Benussi Blog

Dave and Angie Dawes have scooped £101 million on the Lottery and are planning to splash out on luxury homes in London and Portugal and a “glamorous” wedding , as well as giving away some of their winnings to friends.

At the same time as the engaged couple from Wisbech, Cambridgeshire were popping the Champagne corks, it was announced that the UK’s jobless figure had reached a 17-year high.

The Office for National Statistics (ONS) said the unemployment rate rose by 114,000 between June and August to 2.57 million.

Prime Minister David Cameron commented that “every job…lost is a tragedy for that person and for their family”.

The double-edged news brings to mind Rudyard Kipling’s famous lines “If you can meet with triumph and disaster and treat those two imposters just the same”.

Winning vast amounts of money doesn’t guarantee a happy life or successful marriage, just as falling on hard times doesn’t spell enduring misery. It may sound trite – but how you react to good and bad experiences is what matters.

This week’s Grand Designs on C4 featured a couple who had lived in a “series of caravans” on their Herefordshire smallholding with their four children and a menagerie of livestock for the past eight years. It was a basic lifestyle by many people’s standards, but Ed, Rowena and their kids seemed blissfully happy.

No one would pretend that being jobless and financially hard-up is fun, but having to tighten your purse strings isn’t necessarily a recipe for disaster.

The trappings of success – big houses, fast cars and exotic holidays – can often hide a host of problems in a marriage. When the glitz and glamour are stripped away, the relationship is laid bare.

Having to “fall back on yourselves” can be a surprisingly enriching experience: if your relationship is solid, you can not only ride the storm but become closer and more appreciative of one another and the things you do have, such as your health and your family and friends.

Conversely, coming into a lot of money can cause all manner of difficulties: you only have to read some of the stories of past Lottery millionaires to understand how winning a fortune can poison someone’s erstwhile contented life.

So, in these strange times of financial winners and losers, we would all be wise to take stock of what really matters. Money might “make the world go round” but it can’t repair a broken relationship – and nor should it destroy a healthy one.