Daily Mirror (Northern Ireland)
Let’s do this together
Have you ever wondered what you’d do if you won the National Lottery?
Would you donate it all to charity and be back at your job on the paperclip production line the next morning because you didn’t want to “let it change you”?
Or would you be like Michael Carroll, from Swaffham, Norfolk, who wanged his £10million win in 2002 on sex, drugs and alcohol, and is now a penniless lumberjack earning £10 an hour?
Asbo-boy Carroll says ending up broke was the “best thing that happened to him”.
Which is possibly the most important quote since the 13th-century Italian friar, St Francis of Assisi, quietly pointed out that money doesn’t buy you happiness – without having to drink two bottles of voddie a day like Carroll.
While a lottery win can sometimes be a double-edged sword for those who hit the jackpot, it’s life-affirming to know that by playing the National Lottery, we raise a staggering £30m for good causes every week. That’s even more than Mariah Carey’s monthly spend on kittens.
We can also celebrate the enormous good the winners of the National Lottery Awards have done for their communities. People such as Julie Morrison, who endured the stillbirth of her almost full-term child and still had the heart to set up a charity to give other bereaved parents a retreat to mourn their lost babies.
Or 81-year-old Tony Gibbons, who’s had the generosity of spirit not to complain about the younger generation, but to use his experience of living on rations to found The Friendly Food Club, teaching families on free school meals how to cook.
These are just two of the life-changing people who are funded by the National Lottery and are our real winners.
And to answer my own question – if I won the lottery, I’d buy a luxury ocean-going yacht and spend the rest of my life sailing around the world. Although I get horribly homesick, so I’d probably be back within about three hours.
Email me at siobhan.mcnally@mirror.co.uk or write to Community Corner, PO Box 791, Winchester SO23 3RP mirror.co.uk/ newsletter