Please deliver a lottery win – or, failing that, a job lot of booze will hit the spot

We’d all like a wee windfall, wouldn’t we? Maybe not the eye-watering £184 million Euromillions win for a couple in England last week, although for many currently struggling to pay their bills, worrying about what to do with that amount of spare spondula would be the kind of problem they would love to have.

But a wee bit extra to tide you over the hardest of hard times, the famous “rainyday” money that we are all urged to squirrel away? That would be handy, especially when the rainy day in question now looks like a cross between a monsoon and a tsunami, apt in these climate-challenged days.

Except that that nice Mr Sunak, fair desperate to get us, if not exactly into the black, then somewhere approaching an acceptable shade of Fiscal Grey with a Hint of Overdraft Red, has now said, amazingly, that he can’t fix everything.

Perhaps, taking the advice of his colleague Rachel Maclean (minister for safeguarding, forsooth), he should work a few extra hours.

Or get a better job which, in all fairness, he’s probably working on by tunnelling under No 10.

And still, major companies making whopping profits (and increasing ones, if they are the utility wallahs taking up the slack by doubling your standing charge) are still unlikely to be asked to fork out much in the way of extra towards the common good.

However, the hilariously-named Bernard Looney, chief exec of BP, who once described his company as a “cash machine”, has conceded that this particular one-off action would not affect plans to invest in good old GB.

Glossing over, at the same time, announcements of record company profits. Which kind of takes the feet from under a large part of the political argument against a windfall tax.

Politicos have not ruled it out which, on previous and current form, means it will be a done deal before you can sing: “The partygate’s over…”.

Although if it’s anything like that central core of the Brexit agreement, it’ll also be torn up and discarded before you can say: “Northern Ireland Protocol…”

● Home deliveries, as I have remarked in the recent past, can in and of themselves be a big fun experience. You can tell that, after two years and a recent Covid isolation period, I definitely still need to get out more. But then, I always did, so make of that what you will…

Any road up, I freely admit that, in what passes for fun round our way, I have snapped my fingers in the face of price rises, raging inflation and cottoned on to the prime minister’s airy view that not every BOGOF is a bad BOGOF.

Only my BOGOF of choice tends towards the harmful liquids end of the food chain rather than the “illegal, immoral and makes you fat” sector now to be given free rein.

For Mr Johnson has decided we should not be prevented from bingeing ourselves on to the NHS waiting lists by way of consuming more and more junk food.

How soon has the ever-inventive, never-consistent PM forgotten his recognition that his particularly nasty case of Covid was largely due to his obesity?

Yesterday, all my troubles seemed so far away… he’ll probably have another wee party to celebrate now he’s off the Met’s “to-do” list.

So, following the comforting cliché that you can never have too much of a bad thing, I have once again shamelessly gone for the online bargain offers, especially the infamous one consisting of litres of gin of a well-known and well-loved brand.

Technically there are only three bottles allowed per order – but that’s three per person, not per household. There are two of us in this marriage, so you do the math. Altogether now: “Ten green bottles, hanging on the wall…”

And being a sad old bag with a drab, wretched social life, I am looking forward to having to prove, yet again, my age to the hapless worker on my doorstep handing over the precious cargo. See this column, March 28.

It’s the delivery that keeps on delivering, especially if you get through as much drink as I do. The Significant Other reckons I could sell tickets, as it’s liable to be the funniest thing you’ll see this year, with the possible exceptions of Michael Gove attempting a Scouse accent or Liz Truss impersonating the foreign secretary.

But now and then they bring the comedy with the order. You think having booze delivered was enough of a giggle? Try ordering a kitchen knife. And having it brought to your door by the delivery sector’s equivalent of Private “We’re all doomed!” Fraser.

As he asked to see my bona fides (oo-er missus!), I made the schoolboy error of essaying a light-hearted remark about proving my age and eligibility. He fixed me with a glare worthy of Jacob Rees-mogg eyeing the empty desk of an absent workerfrom-home and intoned: “It’s either the blades or the booze!”

If we get him for the next gin delivery, I may have to resort to going back to the offy…

I have once again shamelessly gone for the online bargains

CHEERS: Helen raises a glass to the drink offers that are available online and are delivered to your door.