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LIFE'S A LOTTERY Last night I had four numbers on the National Lottery, or Lotto as they now call it. I won £97. Unusually I saw the draw live as The Trouble watches 'Casualty', which follows it, and had switched on the TV a little early for it.     Fortunately my four winning numbers came out last, one after the other. I shudder to think what my physiological state would have been had my numbers come out first, leaving the other two numbers still to be determined. Palpitations, and lots of them, would have been the order of the day, that's for sure.     I later checked on teletext what I would have won had my two losing numbers been replaced by the other two winning ones. It was over £10,000,000. Once I'd stopped feeling sorry for myself I got to thinking about the lucky people who have won similar sums in the past, a road I often walk, and in particular to the two quotes many of them unaccountably come up with when asked what they will do with themselves now that they are multi-millionaires. One of which is "I'm going to decorate the house right through." Oh yes? And how long will that take? Three weeks? Four? And what then? Start at the beginning again and decorate it all again? For Christ’s sake man you're rich beyond your wildest dreams, you can afford to have Derry Irvine's decorators in and have them slap on some of that £300 a roll wallpaper the taxpayers bought for him!     The other, and even more pitiful lottery winner's replies is "It won't change my life at all, I will carry on with my job as a postman." (or waiter, or shop assistant, or dustman, or lavatory attendant, etc etc). Which begs the question "If winning the lottery won't alter your life and you intend to carry on with your job why did you bother to enter it in the first place you sad fucker?"     What on earth do these people want the money for if it isn't going to change their lives? What are they going to do with it, sit there and look at it? That's if they have any time to sit and look at it after continuing to work and do the shopping and wash the car and do the garden and all the hundred other things they will have to carry on doing if winning the lottery isn't going to change their lives.     If I were put in charge of the lottery the first thing I'd would do would be to introduce a rule that would empower me to take back the winnings of any winner who declared that "It won't change my life at all, I will carry on with my job as a postman, or whatever", and give it to somebody who would use it to change their lives, and bigtime. But then I suppose that once a few winners had been deprived of their jackpots they would get the message and those who intended to carry on working would keep quiet about it. Thus perhaps occasioning a visit from my Lottery Police ....      LOTTERY POLICEMAN: So then Mr Higgins, what are you doing with yourself these days now that you've given up being a postman?     JACKPOT WINNER: Oh, this and that. Help the wife around the house, you know. Do a bit of walking.     LOTTERY POLICEMAN: Walking? Where you do your walking, the Lake District? Or the Or the Yorkshire Dales perhaps?     JACKPOT WINNER: No, just local.     LOTTERY POLICEMAN: Local? Where local?     JACKPOT WINNER: Well I usually start off at Victoria Street, then from there I go down Sycamore Crescent, then Hall Street, Lea Street, Meadow Terrace, Meal Street, Acorn Terrace, Hyde Bank Road, and end up in Jubilee Street.     LOTTERY POLICEMAN: Correct me if I'm wrong but isn't that your old postal delivery route?     JACKPOT WINNER: ....Yes....Yes I think it is, now you come to mention it.     LOTTERY POLICEMAN: And when you go out walking on what just happens to be your old delivery route, do you by any chance carry a bag with you?     JACKPOT WINNER: Just a little one.     LOTTERY POLICEMAN: As little as a lady's handbag?     JACKPOT WINNER: No, a bit bigger than that.     LOTTERY POLICEMAN: As big as a postbag perhaps?     JACKPOT WINNER: Well round about as big as that.     LOTTERY POLICEMAN: And would there be letters in this bag?     JACKPOT WINNER: Look, don't shop me, let me keep the money, I promise not to do it again, honest.     LOTTERY POLICEMAN: Well all right then. But just this once.     JACKPOT WINNER: Thanks. I won't let you down.     LOTTERY POLICEMAN: So then, how are will you be spending your time once you no longer have a job?     JACKPOT WINNER: I'll decorate the house.