Some people have all the luck, and none more so than Lucky Albert. Everyone round here knows Lucky Albert.

I first met him when I moved into these flats as a young man just starting out in life, and he lived in the flat above me. You can ask anyone and they’ll tell you, he’d always lived there, a big man, square and strong, standing on the landing, leaning on the black iron railings, watching the world go by and counting his blessings. And if anyone’s got a lot of blessings to count, it’s Albert.  He’s the luckiest man I know.

He wasn’t that old when I first moved into my flat. He’d only just stopped working then. He’d always been a driver, Albert had. He loved it. Cars, trucks, buses; anything with wheels that needed driving, Albert was your man.

Then one day his good mate Charlie Forrester was reversing a truck out of the yard just as Albert was walking in. Albert saw the thing rolling blindly towards him and he skipped back out of its way, straight into a tram that was gliding by.

At first, the doctors thought they could save his leg, but as it turned out, they couldn’t.

So he lost his leg. Couldn’t drive again. Three times lucky Albert called it. Once because he dodged the truck, again because the tram didn’t kill him, and three times because it got him his invalidity pension.

But his good luck didn’t stop there. Early on he thought he’d miss the driving. It had been his life up till then of course. But as he gradually learned to walk again, first with a frame and then on his sticks, he started to realise the benefits of moving very slowly, and he began to enjoy seeing things he’d never noticed before when he’d whizzed past in his truck, or bus, or what-have-you.

So life had taken another turn for the better for lucky old Albert.

As it did yet again that lucky day when he found Sonny.

Albert’s slow walking meant that he peered down alleys and into doorways that most people simply ignored. And in one of these alleys one drizzly morning, he saw a little dog shivering under a pile of rubbish sacks and damp cardboard boxes. The poor frightened thing had no collar and his front left leg was all damaged and wrong. How could Albert, of all people, ignore him? He couldn’t, of course, so he took him up, got him properly seen to by a good vet who removed the leg nice and clean, and before long Albert and Sonny were best friends, living together and keeping each other company, directly above my head.

Albert loved to explain with a chuckle why it was so lucky for him to have found Sonny. Between the pair of them, they now had four legs, and according to Albert’s reasoning, four legs between the two of them meant there was an average of two legs each. A bit tough on Sonny, but Albert really couldn’t have asked for more. Typical of my good luck, he said.

Albert told me he’d once been married, and he has a son and daughter-in-law living in Southend, and a daughter in Vancouver. I never knew his wife, but she was a wonder. He’d definitely been lucky there. Her name was Rosie. She had charmed him and blessed his life, and given him the children who made him proud and happy to wake up each morning. Albert doesn’t really say much about her, but she was his joy, and as he says, if one thing is certain, it’s that he’d been lucky in love.

All this was a long time ago. I swapped flats with Albert a few years ago when the stairs got too much for him. He’s an old, old man now, and he can’t always get out when he wants to. In fact, he doesn’t really get out much at all these days. Which is lucky really, because it gives him time to look back and remember what a wonderful life he’s had.

And he’s only got one stiff and achy leg to contend with instead of two, which is another blessing.

He says he’s not afraid of dying, but he thinks he’d rather not, just for the time being, and he hangs on.

So that’s Lucky Albert’s story for you in a nutshell.  The lucky bugger.

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Except there’s one more thing.

He had a real stroke of luck the other day. He was sitting on his stool shaving as he does every day, with the mirror propped on the back of the bowl on the wobbly old table by the kitchen window. He reckons he must have knocked the bowl as he rinsed the soap off his razor. Anyway, the whole thing fell to the floor. Apart from soaking the carpet and getting a slight nick to his thumb from his razor, and a rick in the back as he tried to grab the bowl, the only damage was that the mirror shattered as it hit the table on its way to the floor.

There’s a stroke of luck if ever there was one.

Albert’s well into his eighties now, and he reckons the seven years bad luck he’s now due will be sure to see him safely into his nineties.

At his time of life, could anyone ask for better luck than that?