You stop for coffees on your way to work and check the lottery ticket you bought on Friday.

I would not know what to do with even a tenth of that!

I've given up buying the UK equivalent, the National Lottery. It used to be based on 6 numbers from 59 but a year or so ago the company that runs it and creams off the profit (Camelot, owned I believe by a Canadian teacher's union), put the numbers up to 50 and the ticket price up from £1 to £2.

Since combinations and permutations work on factorials, I think that extra one number effectively reduced the chance of winning the full prize, 50-fold. It had previously been about 13 000 000 : 1 anyway.

I buy the odd Euromillions ticket, which has a better chance of winning a modest sum, but only rarely.


One morning when I was buying it regularly, I examined my National Lottery ticket against a results slip.

1 match. No good. Nor two.

3. Oh, I've won back £10 less the £1 stake from the many weekly stakes!

4 numbers: not bad, a 2-figure prize. I had once won £45 (all right, £44).

5 numbers: Wow! A 5-figure prize!

6 numbers. Oo-er. I felt giddy. Get a grip! Potentially at least a million. Breath deeply, keep calm, think. Decide. Take it to the newsagents, ask them to verify it discreetly before I claim, for which there were rather complicated instructions on the back....

.... Then I looked again. I were wrong. That results slip wasn't. It was the ticket counterfoil - all three small slips of closely-printed paper were similar.

Ah, well, nowt for it but to set off for work.