First prize!

When it comes to winning competitions, my life has been a game of two halves.

Give me books and the creative arts and I've always done quite well. I remember I won first prize in the Puffin Childrens' Book competition when I was 7 or 8 and that started a sporadic winning streak of short stories and poems and pieces of artwork that has continued over the years.

I even once won the Natural History Museum Poetry Competition (over-18s category) hands down with a snappy poem about an archaeopteryx. Now there's glory for you.

However I seldom win anything significant in raffles. Its usually the bath-cubes, or the box of handkerchiefs or the thermos flask for one for me, if I'm lucky. I once won the booby-prize of a half-finished bag of mini Bounty bars at the Polytechnic of North London staff party raffle in 1990 or thereabouts, but that was a low-point, even in my terms.

So imagine my surprise and delight when I drew first prize in the Woodbridge Eve Appeal Event raffle yesterday, and it was these lovely flowers.

The Eve Appeal is a charity devoted to raising awareness and funding to fight gynaecological cancers. It had particular plangency for me this year as a school friend of mine died of ovarian cancer only last month