As I write, my friend Jenny is waiting to hear if she has won a "holiday of a lifetime" to Australia.

She entered a Southern FM competition this week, which involved her talking on the phone to a complete stranger in Melbourne for 14 minutes, and it looks as though her chances of flying out there, all expenses paid, with her husband are extremely high.

"I do hope you get it," I said to her a short while ago when she told me her news. It will be the most fantastic experience."

I meant it most sincerely, of course. Who wouldn't begrudge close friends the holiday of a lifetime?

Who wouldn't want to see their buddies getting excited about a journey across the world that's come to them gratis?

Jenny has never won anything before. Her time has come.

However, I have also just heard that another friend of ours, Adrian, has just come back from a free break to New York, which he had won through a competition in a national newspaper.

"It was fabulous," he said. "We had a hotel just off Times Square. New York was better than I could ever have imagined."

I have yet to travel to either of these desirable destinations so I cannot deny that I am just a teensy bit jealous to hear my friends are not only beating me to them - they're doing it at somebody else's expense.

"It makes you think, doesn't it," I said at breakfast this morning to my husband.

"About what?" He said, counting out raisins on to his Bran Flakes.

"About entering competitions," I said, slicing chunks of cold butter for my toast. "Why don't we do it?"

"I do it all the time," he said. "By now, we should have won hundreds of cars."

Ah, I'd forgotten this little pastime of his. It only resurfaces when I see newspapers we wouldn't normally entertain in the house piled up in our recycling box.

The photos of Land Rovers and Ferraris on the front pages usually give it away.

"But you've been doing that for YEARS," I comment. "Why are we so unlucky?"

"We're not," says my husband philosophically.

"Any day now we'll get a phone call telling us we've won a Fiat Multipla. We'll be able to sell it and then use the thousands we get from that to redecorate the kitchen AND have a nice holiday.

"It'll be much better than just winning a trip to Barbados or Alaska or somewhere we've never heard of."

I've never been convinced that car competitions are the way to go. They're bound to get loads of entrants and the probability of us winning anything must be equivalent to Elvis being found alive in Saltdean.

Perhaps this is part of the problem. It's my attitude. I heard something somewhere recently that if you believe yourself to be lucky, you will be lucky.

Conversely, luck evades those who think they don't deserve it.

I'll have to be more positive. The next time my husband has to think up a catchy slogan for a tin box on wheels, I'll be willing him to come up with something brilliant and full of praise for his efforts.

I'll rejoice when he sticks his entry in an envelope and I'll pop some corks when he puts it in the post.

I'll then choose a kitchen design, pile up some holiday brochures and wait for the moment to embrace our good fortune.