In England, a million dollars is worth only about £765,500. Of course, that would buy me a lot of old jigsaw puzzles, or chocolate biscuits or dry white wine but, in the scheme of things it’s not really worth all that much!

OK, so we don’t have a mortgage now and are pretty well off. Though old(ish – 81 isn’t that old), we don’t have to worry about medical bills – the NHS is still working well-enough for our ills. We don’t need lots of new clothes, shoes, handbags, or gimmicky electronic goods, just maybe some replacement tubes of paint and some canvases from time to time – although we’ve both made so many paintings that are never going to sell that we can always paint over them! Our needs are few and the pension seems to cover those.

But kids and grandkids could use a bit of help, living as they do in two of the most expensive areas of England for housing. ‘Veronica’ could use a cash injection of £500k to finish improvements on her new house but that would leave only £265,000 for her daughter – that’s no good! She lives in the most expensive area and would need a lot more if she wants to pay off her mortgage and still have enough to buy somewhere a little less expensive.

And then, there’s tax. Say I win £766,000 on the lottery, I wouldn’t have to pay tax on that but if I give away part of it, the person I give it to would have to pay tax on it. So what I’d given them wouldn’t be so much. Still, I’m sure they would appreciate it.

I think I’ll just have to win a bigger lottery prize! If I should win tomorrow night’s European Lottery, I would be something like £24,000,000 richer! Now, that’s more like it!

Daughter and grand daughter would be given enough to pay tax and still have loads for properties, cars, clothes, travel. I’d be left with quite a bit myself and then I could sit down and work out which charities I would give some to.

The Dogs Trust would get some – I’ve gone to them for my two wonderful canine companions over the years; Julian is keen to donate to the Great Ormand Street Hospital for Children charity because he spent a month or two with them when he was a child and, coincidentally, ‘Veronica’ spent a couple of weeks there as a toddler, so I am also keen – they do such great work! Then there’s the Woodland Trust, the lifeboats, the air ambulances, the hospices, the blind, the deaf, medical research, Samaritans, women’s refuges, the food banks, the hostels for homeless people and so on and on and on!

I think I’d better win one of the even bigger prizes! I’ll probably need to pay a secretary to write the cheques for all these charities and to research others!

Or, maybe I should forget about lotteries and huge winnings and leave it up to my daughter and her daughter to work out their finances to the best of their abilities and donate monthly small amounts to just the few charities that I already support.