“There are no shops in the cemetery,” lottery winner Steve Smith grimly observed after being told he’d won 19 million pounds in a triple rollover jackpot.
Not the usual reaction from people whose numbers have come up, but Smith, 58, suffers from a range of health problems including a weakness in the main artery taking blood from his heart — a condition which could easily prove fatal at any moment.
At what must have been one of the most sombre celebration press conferences the lottery organisers have ever held, Smith said he’d swap it all for a guaranteed lease of life and the chance to grow old with his wife Ida after all the hardships they’d been through together in married life.
Would you?
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2 comments so far
he’s got a point, it’s not like he can enjoy the money. lets face it the first thing we’d all do is go out get drunk go on holiday buy fast cars he can’t do any of that.
but on the other hand if he’s not a selfish person and cares about his family he can watch them enjoy themselves with what he can now provide. I’d personally love to be able to afford to send my children to high class schools send them on skiing holidays buy them anything they wanted. it’s all about the person winning it and what they find enjoyment in.
he won’t live forever but then nobody does, he just needs to re-evaluate what makes him happy and he has the money to do it.
and if he’s really that moody about it he can always buy 19 million lottery tickets and be in with a good chance of winning the jackpot twice… that’d be something to be remembered for eh :p
- Posted by AbelWe swap wealth for health all the time–when we see a physician or purchase medicine or other health supplies.
The way I see it, Mr Smith is saying that if someone had, for sale, a cure for his health problems, he would buy it–which most certainly is a legitimate way to spend money.
If I had the money, I suppose I would be a little less willing to pay for guaranteed health, seeing as how I’m in my early 30s and still healthy…but then, as a smoker, I probably would pay a couple of quid if I could continue to smoke with a guarantee against getting lung cancer or some of the other stuff I’m supposed to get.
- Posted by J.W.