Yesterday All My Dreams Came True

Yesterday was a beautiful sunny day, with the warming rays of the sun streaming through the white Madras lace curtains of my bedroom window. My lovely wife kissed me gently on the lips and told me how much she loved me. Then we got up and sat down to an amazing breakfast of hot buttered toast, with Colston Bassett stilton cheese and a drizzle of Manuka honey. This was accompanied by a freshly squeezed, crystal glass of orange juice and a hot Kopi Luwak coffee, served in a Shelley Lincoln bone china tea service.

Later on in the morning the post arrived and brought with it birthday cards from all four of my estranged children by my two ex-wives. Then when I opened my email account, I saw an email from each of my two ex-wives saying that they had finally decided to tell our children the truth about what happened all those years ago. They spoke of their affairs and lies to and about me, and they profusely apologised for all of the trouble they had caused me.

Much later on, during the afternoon, I checked on my lottery numbers and discovered that I had won the jackpot of several million. After the initial excitement, I sat down with my wife and we planned all the things we wanted to do, all the things we wanted to buy.

Of course, a round-the-world trip was one of the first things we planned. And we chatted excitedly about all the countries we wanted to visit and all the sights we wished to see before we passed away. Then, we decided to buy two or three houses, one in Japan, one in the south of Spain and one in the United Kingdom.

Next, it was the cars we wanted to buy. I wanted a little collection of classic cars. A 1950’s Jaguar XK150, a Bentley SIII, a Mini, a sixties Jaguar E-Type and, of course, a beautiful Aston Martin DB5.

Then we would have to find room in the collection for modern cars, a mix of ordinary models like a VW Golf, so as not to attract too much attention, a BMW Mini Cooper, just for the fun of it, and a modern-day Aston Martin for long road trips in Japan and across Europe.

Now by this time, we were feeling quite heady from it all, and so we had to give ourselves a little time to calm down.

We started making broad brush strokes with a fair division of the money we had won. I felt we ought to donate a reasonable amount to the less well-off in life, and had it in mind to scan the newspapers for stories of people down on their luck.

Then like Father Christmas, I would anonymously pop up out of nowhere and hand them a big bundle of cash. And of course, I wanted to give a large sum to each of my four children, to help them to buy their first house and a car.

After all of that, I wanted to give a sum of money to people from my past who had helped me in some way, when I had passed over an unsettling little bump in the road, or when I had crashed and burned due to my two acrimonious divorces.

Oh, and how could I forget my younger brother and his son? They would need a bit of a lift too. And, also not forgetting my wife’s family, who have always treated me like a king.

After all of that, I wanted to invest in social projects like affordable housing for those young and old people who were living in less-than-ideal circumstances. I particularly wanted to help divorced Dads who had had a raw deal from their exes.

And after that, I thought that we should invest in some long-term, low-risk investments for the future. Perhaps I would also set up a trust fund for my children’s and their children’s futures.

My oh my, what an amazing day of good fortune. It was almost all too much. So we decided to go and have a relaxing lie down on our bed for an hour or so.

When I woke up my lovely wife was busy in the kitchen as usual juggling getting ready for work with making my customary breakfast of past its sell-by-date, sausage and stale bread, with a hot mug of Tesco, own brand, instant coffee.

I rubbed my eyes in disbelief and suddenly realised that it had all been a dream of wishful thinking. And yet it was so vivid it all seemed so true.

Then my wife came over to sit on the bed and gave me a beautiful kiss, and she told me how much she loved me and thanked me for choosing her to be my lover and life partner. And at that moment I knew, I had indeed won the lottery, and it was worth far more than all of the millions and property and material goods you could ever wish for.

And that is a life lesson in what is really important, something which is absolutely priceless, the true enduring love of another beautiful human being, an angelic soul mate who has no equal in this time and space I find myself in, after passing through two terrible storms that almost destroyed me forever.

My wife was running late because of looking after my needs and ran out to her car shouting “I love you Liam Ireland, don’t forget me.” And with that, she was gone, racing down the road in her car, to put in a hard day’s work to sustain our lovely lives. And I sat back in my desk chair, and a tear came to my eye as I thought, oh what a lucky man I am, I am.

I now realise that all my dreams of yesterday did indeed come true when I met this beautiful woman. The yesterdays of many moons ago, when in the middle of a tremendous storm, a living hell, being persecuted by female demons, all I ever wanted was to feel loved, respected and appreciated. It wasn’t much to ask, or was it?

Whatever, in the end, I got what I wanted, and it makes me feel alive again, alive and still deeply in love with the best woman I have ever known in my entire life, apart from my own dearly departed mother. Who could ask for more? Life could be a lot worse than a paltry pension and an abundance of love.