A LUCKY man from Reading saw his dreams come true after he won £1m in the Lotto draw last Saturday (January 9).
Determined Malcolm Haines has been waiting for his big win since the launch of The National Lottery, and was thrilled to see his patience pay off.
The 49-year-old joked that since he started playing, he's always believed a big National Lottery win would come his way.
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So confident was Malcolm, a Watford FC season ticket holder, that every time he drove to the Watford ground and passed Camelot’s HQ he would tell his son he’d be visiting the offices soon to pick up his prize.
While he wasn’t able to visit the HQ, he has indeed picked up his £1m Lotto prize.
Malcolm and his wife of 24 years Rebecca, 52, discovered that Malcolm’s confidence in a win was well placed on Saturday night.
Having picked up a few Lucky Dips for the Lotto draw while in the supermarket, he put them in his phone case and didn’t think too much more about them until later that evening.
Malcolm said: "Like many families in lockdown our bedtime is stretching later and later so it wasn't until just after midnight, when Rebecca and our two teenage children had gone up to bed, that I decided to check the tickets.
"I always check using the app and, much to my wife's amusement, shut my eyes when it's scanning in the hope that I hear that little bell.
"This time I heard the bell, opened my eyes expecting to see a Lucky Dip, perhaps a fiver, and instead saw lots of noughts!"
Although he’d been waiting for the life-changing win, Malcolm didn't believe it when it finally came and he spent a good few minutes checking and rechecking on the app, and an alternative app, before shouting up to Rebecca to come and have a look.
"I was in bed when Malcolm shouted up to me," Rebecca said.
"I’ll admit I wasn’t keen to leave it but when he showed me the message on the app, sleep was very quickly forgotten.
"We looked at each other and started to laugh, then, because we wanted to share this amazing moment with the children, we called them down too and all stayed up discussing some crazy, and not so crazy plans, for our winnings."
Travel, when it’s safe to do so, was high on the list and in the early hours of the morning the family used a game they’d been given for Christmas to help with the plans.
She added: "To structure our travel plans we laid out the Who Knows Where world map, we each had two tokens and had to place them on the map for where we’d like to travel.
"The list is quite extensive and includes Australia, Canada and a host of European destinations."
With their travel plans set, the family headed off to bed with Malcolm nervous about where to put the winning ticket.
He said: "We have a Doberman puppy called Mabel and all I could think was ‘what if she somehow gets hold of the ticket and chews it’, so having left it on the bedside table I got up again, took lots of photos as evidence and then put it higher on a shelf, out of Mabel’s reach!"
With the ticket surviving the night and the win all confirmed, Malcolm and Rebecca are making more plans for the future.
Malcolm added: "While we will be travelling as much as we can once it’s safe to do so, our first purchase as Lotto millionaires wasn’t desperately glamorous - we replaced our ‘not quite fitting’ dog guard for one that was purpose built!
"Slightly more exciting in the car department, we will be swapping our run of the mill Mini for a John Cooper Works Mini convertible."
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The pair, who both work for accountancy firms, have no plans to give up work - instead they will pay off the mortgage with the winnings so that their salary can go on finishing lots of DIY jobs they have wanted to do, but never seemed to have the spare cash, or inclination, to do.
"The list seems to grow everyday but includes a new ensuite, some bedroom cupboards, a bit of rewiring and decorating jobs that before we would have begrudgingly done ourselves but now can pay someone else to do, and probably do a much better job too", Rebecca said.
"While I have always expected this big Lotto win I can confirm it doesn’t make it any less shocking when it finally happens," Malcolm admitted.
"I’m an accountant so used to seeing lots of noughts but when they are your noughts it’s a completely different matter!"
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