If there was a prize for losing, I’d be a winner!

YOU know, I may be a loser but at least I’m consistent.

As mentioned in last weekend’s Whispers column, I celebrated a birthday last week and accepted an invitation to dinner at a Ruthven St pub.

It was an entertaining evening and a very good meal.

However, when I attended my “local” in Russell St two nights later to watch State of Origin III with some of the same mates, I learned that my number had come out at that pub’s members draw on the Monday night while I was enjoying dinner at the other hotel.

Because I wasn’t present, I missed out on the $1100 jackpot cash prize.

Unfortunately, this wasn’t the first time.

Some years ago, I used to help out with the Thursday night raffles at the Toowoomba Sports Club, my beloved Brothers being one of the five benefactor clubs involved with the Ruthven St club.

I was at the club most Thursdays until one particular week a group from The Chronicle chose to take in a Thursday night movie.

You guessed it, my name came out and I subsequently missed out on a $700 jackpot.

Even worse, my then boss was at the draw and couldn’t wait to tell me when I arrived at work the next morning.

Anyway, the missed $1100 jackpot behind me, a group of four of us headed to the Ruthven St pub on Wednesday night for dinner.

This pub provides a free ticket with every beverage and the four of us pooled our tickets and agreed to share the $700 jackpot should we win.

The number 89 came out and seeing our tickets ranged from 76 to 96, we figured we were in the money.

However, much to our dismay, we discovered one lone patron at the next table who had bought one lone beer during our sequence and had the number 89 ticket - the only 80s number among our pile of tickets which we didn’t have.

Now, I’m not sure whether that is the lot of your average loser or some type of direct intervention by a higher authority.

Prompted to enter into a tirade of sob stories on the cash I’d missed out on, my “mates” consoled me with the fact that it wasn’t only money that I’d missed out on and reminded me of another incident not related to cash.

We had attended another mate’s wedding after which the reception at South Toowoomba Bowls Club went well into the night.

Late on, I headed home and asked the bar tender to call a taxi, after which I went out into the cold and waited until a I spied a Blue and White taxi on Hume St.

I ventured slightly onto the road waving my arms above my head until the cab stopped and the back door flew open.

I normally take the front passenger seat in cabs and talk to the driver, but I noticed there were two cabbies in the front.

It was only when I nestled into the back seat that I noticed both men were wearing blue uniforms.

As we headed toward the watch house, I whined incessantly about simply wanting to go home rather than spend a cold night on plastic covered foam mattress on the bare floor of the old Neil St watch house.

My whining eventually got to the driver who turned around: “For Pete’s sake (I don’t know how he knew my name), where do you live?”

They took me home and it didn’t even cost me a fare. That would have to be considered a win in the circumstances wouldn’t it?