That €14m Lotto win turned my thoughts to property, says Isabel Morton

TALKING PROPERTY:"IT COULD BE ME!" I thought while I rummaged through my handbag for my Lotto ticket, which was eventually found stuck between an incorrectly folded street map of Nice and last week's crumpled supermarket shopping list.

In those short few minutes, I had bought up a selection of properties in various hot spots around the planet. (Note, that I didn’t daydream about buying bank shares, gold bars or oil fields.)

Regardless of how purchasing property may recently have gone out of favour, it is still ‘sexy’ by comparison with every other type of investment.

Short lived as my little daydream was, it was jam-packed with property. And, I suspect that I’m not the only one who would still buy property before considering investing in anything else.

My convenient Spar (it’s easy to swing off the roundabout into its car-park) at the top of Glenageary Hill, was still buzzing last Monday lunchtime and had been since it heard the news that it had sold the €14 million winning Lotto ticket.

Speculation was rife among the staff and customers as to who the lucky winner might be. Strangers were chatting with each other and watching the young employee who, in the absence of the actual winner (as yet unknown), was posing with a handful of Lotto tickets and smiled for a press photographer.

“It could be anyone,” said a woman in the queue behind me, “anyone from anywhere. It could have been someone passing through on the way up to the M50 or a working person from the Noggin (Sallynoggin) or even someone already rich from around Silchester or Marlborough roads or someone on the way home to Dalkey or Killiney. You’d never know ... it could be anybody really.”

And it could have been ME. It wasn’t. But it could have been.

After all, I had bought my Lotto ticket on the same day, in the same shop. Like millions of other wishful thinkers, I had come close, but not close enough.

Now, I could tell you all that I spent those precious “limbo” minutes thinking up a list of worthy charities, but the truth is I didn’t.

I did what everyone else does when they are daydreaming about an unexpected windfall; I let my imagination run wild.

Would I stay in Dublin and select a few ‘trophy properties’ from Sherry FitzGerald’s ‘private buyers’ list? I quite fancied the idea of a townhouse on Merrion or Fitzwilliam Square and a Victorian detached ‘villa’ on a few acres overlooking Killiney Bay (hopefully out of earshot of Bono’s next big release).

Or would I contact Colliers Jackson-Stops or Knight Frank and retreat to the country? I visualised the classical symmetry of a Palladian mansion surrounded by lush parkland, a walled kitchen garden and a cobbled courtyard with stable buildings (plus a dashing Mr Darcy lookalike on horseback).

Then I did a mental skip across the Atlantic and contacted The Corcoran Group on Madison Avenue to track me down a classic townhouse in New York’s Upper East Side and a ‘cottage’ in East Hampton, in order to escape the summer heat of the city.

Then, in a flash, I was back in Europe again as I’ve always quite fancied the idea of living in the oldest square in Paris. No doubt Emile Garcin might be able to find me a large elegant first floor apartment in the unique redbrick and stone Place des Vosges in the Marais district.

But, as only tourists stay in Paris throughout the summer, I would call Carlton International to see if they could track me down an elegant Belle Époque mansion overlooking the Mediterranean on the Côte d’Azur (if one can be found which hasnt already been snapped up by Russian oligarchs).

And, as I would have to have at least one London residence, I would probably choose a large ‘flat’ in a tall, elegant stucco fronted, terraced house overlooking one of the garden squares in Knightsbridge or South Kensington. My brief to JD Wood and Sotheby’s would be very specific and would include an absolute requirement for outside space in the form of a balcony, terrace or a patio area, as London can be so claustrophobic.

Now where next? How about a Caribbean hideaway, a chalet in the Swiss mountains or even a castle in the Scottish highlands, although it might be too damp and cold there.

My daydream was rudely interrupted: “No. Sorry. It wasn’t you,” she said the shop assistant as she handed me back my luckless Lotto ticket.

“Don’t worry,” I laughed, “I never for a second thought that it could be me,” I lied unconvincingly.

Nevertheless, I bought a ticket for the Euromillion Lotto which is approaching €70 million this week.

Now that’s more like it! Dreams. A perfect escape from the recession. Now, where was I?