I had £21m ticket in my bag for a week
A LOTTERY winner who scooped a £21million jackpot carried the ticket around in her handbag for a week before she realised.
Donna Stickley, 48, was so pessimistic about her chances of winning she did not bother to check her numbers.
But a week later she finally looked and took what she thought was a more modest winning ticket back to the shop.
And the sales assistant told her to call Camelot immediately, which was when she received the good news.
She said: “At first I thought it was £2million but there were too many decimal points. It did not quite compute.”
Donna and husband David, 58, from Slough, Berks, have been playing the lottery for 20 years but had given up any hopes of winning.
Using their regular numbers – 1, 15, 21, 30, 35 and 44 – they entered on May 12 and Mrs Stickley shoved the ticket to the bottom of her handbag.
Excited
Harmeet Bhatia, manager at Casco supermarket where they bought the winning ticket, said: “They’re my regular customers but I don’t think I’ll be seeing them again. Donna comes in every Friday after work. I’m very excited for them, well done.”
However, David stressed the newlyweds will not be splashing the cash, after claiming the contest’s 5,000th £1million-plus winning ticket.
The couple married two months ago despite living together for 20 years. Love blossomed from a shared interest in flying remote controlled aircraft replicas.
They said they plan to keep their jobs in aviation, stay in the same £400,000 semi-detached house and carry on driving the same 13-year-old car.
David said he did look up the price of his dream Audi R8, but decided £120,000 was too much to pay for a car. They will stick with their VW Transporter Kombi.
He will also return to work as an aircraft re-fueller next week, while his wife will return to the office she manages at a model aircraft manufacturer.
David said: “I just want things to go back to normal. I don’t want the relationship that we have with friends and family to change.
“We’re not going to change. I just want to be able to go down the pub and order my usual pint of Guinness and a soft drink for Donna – because she always drives me home.”
His wife added: “We enjoy our lives and we don’t want it to change. We like our jobs and the people we work with so why have no idea where we will go yet – we might just stick a pin in the map. At one point we were thinking of Hawaii, but then we turned on the television and there was lava everywhere.”
Her husband added: “We only went to Barbados last November, so there’s no rush.”