That's your lottery

Here are some opening facts about me: I'm a millionaire. I won my money on the lottery, but I have yet to tell most people, including my family; I don't want begging letters coming to me from people pretending to be my friend. I also don't need my family assuming because we share a common link they are due some cash – they're not.

I know that some of you may find it hard to believe that this story is true. I can't convince you any more than with these words, really I can't. Well, perhaps I could, but then I'd have to kill you.

Okay, I know that’s a cliché, but it’s a statement that also happens to be as true as the story I am about to tell you.

It all began about a year ago. I was lying in bed, watching shadows pass on the ceiling, waiting until I felt like I wanted to face the world. I'd had a hard year of arguments, stress and the death of a close relative. I’m not looking for pity/sympathy – I'm just giving you some relevant back story.

So, there I was, lying back and day-dreaming. Wondering. It was then that I noticed the buzzing. I looked about for a fly, hand ready to lash out and splat it against a hard surface, but I couldn't locate it. It was the first time I'd heard the buzzing sound and I sat up in bed, my head moving about as I struggled to find the source of the distraction.

Over the course of several days, the buzzing got louder. By this time, I'd noted that it was intermittent, some long buzzes followed by shorter bursts of static noise. Not knowing what it was, or what might be causing it, I made an appointment at the doctor's surgery. Surely, someone with a white coat and untidy handwriting could get to the bottom of this droning sound.

They did. The simple conclusion: tinnitus.

So, I did what any normal person would do and I looked it up on the Internet. It is described as:

Tinnitus is the condition where noises 'in the ears' and/or 'in the head' are heard but where they appear to have no external source. Tinnitus noises are described variously as ringing, whistling, buzzing and humming.

Easy. Problem solved. Or so I thought.

I discovered an old professor, for whom tinnitus had become a life's work, labouring in the bowels of some London hospital. He suffered, too, something that proved to be a turning point in my discovery.

On our first meeting he asked me to tell him more about the noises I was hearing. I described them in detail, making great use of as many onomatopoeic phrases as I could muster. It was then that he dropped his bombshell.

"You haven’t got tinnitus, at least not in any form I know of."

Dismay hit me full in the face, knocking me off-centre. What was worse, the noise in my head or not having a name for it? I couldn't decide. I left the hospital feeling worse than when I'd arrived. I guessed I’d have to live with this affliction after all, whatever it was to be called.

Two months later the buzzing noise was still evident, but I could now discern that there was a pattern to it. Perhaps this will unlock the nature of this annoyance? All I needed to do was unearth the pattern and I'd have all the answers. I knew it could take months to work out, but I believed I had a decent starting point.

The only patterns I knew came from Morse code. Dots and dashes.

Finally, it all fell into place. It was a pattern. It was code. Numbers.

There were six numbers in all. Ranging from 7 to 42. I wrote them on a piece of paper and spent a huge amount of my time staring at them, trying to figure out what they meant. Nothing came to me.

I ducked out of the house to grab a paper from my local newsagents. While I was there I saw a sign for the lottery. I hadn't had a lot of luck over the months, so I thought I'd see if things might change. It was then I put two and two together and for the first time it added up to four.

The buzzing in my head was a set of lottery numbers.

Maybe that wasn't the real answer, but I knew it couldn't hurt to use them. I quickly grabbed a pen and an entry form, filled in the numbers from the piece of paper and paid for my lottery ticket.

The following day I checked my numbers and, yep, you've guessed it:

I'd won. The jackpot.

That was six months ago. No sooner had I placed my hand on the cheque, the buzzing stopped. To this day I don’t know if I was meant to use them to win or if it was a strange coincidence. Now I'm £12 million richer I really don’t care.

I've not used the numbers since. I've only played the lottery once. Odds are I won't win again. So, perhaps you can make use of my numbers, see what they can do for you.

Here they are: 7, 18, 34, 35, 39, and 42.