I'm a winner

Not everyone loves a winner, but a strange lot do, as I found when I won the Princely Prince Charles contest.

A few years back, after puffing up my forty-three front steps carrying the groceries, and grabbing for the phone, I was told by a very London-y voice that I'd won an internet contest I hadn't recalled entering:

Trip for two to London, 4- or 5- star hotel in Mayfair (the boutique Hotel Chesterfield), dinner here, The Lion King there, an Elvis Costello concert , a Driver (not as in golf but as in an ubiquitous automobile and very-impressed-with-my-winner-status chauffeur), a 50th anniversary celebration concert at Royal Festival Hall, AND a pre-concert champagne reception with Prince Charles.

I'm not kidding.

And cousin Carol and I made the most of it, laughing all the way. Another cousin sent me a kid's princess tiara, which I wore on the flight over. In the airport that tiara helped me get front seats in Economy, those ones reserved for babies and me, with extra leg room. Part way through the flight, the stewardess, emboldened after conversing with her colleagues, asked, "We were all wondering. What's with the tiara? Having tea with the Queen?"

("Thanks, my dear , for the set-up question:") " No, I'm having champagne with the Prince.")

They loved a winner and gave us a magnum of champagne and moved us into First Class.

And so it went, on and on, people rubbing up against me to catch the winningness of it all.

I win lots of things; winning begets winning. That little snow gal, with the Latvian braided scarf, was a winner at Knitting Etc.'s First Annual Tree Ornament contest.

Winners irk lots of people. How obnoxious is this blog!