I was a teenage Cable Monkey

Over the years, I've done lots of jobs. I've been a barman, a delivery driver, a doorman and a bailiff.  I've run nightclubs, helpdesks, and teams of IT engineers.  I've worked for airlines, pharmaceutical companies, councils and hairdressers.  But in all those different jobs, I'm never happier than when I'm lying on my back, with my head under a false floor, plugging cables into boxes with flashing lights on.

I am a hard-wired, dyed-in-the-wool cable-monkey, and proud of it. People I work with tend to find this out fairly early and I tend to get asked to do the 'difficult stuff', The conversation will often go something like this:

Them: Aw, damn!

Me: Whut?

Them: This new thing doesn't work?

Me: Whut?

Them: Well, I've got this iPhone (They show me the iPhone, because they think I've never seen one before) and I want to connect it to... Erm... This duck? (They hold up a duck, which looks much like any other duck, but has a slightly more confused and upset look on its face than usual) and I want them to talk to each other but I don't have the right cable.

Me: Is there a right cable?

Them: Well, Maplins said there wasn't, but there has to be, right? I mean, I can't be the only person who wants to connect a duck to an iPhone

So, I go away and make a cable up and everyone's happy (Except for the duck, obvs)

What I'm trying to say is that I'm pretty good at making things work, Mrs Dandy doesn't ask me if I've managed to fix something anymore, she just assumes that it's now fixed and asks what I've had to dismantle in the process.

So, onto today's story.  In 2005, I worked for a large, international, construction company.  It was halfway through my last week when my boss informed me that there was one, last, special job that I could do as sort of a 'leaving present'.  It was unusual and would involve a huge amount of travelling, but there was an overnight hotel stay at a hotel in Scotland and the company were known at the time for their free and easy attitude towards expenses claims.

It turned out that the CEO of the company had bought himself a castle in Scotland, complete with turrets and archways and a dungeon (probably) and he wanted his office wiring up so that he didn't have to commute to Solihull every day (Not that he did, of course, thet'd be mental) The only downside was that He, himself, wouldn't be there, it'd just be his wife... and she'd requested that I'd be there by 10:00am... and it was a four and a half hour drive, as long as I didn't stop at all, ever.

So the next day came, and I flung the bedroom curtains open to be met by snow.  I threw on my warmest clothes, shoved a similar set into my haversack and clamboured into my Audi (I had an A6 at the time, leather seats, climate control, the whole shebang... It were reet lush)

The trip was singularly unremarkable, except that the snow stopped at Carlisle, and so did I for a frankly overpriced breakfast at the services at Todhills.  I drove on through Gretna (Which isn't as picturesque as I'd though it would be) past Dumfries, the home-town of the irrepressible Scots Mick, to the sunny, seaside village of Rockcliffe.

This is Rockcliffe (photo is actual size,
no, really it is that tiny)

If you take a trip to Rockcliffe, you'll instantly know why the Scots are traditionally described as a rugged people.  The 'Beach' isn't made of sand, or even pebbles - It's made of jagged outcrops of granite that local visitors let their babies cut their teeth on. The entire village is closed throughout the summer months on the grounds that "Anyone who's want ta visit in th' warm weather is a Softy-Walter!"

Luckily, when I got there the sun was out and the sea was calm, by which I mean the water was battering against the seafront cottages, but it hadn't, as yet, put any of the windows through - Which I believe is an ancient Scottish friendship custom.

It took a while to find the castle, it was hidden up an unsignposted track, behind some huge pine trees.  Passing through the wrought-iron gates, I drove up the half-mile or so of gravel driveway and parked inbetween a greenhouse that could have produced a chorusline full of Audrey Two's from Little Shop of Horrors, and an attractive middle-aged lady dressed in the neuvau-agricultural style that you can buy piecemeal from Harvey Nicholls (You know, tight-jeans, rugby-shirt and wellies that cost more than my house) 

She waved at me and called, "Are you the man?"

I whispered under my breath that "Indeed I was the Gods-damned Man." Then smiled brightly, got my heavy toolbox out of the boot and crunched towards her over the artfully scattered, hand-polished marble chips.

"It's in here!" she said as she disappeared into the kitchen, which looked a bit like the one from Downton Abbey, except bigger... It had the bells on the walls and everything.  She ambled through a selection of oak-panelled corridors, asking about my trip and making the concerned noises when I told her about the early start and the over-priced breakfast.  Then she took me upstairs. (For the benefit of the professional tradesmen reading this, yes, I stayed the prescribed four steps behind her all the way up the stairs so that my face was level with her backside) "Here we are." She indicated a large room, completely empty but for a selection of cardboard boxes. "There should be everything you need, he'd like it over there I think."

"Sorry?" I replied, genuinely non-plussed, "I'm just here to connect his laptop and make it work."

"Oh, right you are. Is someone else coming up to build the furniture?" She looked between me, my burgeoning toolbox, the pile of boxes that now obviously contained the office furniture, and the Long-Haired Border Collie that had appeared out of nowhere and was busily sniffing my genitals. "That's Bruno, come off Bruno!" (His name probably wasn't Bruno, but it was something like that, I can't really remember, but you know the sort of thing) She smiled again, and said, "Well, if you just build the table, you can put it on there can't you?"

And because she was... Is handsome a word you're allowed to use for an attractive lady of a certain age? and I'm a sucker for a damsel in distress, and Bruno was getting even more insistant about his desire for my gentleman's area, I agreed.  She turned and went downstairs, with the dog following her closely, and I opened the G-Plan box that contained the desk.

After about an hour of scratching my head and inserting tab 'A' into slot 'F', there was a call from downstairs. "Excuse me, Mr Man? Could you give me a hand?"  I amazed myself by only getting lost three times on the way back down into the kitchen to be presented with the sight of Mrs. CEO surrounded by a sea of carrier bags. "The shopping's just been delivered... I don't suppose you'd give me a hand putting it away?" And I did, because: Knight in shining armour remember?  Then she made us a coffee and we sat at the hand-made kitchen table on hand-made kitchen chairs drinking it from hand-thrown pottery mugs watching the Red Deer frolic in the 'As far as the eye could see' garden.

I went back upstairs and slid back under the desk, tightening the odd screw and greasing the draw-sliders.  Then I cracked my head off the corner of a board as I felt a hand travel up my leg, inexorably towards my Magical Boy Garden of Delights.  Once the dancing stars had faded, I looked down to see Bruno's nose, rather than the hand I had first thought.  I shooed him away, and he looked crestfallen.  I waited, straining my ears trying to hear him trot down the stairs.  When I thought I was 'safe' I carried on with my work.

So, you can imagine my surprise when minutes later a hard rubber bone was dropped onto my scrotum from a great height and I received a similar bump on the other side of my forehead, giving me something of the air of Hellboy.  This time I actively chased Bruno from the room and locked the door behind him.

I finished the desk... Then put together a chair... Connected the broadband up and built the laptop... Built some shelves... Unwrapped the bin... Made up some curtains... embroidered the lampshade and finally made to leave sometime in the mid afternoon.  As I re-entered the kitchen she was stood putting her Barbour coat on.

"Oh, I was just about to ask how long you were going to be, I have to pop out for a few hours." She shook my hand and said thanks, I thanked her for the coffee and she asked if I was driving back to Birmingham.  I said no, and that I was staying locally and driving back in the morning.  When I mentioned the name of the hotel she said, "Are you sure? Because it's closed for the season." She shrugged and I followed her out of the house, jogged to the car and checked the booking form.  It was the right hotel, but there was a note at the bottom of the page that said "check-in from 19:30 onwards." It seemed that I had a couple of hours to kill, so I parked the car at the very closed hotel, walked through a deep, dark forest to find the nearest pub, had a few pints surrounded by very suspicious looking natives and convinced myself that I was firmly in the grip of a local am-dram society's remake of 'An American Werewolf in Scotland'.

When I returned (through the deep, dark forest) the hotel was open, but they had no food available, so I drank whisky until it was time for bed.

I woke up at around 10:00 the next morning.

The snow had followed me.

And due to the fact that the temperature was -45 deg. the car refused to start.

And I was marrooned.

And I died alone and unloved by anyone... Except Bruno.

But I didnae dye my beard purple

So, if you were to spend £2 on a lottery ticket today, and you matched all seven numbers numbers AND you were the only person to do so... You'd win £157 Million. ($242 Million)

ONE HUNDRED AND FIFTY SEVEN!... MILLION!... POUNDS!

ZED-OH-EM-EFF-GEE!!!1!!!!!11!!1!1111!!!Eleven

What could you do with that amount of money? Well, I guess you could do pretty much anything you wanted - I know I'd go mental, buying black market badgers and teaching them to sing showtunes and suchlike, but I think you'll agree that it's a proper game-changing amount of money.

You could do a lot of good - You could pay the wages for a nurse (Pay band 5, point 1 - for my NHS chums) for nearly seven and a half thousand years. Or, conversely, you could pay Wayne Rooney's wages for ten years. (Feel sick about how our sad society thinks that balding Granny-shaggers that play a child's game for an hour and a half a week are somehow seven hundred and fifty times more important than people who actually save lives yet? I certainly do.)

It's higher than the Gross National Product of the entirety of Micronesia (A chain of island-states just north of Australia) and you could possibly therefore buy it and pronounce yourself King, or Emperor or some other high muck-a-muck and find yourself owning a potential fortune in High-Quality Phosphates - You'd need a big wallet though, especially if you decided to live on the island of Yap, where the local currency consists of carved stone disks, up to twelve feet in diameter.  You could introduce some sort of credit system, the islands chiropractors would then worship you as their God. (or possibly kill you and eat you as you'd have taken away all their business).

You could buy four, brand new, AH-64D Apache Longbow Attack Helicopters, one for each member of the family perhaps, and make parking worries a thing of the past.  You might even have enough left over to teach you how to fly them. (It seems that there's a bit more to flying one of these buggers than it shows you on the XBox - It's like balancing a tea-tray on an oily ball bearing, in a high wind, or so I'm reliably informed.)

But all the mad things aside, what would you actually do?

If you were sat at home tonight and my very good and close friend, Mr Nick Knowles (or whoever presents it nowadays) reads out those seven numbers and you look at the screen, then look at your ticket, then back at the screen, ticket, screen, ticket.  Once the screaming and the explosive defecation had subsided, you'd check the numbers again and then read the back of your ticket to see what to do next.  So you ring Camelot and (I don't know because obviously it's never happened to me, but I assume...) They ask you some questions, maybe where you bought the ticket, if you'd like publicity or not, did you want to come to London to collect a cheque, or shall they put it straight into your Post Office savings account?

Would the paranoia set in now do you think? Would you start thinking that every person in the world wanted your ticket?  What would you do with it whilst you slept? What if someone breaks in and steals it? What if your wife slits your throat and makes off with it? What if the dog eats it? What if the wind blows through your draughty double-glazing and blows it into the oven, that was still warm from when you reheated a plate of leftovers from yesterday and the cat walks over the button that sends the spark to relight it and it catches on fire?

Then you try to calm down, because you realise that you're about to have a debilitating brain aneurysm - which would be ironic, according to Alanis Morrisette at least.

Then you think... A nice holiday whilst you take it all in, perhaps a couple of months in America.  DisneyWorld, Route 66, Hollywood, Californian beaches, maybe even a beachfront house (You can get something quite nice with five bedrooms and eight bathrooms for $20 Million on Laguna beach)  where you can spend the summers.

And then maybe a new car, you imagine walking into the Audi dealership, dressed in your pyjamas and your old dressing gown that your Auntie Edith bought you for Christmas in 1987, walk up the the salesman and say, 'I'd like a matching pair of R8 V10 Spyders please, and what's your price for cash?' Then you open the aluminium suitcase full of stacks of £50 notes and watch as he does a sex-wee and crumples to the floor with his eyes rolling back into his head and his arms and legs spasming uncontrollably.

But you'd need somewhere to live, you wouldn't emigrate, because you're staunchly British and you realise that foreign lands are all very well to visit, but you wouldn't want to live there (there are usually flies, and the distinct possibility of poor people, who in all likelihood sweat all over the place and make it look untidy.) So you'd buy some land, and engage some hardworking and artistic people to build you a stately pile.  It'd be a castle though wouldn't it, really?  From the outside it would look like something that could repel an invasion from an unwashed medieval horde for six months.  You'd have a high wall, and possibly a moat, with hammerhead sharks (because my wife says I can't have killer whales), because even though the initial paranoia has worn off, you still know that there're a list of people as long as your arm that think they deserve what you've got and are willing to take it by force.

Your castle would have a cinema, because going to the cinema is great, you might have a nightclub for having parties in, and a gym, obviously.  Perhaps you could cultivate the friendship of everyone's favourite 'Dragon', Duncan Bannatyne and he could get you a good deal on some decent equipment.  I'd personally supplement all this with a games room, the normal stuff like pool and snooker tables maybe even Ski-ball... And also a number of high-end gaming computers with 50" HD Monitors.  Maybe a bowling alley, but definitely a shooting range for guns and bows.

Other possibilities include one of those Wacky Warehouse type places, but adult sized.  A swimming pool with built in jaccuzi and water-slides coming from each bedroom.  You'd probably have bought some woodland too, then you could get some of those crusty type new-age chaps to build you a completely awesome tree-house / suspended walkway / Ewok habitats where you can sit in the autumn, drinking Fortnum and Mason hot chocolate whilst you take potshots, with your air-rifle, at people poaching rabbits on your land.

I'd have a cave too, built in the cellar, where all the walls have been sculpted out of something that looks like solid rock, but not that Star-Trek expanded foam stuff, painted to look like rock, something solid that you could bang a nail into to hold up a picture or something, should the mood take you.  It would have my writing computer, which would be like the gaming computers, but with twin, A4 sized monitors side by side... And I'd be able to dictate stuff to it and it would tell me if it was rubbish or not.  It would also have a dumbwaiter that led to the kitchen (that was big enough for me to fit in, because I've always wanted to do that.) And a soundproofed mini cinema, because occasionally you want to watch films in private, with the door locked, on a heated and Scotchguarded La-Z-boy. *Cough*

I guess I'd put a massive wodge of cash in the bank for the kids futures, maybe share it out a Little too, pay my close friends and families debts off, give em a million or so on top.  Actually, that's a point... If it were you, would you give everyone the same amount, to save on arguments, or would you employ a 'sliding scale' process?  Something like - 'I like you, but you borrowed my George Foreman grill last year and broke it, so I'm taking £100,000 off your award' or 'Actually, even though I've only really known you for a couple of months, you've been quite cool about the time you caught me staring down your top when you bent over, so have another £250,000.'

It's a proper minefield isn't it?

Is it all worth the hassle?

Could you cope with the constant worry about yourself or your family being kidnapped and held for ransom, the deluge of begging letters when people you haven't seen for years find out and come crawling out of the woodwork?

All you'd have in return is everything you've ever dreamed of?

It's a difficult question and no mistake, but as I sit here, riding around my personal skating rink made from ice from Jupiter's moon Europa, on the back of my platinum plated narwhal, I would say yes, it jolly well is worth it and I would repeatedly shoot anyone who says different.

That reminds me, I really must put an advert for a new chef in next month's Country Life.