Fifty-year-old Mrs. Bowes-Shorten isn’t having the best of times. The Norfolk grandmother of four suffers from non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma, for which she has been receiving chemotherapy treatment over the past five years.

She had to give up work five years ago because of the pain and inconvenience of the treatment, which entails stretches of five days in hospital every three weeks. Despite the intensive treatment, the cancer has returned three times since first being diagnosed and treated in 2002. Her doctors have warned her that it could come back at any time.

As well as the pain it causes, the chemo robs Mrs. Bowes-Shorten of energy, preventing her from doing many of the normal things most of us take for granted. About the only recreation she can still enjoy is a fortnightly game of bingo with her friends.

Even that was a question mark, as her husband Daniel recently had to take five weeks off work to look after her, and money was becoming very tight for the East Anglian couple.

Still, she headed off for the Mecca Bingo club on Aylsham Road, Norwich, feeling that it just might be her lucky day. “I think I might win tonight,” Mrs. Bowes-Shorten told her husband, never dreaming that it would be a six-figure windfall.

“I had no idea that bingo could be such a big-money game,” she said after her win.

“I called house on 40 numbers,” she explained, thinking that she might win something, even though this is quite a low figure. However, she wasn’t prepared for the announcement that she had won £100,000. “I was stunned,” she said. “My friend had to repeat it three times before the result sank in."

Mrs. Bowes-Shorten as yet has no idea how she’ll use the money, other than saying that the children and grandchildren could expect something special in their Christmas stockings this year. “In the New Year, we’ll decide how we want to spend the money,” she said.

Before her illness, Mrs. Bowes-Shorten had for 22 years been a playgroup supervisor at the Blue Boar playgroup in Sprowston. She is still very involved in community activities. She was busy helping set up a bonfire at Anglian Home Improvements sports and social club when interviewed recently.

“I’m not going to let anything prevent me from doing what I want to,” she said. “Not even cancer."

This attitude is oh so typical of many members of the bingo playing community and is one of the very many reasons why bingo should receive special treatment from authorities, including special regard as to taxation, so this marvelous game can continue in large numbers, within the community.

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