Someone bought a lottery ticket for me on my birthday.

It’s a novel idea and the first ticket I’ve ever had. So there I was swept up with millions into that strangely surreal atmosphere of hope and expectation.

There was nigh on £8m up for grabs. Isn’t it amazing how your mind is suddenly taken over by thoughts of wealth and what you would do with all those zillions? I must apologise to the relatives I was visiting in Devon on Saturday if I seemed strangely abstract.

My brain was partly annexed for the day. I worked out, for instance, that I could comfortably survive on £500,000 until I went gaga and hadn’t a clue what money was for anyway.

With that sum set aside I was filled with a sense of largesse and how I would distribute vast sums among relatives and friends. Easy when you haven’t got it, isn’t it?

Of course, I didn’t win. The odds are a mathematically mind-numbing 1 in 13,983,816 against you doing so.
Will I now engage in the extreme sport of lottery ticket buying?

Err … nope. It creates far too much brain activity on a Saturday.