The Lucky Gene

I did not marry for money, but maybe the lucky gene helped our relationship. You can't buy it, it is not for sale, it is a Sprite family heirloom passed down through to the most fortunate of the generation. Yes, Matt is the beneficiary of the family luck gene.

He warned me about it when we first met and about the Sprite rule number one: be happy. It seemed so uncool. After all I was chasing an artistic career and we all seemed to have far higher aspirations that just to be content. In fact, his whole approach to life seemed a little different: he did not find wild private views in the East End cool, he found them a little dull; he thought critical appraisal was people being pretentious and was baffled that there was never any agreement and shock, horror, he was not ashamed by being part of a mass market.

Maybe it was the luck gene, but I stuck around and he even learnt to be a fair (if to the point) theatre critic. It is strange, but his life did seem charmed. He was not rich, had a dive for a house and his car was clapped out - but he was happy. Being around him everything seemed so simple. I did not want to, I did not mean to, but I was falling in love.

He was nothing like the mythical man of my dreams. My ex was an actor/writer/poet and he was (don't hyperventilate) an engineer and worse, he did not read. But, I was falling in love.

So, over ten years later and we are happily married. My pad in central London has gone and I live in this tumbledown cottage but things are working out. I think of the lucky gene, and I think it has rubbed off on me.

Has life been a bed of roses? Well, maybe, considering how my roses lacerate my arms when I prune them. We have had ups and downs, family illness and deaths, redundancy, debt and infertility - but that lucky gene has always pulled us through.

The lucky gene is not a double headed coin, it is no panacea but it is a lens through which to see life. Like the Sprite rule number 1 - be happy. Shit happens, but it isn't about to get me down. Now that is what I call a lucky life!