There should be a line on a raffle ticket - If you haven't heard anything by [insert date a couple of weeks after the draw], for goodness' sake throw this away. Otherwise they end up hanging around for months after they no longer represent the boundless possibilities that good fortune might bring into your life and now signify your tendency to fall for every snake oil salesman you stumble across (even if this is good-cause snake oil).

Of course if you're in the room - if someone calls your number and you collect a bottle of champagne, or a luxury hamper from Fortnum & Masons or Harrods or (at a pinch) Selfridges or one of those other prizes that are associated with raffles (a toy bear?) - or more to the point if not - you know where you stand (at the back of the room, wishing you had the hamper, thinking "bloody Irene, she always wins, it's a fix") - but when you buy these remote raffle tickets, you have no idea. They could be searching for you, trying to decipher the address in your terrible handwriting, eventually turning up three years later after many adventures, clutching a hamper or a stuffed bear or (and this is what you actually want, let's be frank) an envelope containing £2,000 in cash. And if you'd thrown the ticket away you'd look foolish (almost as foolish as someone eating food from a three-year-old hamper).

(Actually there is such a line on the back, I checked before shredding them - "All winners will be notified in writing by 6 October 2006. A list of winners is available on request." with an implied "Get over it, luser". How many people request lists of winners? It doesn't say who to request the list from.)

I knew someone who threw raffle tickets and lottery tickets away as soon as she'd bought them, as she'd just bought them to give the money to charity and didn't want to be distracted by thoughts of the prize. An admirable ideal, but difficult.

I really should have an eye test, too, now I come to think about it.