I’ve never played the lottery. Secretly, I’ve prided myself on the fact that whatever rewards have come my way have been earned by hard work. So it comes as a small shock to realise that I play a kind of lottery every day. This happens without my conscious intention, but it underpins everything I do. More than that, it makes the process of living possible to me. It works like this: at any given time I’m nursing a secret hope, exactly like the hope of the lottery player that his numbers will come up, but my secret hope relates to