Albert's luckiest day

Albert’s luckiest day

‘Lucky Bet’ was the most unlucky man you could ever wish to come across. His problems had started at a very early age during his christening. The vicar had nearly dropped him in the font; as a result his given name was Albert Beatty Whoops Collingwood.

After the initial laughter the name ‘Whoops’ was dropped, after all, the vicar had prevented a serious accident. The initials a,b,c of his name quickly lead to the nickname of ‘alphabet,’ and by the time he went to school he was known to all his friends as ‘Bet’.

At school he was always the last one to be chosen when teams were selected for school games. He was absolutely useless when it came to running, jumping or kicking a ball!

He was equally useless at lessons. To a man the teachers had only one phrase to use on his end of term reports; ‘Albert must learn to concentrate on his lessons.’

He finally left school at the age of fourteen having achieved nothing except the nickname of ‘lucky’, for no better reason than the fact that he failed at absolutely everything he tried.

He managed to scrape a living doing all the messy jobs that no one else wanted. He worked in the town following the traffic, cleaning up after the horses and he was soon supplementing his small wage by selling the results as garden manure. It wasn’t much, but then lots of people were just as badly off as he was.

Unusually for a poor working class man of his time ‘Bet’ didn’t drink. Not for want of trying, but alcohol brought him out in painful red spots and made him very dizzy, to the point where he fell over in the street. Once he was lying helpless in the gutter it could be guaranteed that one of the local roughs would find him and steal his money.

Even ‘Bet’ had enough sense to realise that this was not a good thing. As a result he actually began saving money. Only a few shillings a week but as he got older, and a little bit wiser, the pounds began to accumulate in an old box under his bed.

Then one day as he was hawking his wares around the gardens of the town, he met a man who spoke with a very strange accent. The man bought the complete load from his handcart and congratulated him on his hard work and enterprise.

“If you ever get the chance to go to America son, then grab it with both hands. Hard working men with ideas like you can make a fortune over there.”

‘Bet’ made some enquiries from some of his more knowledgeable friends as to the whereabouts of a place called America. Most of them just laughed at him but amongst all the leg pulling, he managed to find out that it was a very long way away and he needed a boat to get there.

The idea of going to America to make his fortune appealed to his simple mind. So pushing his handcart and carrying all his possessions, he set off to find a boat. He collected the raw materials of his trade as he walked, sleeping in doorways or under hedgerows, selling his produce to gardeners and still making a small profit after his basic needs were met.

He found his way by asking passers by where the boats that went to America could be found. When he eventually arrived at the port he was amazed at the size of the boats. Why some of them must have been as big as the villages he’d passed through on his journey.

He went down to the docks and stopped beside one of the smallest boats he could see. He reasoned that riding in a small boat must cheaper than the bigger ones.

He went up to a man in an impressive blue uniform with shiny brass buttons and asked if the boat went to America.
To his surprise the man was very rude to him. He said something to ‘Bet’ which he couldn’t understand, but he was left in no doubt it meant ‘go away and don’t bother me.’

So he made some more enquiries and pushed his cart through the traffic to the nearest church. He’d always found the clergy helpful if he asked questions politely.

The vicar assumed the young man was trying to better himself and get a job on the boats. So he took pity on him and told him as kindly as he could that he wouldn’t be able to get on a boat unless he had a bath and some better clothes. Indeed he went so far as to take him into his vicarage and let him have a tin bath full of hot water in the kitchen.

When the unusually white and slightly carbolic scented ‘Bet’ got out and dried himself, he found a pile of clean, though obviously second hand clothes, waiting for him to change into.

The vicar took his handcart and its contents in payment for the use of the bath and gift of clothes, before sending him on his way. Then relaxed in the golden glow of Christian charitable works and spread the manure on his roses.

‘Bet’ walked confidently back to the boat and spoke again to the man with the shiny buttons. He was still laughed at, but was informed this time that he needed a bigger boat to cross the Atlantic.

“Why not try that one,” suggested the man, “it’s sailing in two days time. You’ll need to buy a ticket,” he shouted as ‘Bet’ headed in the direction indicated.

The boat was the biggest one in the harbour. ‘Bet’ was most impressed. It was much taller than any building he’d ever seen, it looked all new and shiny and he knew as soon as he saw it that it was the boat he wanted to take him to his destination. ‘Bet’ asked a man with even more shiny buttons than the first, where he could buy a ticket to America. He was given instructions and a rather strange look as he walked off.

The man in the ticket shop was extremely polite and friendly and ‘Bet’ liked him at once, but he was very surprised at the cost of even the cheapest fare, ‘steerage’ the man called the ticket. Still, once he’d arrived he was going to be able to make his fortune and fortunately his old box with his life’s savings contained just enough money.

He was so happy that at last his bad luck had left him that he rushed carelessly out of the shop clutching the ticket to his future and was immediately knocked down by a passing hackney carriage.

When he woke up he found he was in hospital with both legs in a plaster cast suspended from a frame over the bed.

He asked the man in the next bed what day it was. The reply made him to burst into tears, his bad luck had returned; now he’d never get to America to find fame and fortune, the Titanic had sailed without him.

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