my head when night fell.

There was a time when I gave all my energy to determining how I was going to make my second million pounds. That was because I had abandoned all hope of ever making my first million. However, you will be surprised to learn that the second proved as elusive as the first.

They say that those who are born to hang need never fear water. I wonder why they say that. I also wonder why I wrote it! I confess that while I swim a lot, gallows and thick hempen ropes make me nervous – very nervous!

Back to the plot!

I have always wondered why those people on TV who advertise a sure fire way to make millions without risking more than a few pounds waste what they have by spending it on expensive commercial advertisements instead of busying themselves at applying their own secrets to make even more money.

I still do not have an answer to that question, unless it is a matter of telling different people different things so that at least one of them might make the great secret work in their favour. I was told by one-who-knows that racehorse tipsters – for example, Prince "I-gotta-horse" Monolulu, give different tips to different customers for each race, naturally in the hope that a percentage determined by the number of horses lined up for the start divided into a hundred will be lucky winners or placers. This system is foolproof as long as someone bets each way in every horse on the field. However, for every percentage of winners, there is a much larger number that go home disappointed, wishing that the Prince would choke on his own feathers.

Not being so devious as a tipster, unless I am being asked about my whereabouts on the night of December the third, 1947, by a man who resembles a cross betwixt William Bendix and King Kong, who consistently refuses to stop shining that dazzling light into my eyes, in which case I might offer an alternative to ‘veritas absolut,’ I have a foolproof [but offer no warranty] method of becoming a millionaire in moments, and all it will cost you is one Great British Pound, or about two US Dollars.

"Alright," I hear my critics sneer, "If that’s so, why aren’t you rich?" I am then obliged to point out that I did not promise riches, I promised only to show you how to become a millionaire.

"What’s the difference?" rasp the chorus of unbelievers, a group that grows numerically and also grows more unpleasantly vocal as the seconds tick away.

I must confess to being almost innumerate. That is the same as being illiterate with writing and reading, only with numbers. I am not illiterate, I can read. My sole flaw in that direction is that while I can read reading, I cannot read writing.

But when it comes to mathematics, especially the sort with letters instead of numbers (what a silly useless sort of fool thing that is!), I prefer to be faced with Sanskrit back to front and upside down. The most I can say about the numbery thing is, "I CAN’T!"

So, although it would seem to be a foregone conclusion that I ought not to know anything about millionairing, I do know how easy it is to become one. I check the facts every morning and they are always consistently in support of my premise that anyone can become a millionaire provided that they have a quid or a couple of bucks.

My enlightenment came about on this wise: although I am a subject of the United Kingdom, from England, Yorkshire, West Riding, Wapentake of Upper Agbrigg, and the town of Huddersfield, I dwell in ‘terra émigré,’ a country that lies a little way to the west of Ellis Island in the Atlantic approaches, and so, as one who best serves his country by leaving it, I have my British state pension paid into our local bank account.

Its value in dollars fluctuates with the rise and fall of the currency exchange rates, so as deposit day closes in on us every four weeks we look to our Google Widget ensconced on the desktop of the computer to find out what our extra or shortfall is likely to be.

The rates are changed dynamically whenever there is a change in the currency market, so I need always to have up-to-date information to gleefully or dismally anticipate as the pension readies itself to drop into our bank vault via the exchange mechanism.

Sometimes we get an unexpected bonus of a few extra dollars, in which case we might splash out on new toothbrushes for the dogs. At other times, the value is so poor that we have to cancel one or other of our upcoming world cruises.

So, to get the very latest information, I click on a currency other than the $US, and immediately click on the $US again. In so doing I get a glimpse of the next currency in the gizmo, which is Vietnam, a country that also uses the dollar as its currency.

The difference between the American and the Vietnamese dollar is that for every one of Uncle Sam’s, the Vietnamese provides somewhere close to 16,000,000 of theirs. At the time I write this, a single British pound is valued against the Hanoi dollar yields a mind fazing $31,694,918.

So, if you or a loved one wants to be a millionaire all anyone need do is trot into the nearest bureau de change clutching a picture of Elizabeth II Regina stamped on a little metal disk and ask for it to be changed into Vietnamese cash, and you will walk out a millionaire!

"By the way." said Lieutenant Columbo, turning back into the room as he reaches the exit door, "Don’t forget to take a wheelbarrow. You’ll need it to carry off your haul!"

Copyright © 2008 – Ronnie Bray
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

Check out Ronnie Bray's website "RETOLD YORKSHIRE FOLK TALES" at: http://yorkshiretales.com/