Lottery Winner Spreads Christmas Spirit!
A lottery winner, care home worker who won £1 million on the lottery says she will still do her 12-hour Christmas Day shift.
While some lottery winners quit their jobs and jet off into the sunset, Patricia Aldridge isn’t letting £1million stop her from doing a 12-hour shift at a care home on Christmas Day.
The 55-year-old care assistant and her husband Robert are celebrating becoming millionaires today after scooping the top prize on the Lucky Dip.
But the couple, who live in a £290,000 house in Slough, Berkshire, are keeping their feet firmly on the ground, saying the hefty sum ‘won’t change a thing’.
The mother-of-three will start her 12-hour stint at a Dementia and Alzheimer’s home in the area at 8am on December 25.
The lottery winner said: ‘I really don’t mind working Christmas because I love it.
‘Christmas in the home is a special time for the people there so it is just nice. I’ll be working from eight in the morning until eight at night.
‘It’ll be a normal day of work but they also have a massive Christmas dinner and it is very festive and a really nice day.
‘I’ve already committed to working Christmas Day and could not drop out now and make someone else have to change their Christmas plans.’
The Aldridge family will still be celebrating, but on another day ‘safe in the knowledge, it is going to feel like Christmas more regularly’ in light of their increased bank balance.
And after buying lottery tickets every week for the last 23 years, they are ecstatic to have won.
She added: ‘On actual Christmas day Robert will probably be playing with his new toys too much to miss me.’
One positive the family are drawing from their new-found fortune is breaking the ‘Christmas curse’ they have suffered in the last few years, after losing three relatives in three months.
Mrs Aldridge said: ‘We lost both my parents three months apart just before Christmas a few years ago so it’s been hard to celebrate.
‘Then last year we all decided we’d make an effort again, only to lose my brother to heart failure on Christmas Eve.
‘It’s been so tough but we hope that this win heralds a new and happier season of joy in our family.
