Fast Forward

Suddenly I’m 78. I don’t know how it happened. It just crept up on me. Time’s pretty sneaky. Face it, a lot of people my age have been dead for a while, so selling up wouldn’t be so bad a solution to our problems. We knew that appointing another agent would be difficult. Most of them wanted an upfront fee of £2000 which we could not find, and they talked of up to 2 years to find a buyer. We knew we didn’t have that much time. To support a time against element of a conventional sale there were at the time 3 pubs currently for sale in Harwich and Dovercourt, and all three had been on the market for some considerable time. Anyway, years previously we had tried that route.

Weeks went by with us biting our nails; sleepless nights and mind-numbing worry until one morning Eureka! Going downstairs early to relieve the night porter I blurted, almost joking

“I think I’ll raffle the hotel.” Silly supercilious sitting pro-active as a lump of meat at the end of the bar said, “You can’t do that, it’s illegal.” This was of course, the usual negative input from the workforce which acted as a stimulant making me determined to pursue the idea.

The more I thought about it the more the idea made sense. I thought of the people who might be tempted to buy a ticket. And the more I thought the longer the list I came up with. Those in the hospitality industry already, who pay high rents which they’re not too happy about. The more successful they are the higher the rents go. There are managers who would rather be their own boss. There are those who have one hotel who would like another. There are those who never thought owning a hotel was possible. That’s a whole population of people whose best interests might be served by having a go. Then there are the recently redundant with money in the bank but no job but could afford a ticket. There is a population of people who have saved up, have the deposit to buy a house but can’t get a mortgage due to lenders’ caution after the crash. What about people coming out of the armed forces wanting a new direction? What about all the Chinese who could make a restaurant with rooms? The Chinese are said to like a gamble. There could be an Indian Restauranteur. And so on and on; potential punters with reasons to buy abound.

By now my enthusiasm was boiling over and I realised the legality having been questioned, even though by the unqualified, had to be established. We looked it up on the internet but there was so much jargon the whole thing seemed beyond our comprehension, which brought us to a telephone call to the Gambling Commission. By them we were told a raffle would not be legal but we could run a Prize Draw. To clarify things even further we made an appointment with a barrister in the city, Middle Temple, and based on the advice enlisted a recommended solicitor to produce the terms and conditions. This was not straightforward as fees of something like £25,000 were being bandied about. Pretty well out of the question. Eventually after several months we found a lawyer whose fees were more reasonable and terms and conditions were agreed.

On a shoe-string we developed methods to achieve a result employing PR people, web designers and so on. After a lot of work, a lot of burning of midnight oil we arrived at www.winahotel.co.uk. With much angsty we settled on a ticket price of £1000. Once up and running, the Gambling Commission contacted us and fortunately after a brief correspondence advised,“no further action will be taken.” Virtually we were given a perfect all clear to get on with it and good luck.

The play written, the scene set, the box office open. Tickets sales miserable. Optimism’s outcome a sickening failure. Lonely. Lonely. Lonely.

Why? Why Is another many-flavoured tease. Almost too tricky to explore. Too depressing.

Was it the ticket price? Was it the Odds? Was it the anti-campaign? Paranoia. Excuses. “Passing the buck”. Self-justification. Why bother to ask? Does it matter anyway?

It must. It does. Of course, it does. Somehow, we have to know why things don’t work out, expectations are not met, in order to go forward. We have to finish things off. We have to understand, if for nothing else, to gain some confidence to energise to the next thing. And we all need a next thing.

Hindsight’s great. You’ve got to dare to look, care enough to look and take what you see on with you. A living, breathing, biological auto-selfie. Otherwise we’re cattle, heads down grazing all day, every day, night and day the same. No Monday. No Tuesday. Instead an unmarked established monotony.

I stray, the mind wanders, talking to myself again so back to it.

There was an anti-campaign, a negative force at work, fuelled by what? Jealousy, hatred, bitterness or just the stupidity of gullible fools. Or just plain ignorance. Wouldn’t be told, wouldn’t ask, ignorance. Or a peevishness, peevishness that could best be illustrated when seen so plainly on the face of sanctimonious rectitude when our prize draw novelty featured on television news. The unexpected interview and filming had been cordial. Consequently, I was bewildered by the broadcast. I experienced shocked amazement at such a display of personal anger, indignation, leering slavering contempt from such a source. The full weight of officialdom, virtually the government, stamping on the powerless who dared put their heads above the parapet.

“Trying to make a million pounds,” she choked through a grimace. The scolding in her face. The-very-idea-ruthlessness switched off the sun. How can such simple ignorance be allowed to wield so much influence?

It matched the idiot taunt “It’s not worth a million pounds” which came at me so often from the drunks at the bar to which I’d retorted, “Maybe not. But it is definitely worth a lot more than a £1000.”

We had tried the normal sales methods several times. We’d paid agencies their thousand, sometimes two thousand pound upfront fees to market the business and had no interest at all, no offers. The promise offered by some of these companies put them in the con artist category. Clearly the prize draw as an alternative, a decent, ingenious, good fun endeavour the product of wholesome, realistic, sensible ambition with honourable intent, for it to be interpreted by ignorance as greed, naked greed, avarice, was devastating.

Was it the ticket price? Someone said £1000 is money, £100 is a punt. Should a ticket have been £100? I felt the administration, juggling thousands of hundreds would be unmanageable ending in muddle and conflict. A state of affairs better avoided. As well the odds 2,500 to 1 would be preferred to 25,000 to 1.

We knew how much we needed to settle our debts; mortgages, loans etc. which had to be covered by the ticket money. And we were sent some tax information by our accountants’ office which on reading I thought meant 45% of our receipts would go directly to the revenue, so we had to make provision for that. So, the target was 2500 tickets @ £1000.

Which minus 45% equals £1,375,000. If you take away the debts of approximately £1,000,000, we would be left with £375,000. Not a lot considering we had to have somewhere to live after the hotel, our really inadequate pension provision, savings non-existent and what would have been the reward for 20years working almost 24/7.

Also bear in mind the sum mentioned includes our initial 1996 investment that through inflation’s value erosion would now be worth over £100,000.

The question: The skills test required by law as part of the terms and conditions for entry into the prize draw. The question had to be answered correctly for your purchased ticket to be entered into the draw. Maybe that put some people off. The test was a simple pictorial sequence and asked which of the four choices was next in the series.

Simply put, 0, 2, 4, 6 ? Answer 8

Had participation been magicianed away in cyberspace? Somehow diverted, interfered with, re-circulated and money mysteriously siphoned off. A fantasy nightmare scenario. Madness. I believed our website was all we needed to achieve our goal of 2500 ticket sales.

Take your pick. It could have been some or all of the above. Intrigue after intrigue. Perhaps sinister. Why did those eagerly talking, “Great idea.” “I’ll-do-this,” “I’ll- do-that,” run out of breath so quickly.

Failure could have been due to inadequate publicity, not enough mention, not mentioned often enough. What about lack of resources. Some people I knew in the advertising world said £200,000 cash in advance would oil the wheels, start things moving.

Perhaps “Where’s Harwich?” was the stumbling block.

Finally despairing, we returned all monies received and more as a young lady sent us her bank details and we duly credited her account with £1000 refund, and found out later she had not actually purchased a ticket. Unmanageable “muddle and conflicts”.

Data protection protected this particular thief. We have not been able to trace her in spite of the fact we believe she was a local girl and worked in a local estate agent’s office.

More cover-up, loose ends, via stress and torment to tragedy.