I still have a folder on my phone called "Lockdown Stuff." It's full of things I downloaded during that strange period when nobody knew what to do with themselves. Baking recipes I never tried. Workout videos I watched once. Links to websites I visited out of boredom and then forgot about. Every few months, I scroll through it and delete a few things. But some of it stays. Not because I need it. Just because it feels like a time capsule.
Last month, I opened that folder for the first time in ages. I was looking for a screenshot of something, got distracted, and ended up scrolling through the whole thing. Old memories. Bad haircuts. A photo of a banana bread that came out looking like a brick.
And a link to a site I'd visited back then. I clicked it without thinking.
The page loaded. I recognized the design. Clean. Simple. I remembered signing up during lockdown because I was bored and curious and had nowhere else to be. I'd played a few times, deposited small amounts, never really thought about it after things went back to normal.
I tried to log in. Password didn't work. I went through the reset process, got in, and found my account sitting there with £0.00 in it. I'd cashed out the last time and apparently never came back.
I thought about closing the tab. But it was a quiet Sunday. My girlfriend was visiting her parents. I had nothing planned and nowhere to be. I figured I'd deposit a small amount, play for a bit, and then close the folder for another few years.
I put in fifty quid. Logged in, found a game that looked familiar, and started spinning.
The first ten minutes were nothing. Small losses. Small wins. My balance hovered around forty quid. I wasn't really paying attention. I was thinking about what to make for dinner, whether I should call my mum, whether I had the energy to do the laundry that was sitting in the basket.
Then the game went quiet.
The music changed. The screen dimmed. A bonus round popped up. I'd seen this feature before—free spins with a multiplier that grew every time a certain symbol landed.
I watched the first few spins. Small wins. My balance crept up to fifty. Then sixty. Nothing special.
Then the multiplier started climbing.
2x. 5x. 10x. The wins got bigger with each spin. Sixty became ninety. Ninety became a hundred and fifty. A hundred and fifty became three hundred.
I put my phone down on the coffee table. Picked it back up. The bonus round was still going. The multiplier hit 20x. Then 50x. My balance hit six hundred. Then a thousand. Then twelve hundred.
When it finally stopped, I had £1,890 in my account.
I stared at the screen for a solid minute. Then I laughed. Not because it was funny. Because it was absurd. A link I'd forgotten about in a folder I never open. Fifty quid I'd deposited on a whim. And now I was looking at a number that would cover a month of groceries and then some.
I withdrew £1,800. Left the ninety in there. Clicked the button, watched the confirmation, and closed the tab.
The money hit my bank account on Tuesday. I didn't do anything dramatic with it. I paid off the credit card. Bought a new pair of running shoes because my old ones had a hole in the side. Put the rest into savings.
The running shoes are what I think about. I'd been putting off buying them for months. Every time I went for a run, I'd come back with a pebble in my shoe or a blister forming. But I kept telling myself the old ones were fine. They weren't fine. They were falling apart. I just didn't want to spend the money.
Now I have new shoes. I've been running three times a week. My knees don't hurt. My feet don't blister. And every time I lace them up, I think about that Sunday afternoon and the folder on my phone.
I still have the folder. I still scroll through it sometimes. Most of it is junk. Recipes I'll never make. Videos I'll never watch. But that link is still there. I kept it. Not because I expect anything like that to happen again. It won't. I know that.
I keep it because sometimes it's worth holding onto the things that remind you luck exists. Not the kind you chase. The kind that finds you when you're not looking. When you're just sitting on your sofa on a Sunday, scrolling through an old folder, deciding whether to
play Vavada online for a bit.
I still play sometimes. Small deposits. Small sessions. I still use that same link from the Lockdown folder. It feels right. Like finishing something I started back when the world was strange and nobody knew what to do with themselves.
I've never hit another win like that. I don't expect to. But I've got the shoes. And the folder. And a Sunday afternoon I won't forget.
That's more than enough.
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