When most people rummage through their kitchen drawers, they rarely uncover anything more exciting than a mislaid knife. Joanne and David Austin, however, found a lottery ticket that made them rich.
The couple, from Hull in northern England, were oblivious to the fact they had bought a winning ticket in Britain’s National Lottery a month ago, on January 8.
However, the lottery operator, which can identify where winning tickets were bought, ran an advertisement in a local paper saying someone from Hull had not yet claimed a £3-million (R34,5-million) prize.
Joanne Austin (38) ransacked a kitchen drawer and pulled out a pile of old tickets, only to be “shell-shocked” when one of them contained the winning numbers.
“I opened the kitchen drawer where I keep our Lotto tickets and got them all out to check as I hadn’t done it for ages,” she said as the lucky family were unveiled as winners by the lottery operators.
“When I found the one for that date I kept staring at it and then the numbers in the papers. I just couldn’t believe it.”
Her husband has resigned his job working for a caravan manufacturer, but Joanne said she will keep working at an estate agent, to “keep my feet on the ground”. — AFP