The lottery

I should have mentioned that it might be seen as obvious that the Malaspina (bad back) should have chosen Bagnone (big bath) as their home but, as I said, they were swine.

Incidentally, the Malaspina were in some large part responsible for the Salic Law on inheritance being maintained, that is that an estate should be divided amongst the (male) children, which led in France and Italy to smaller farms than in England and these were less efficient when mechanisation arrived and this meant that they got a greater subsidy than British Farms when the EU came into being.

I don't think we can blame it all on the Malaspina (Salic Law was much earlier adopted by Charlemagne). But the lottery ticket can be seen as their final curse.

The lottery: and the winner is...

Bagnone is a Tuscan hilltop town above La Spezia and has suffered two misfortunes in its long history. The first was to be the chosen home of the unpleasant and warlike XIV century Guelph family the Malaspina, and the second is to be the home of the lottery jackpot ticket. The newsagent who sold the winning ticket (himself in for around €7 million) said three people bought tickets. One man, a tractor driver, was seen to be behaving strangely while watching a football match shortly before the result was announced (the Superenalotto, needlessly complicated as only the Italians can make it, depends on football matches, selected towns, and numbers).

I felt genuinely sorry for the man. To win €1 million, or, given the price of houses and low yield on pension investments, €5 million, would be a great good fortune. But €148m? It looks to me as if it can only bring bad luck.

The sensible thing, and what I like to think I would do myself, is to give away €140 million. But if I actually had the cheque in my hands......

Jackpot

The top prize in Italy's SuperEnalotto, for which you have to guess six numbers correctly, has not been won since January. The pot is now €115 million, the second highest ever in Europe.

In the Sicilian town of Ficarra, the mayor and his cabinet colleagues stumped up €115 to buy tickets on behalf of the town, saying the winnings would be spent on public works. They didn't win, despite having chosen numbers connected with the town's patron saint, the Virgin Mary of the Assumption.

The odds of winning the jackpot are thought to be 622million to one, but Ficarra's mayor, Basilio Ridolfo, said that was better than the odds of receiving funds pledged by the state.