Obviously there is nothing wrong with trying to prevent home intruders. But many parents and emergency room doctors are concerned because so few children have advanced circus training or proper safety harnesses and, therefore, have a tendency to fall off their rooftops. This is not a problem for the children of Coober Pedy where roofs are at ground level, but anybody who lives in an above-ground dwelling is really ill-advised to fall off a roof, especially if they live in a multi-storey block of flats.

  Trust me, you don’t want to spend Christmas Day in hospital. I shudder to think what they would serve for your Christmas lunch. They might say it’s ‘turkey’, but given the sorry state of our public hospital system it is more likely to be a rat the chef caught down the back of his refrigerator.

  So here are the instructions for building a safe Santa trap (safe for you, but not for Santa).

  Instead of climbing up on the roof and nailing chicken wire over the top of your chimney, simply nail the chicken wire over the bottom of the chimney, across the open fireplace. This will save you having to climb up on the roof, in possibly inclement weather, and it will actually work far better because chicken wire at the bottom will trap Santa inside your chimney so he has no way of escaping until the police arrive. In fact, if you leave a packet of biscuits in the fireplace (preferably chocolate-coated), Santa will be so busy gobbling them up he may not even realise that he is trapped. As you can guess from his physique, he really does like chocolate biscuits.

  So there you have it. Please don’t climb up on your roof just to trap Santa. He is not worth it, and you might fall off the roof. If you block the chimney, you will only encourage Santa to smash his way in through a window and it is devilishly hard to get a glazier to come out and repair a window on Christmas Day.

  There are many, many ways to make a chocolate cake and I urge you to try them all, repeatedly, several times a day if possible. But sometimes, when you are in the grip of a particularly urgent need for cake – perhaps because your blood sugar has dropped to an unhealthy low after being forced to run away from a truancy officer, police swat team or irate neighbour – it is best to keep things simple. Here is the recipe I use when I need chocolate cake and I’m too delirious with hunger to do anything more complicated.

  INGREDIENTS

  180 grams caster sugar

  180 grams butter (soften in the microwave first)

  180 grams self-raising flour

  a pinch of salt

  3 eggs

  2 tablespoons of cocoa (or drinking chocolate if you’ve already eaten all your cocoa)

  2 friends (one strong and one fast moving)

  METHOD

  1. Preheat your oven to 180°ºC.

  2. Grease a cake tin and line with baking paper. (NB. You don’t have to bother doing this if you are happy to rip the cake out of the tin a handful at a time and lick the sides clean with your tongue.)

  3. Put the sugar and butter in a bowl and mix together.

  4. Add the eggs, one at a time.

  5. Stir in the self-raising flour, salt and cocoa.

  6. Now, you must RESIST THE URGE TO EAT THE BATTER (at least not all of it). You might need a large strong friend to physically hold you back at this stage. Preferably while screaming ‘No, don’t do it, Nanny Piggins! Let the batter become a cake!’

  7. Get another friend to tip the batter into the cake tin.

  8. Pop the cake in the oven and bake it. Depending on what sort of oven you’ve got and what sort of tin you’ve used, it should take between 25 and 40 minutes to cook. You can tell when it’s done by poking the cake with a knitting needle. (Be sure to take any knitting off the needle before you use it, or the old lady you stole it from will get cross with you.) If it’s uncooked, the needle will have batter on it. If it’s cooked it should come out cleanly.

  9. Eat it.

  I hope you enjoy this recipe as much as I do.

  Rest assured, the game Sardines does not actually involve the eating of sardines. Fish is bad at the best of times because it is almost never served with chocolate, but sardines are fish with extra badness because they are squashed into a tiny tin full of oil and salt, which only serves to make the fish taste extra fishy.

  The only thing the game Sardines borrows from the fish sardines is the squashing.

  Basically, Sardines is exactly the same as Hide and Seek except when you find someone you don’t loudly say, ‘Ha ha, I found you. What a terrible hiding place. What on earth made you think of hiding there?!’

  No, in Sardines when you find the person hiding you squeeze in and hide next to them.

  So if you are playing with ten people, by the end of the game there will be nine people all squashed into one hiding space while the one last sad person haplessly wanders the halls looking for you.

  I once played a game of Sardines that lasted for six days. Luckily I had several cakes sewn into the hem of my dress so the six other players and I were able to sustain ourselves in our hiding position in a freestanding wardrobe. It was only on the seventh day, when it occurred to us that perhaps we should climb down and check, that we discovered that the last player had got bored and gone back home to Belgium.

  Nevertheless, Sardines is an excellent game.

  The children sat slumped and exhausted at the breakfast table. It was Boxing Day so they didn’t really want to eat breakfast because they had eaten so much the day before. But they knew suggesting to Nanny Piggins that they might skip a meal could lead to a long lecture on the importance of regular meals (she had no notion of the idea of injuring yourself from overeating), so the children dutifully slouched by the table waiting for her to appear. They expected her to burst out of the kitchen with chocolate-covered pancakes, or chocolate-covered waffles or chocolate-covered chocolate, like she normally did. But unsurprisingly, she managed to totally surprise them by bursting in through the hallway door dressed up from head to foot as a boxer.

  The children did not know what to say. Partly because they were still brain-addled from all the calories they had consumed the day before, and partly because it had never occurred to them that their nanny might appear at the breakfast table dressed as a pugilist.

  Derrick had only had seven helpings of Christmas pudding the day before so he was the first to gather his wits and ask, ‘Nanny Piggins, why are you wearing black silk shorts, a vest and boxing gloves?’

  ‘I’m dressed up for the boxing, of course,’ said Nanny Piggins. ‘Who are we going to fight first? Can we go down to the school? I’d love to take a swing at Headmaster Pimplestock for that disparaging remark he made about Michael’s penmanship in his last report card.’

  ‘I think you’ve got the wrong end of the stick,’ said Michael.

  ‘That’s a good idea,’ said Nanny Piggins enthusiastically. ‘After we’re done with the boxing, I could hit him with a stick too.’

  ‘Nanny Piggins,’ said Samantha carefully. She did not want to enrage her nanny when she was dressed for a day of violence. ‘You do realise that on Boxing Day there is no actual boxing?’

  ‘What?!’ exclaimed Nanny Piggins. ‘No boxing?! Is this some sort of cruel joke? If there is no boxing, why do they call it Boxing Day?’

  The children looked at each other. They had no idea. Now that they thought about it, they realised it made very little sense. It would be like calling the day after Easter ‘Kung Fu Day’, then scheduling no martial arts at all.

  ‘Are you telling me that today is Boxing Day and yet I’m not going to be allowed to hit anybody at all?’ asked Nanny Piggins.

  ‘Well, no more than usual anyway,’ said Derrick.

  ‘What a dreadful disappointment,’ said Nanny Piggins as she slumped on a dining chair. ‘Still, it makes sense. I had wondered why everyone was so excited by Christmas, which is just a day of presents and eating. Boxing Day seemed so much more fun, you get all the leftover food plus the chance to hit people.’

  ‘We’re sorry for your loss,’ said Michael sympathetically.

  ‘So what are we going to do today?’ asked Nanny Piggins. ‘All the shops are shut. Anyway, I’ve been banned from the sweet shop and the Chocolatorium for a week while they repair the damages from my pre-Christmas shopping frenzy.’

  ‘To be strictly accurate,’ said Derrick, ‘it was more of an eating frenzy.’

  ‘Well, it seemed such a shame to take the chocolate home, wrap it up and give it to someone else,’ said Nanny Piggins. ‘Much better to eat it while it’s fresh and flavoursome.’

  ‘Last week you told me chocolate tasted better when you let it mature down the back of the sofa for a month,’ said Michael.

  ‘I know,’ agreed Nanny Piggins, ‘and I believed it at the time. But I think that was because I had just found a chocolate bar down the back of the sofa, so my opinion was influenced by the deliciousness of that chocolate.’

  ‘Well, there won’t be any chocolate or boxing today,’ said Michael glumly.

  ‘Why not?’ asked Nanny Piggins.

  ‘Because it’s Boxing Day,’ said Samantha.

  ‘So?’ asked Nanny Piggins.

  ‘In the Green family,’ explained Derrick, ‘Boxing Day is the day when all the extended family gets together.’

  ‘To do what?’ asked Nanny Piggins, assuming there would, at the very least, be some sort of cake-based ritual.

  ‘Nothing, we just get together,’ said Samantha.

  ‘And the police allow this?’ asked Nanny Piggins. ‘Because, and no offence here, children. As you know, I think you three are all lovely . . .’

  ‘Thank you,’ said the children.

  ‘But I am assuming your extended family takes after your father in their lack of charisma and basic hygiene,’ guessed Nanny Piggins.

  ‘You’re right,’ agreed Derrick.

  ‘So surely allowing so many painfully boring and tedious people together in one place could be dangerous,’ said Nanny Piggins. ‘Their anti-personality could act like antimatter and cause a black hole, sucking the entire planet into its vortex and destroying the galaxy.’

  ‘Have you been watching astronomy documentaries?’ asked Derrick.

  ‘No, Star Trek,’ explained Nanny Piggins. ‘It can be tremendously educational.’

  ‘The relatives come over every year and the galaxy has never imploded before,’ said Samantha.

  ‘That’s just what you think to the best of your knowledge,’ said Nanny Piggins. ‘But what if the galaxy had imploded and you just didn’t notice because you were in the eye of the implosion so everything seemed the same.’

  ‘My head is hurting,’ said Michael. ‘This is too much to think about before breakfast.’

  ‘You mean you haven’t eaten?’ exclaimed a shocked Nanny Piggins. ‘Didn’t you find the chocolate friands I made you? There are 12 dozen waiting for you in the kitchen.’

  The children found that after the thought-provoking philosophical discussion they actually did have an appetite for a few friands.

  ‘So when do your dreadful relatives arrive?’ asked Nanny Piggins as she chomped on the seventy-sixth friand.

  ‘They are invited to arrive at 10 am,’ said Samantha, ‘so most of them arrive between 8 and 9 o’clock. Then they can judge the ones who are on time for being late.’

  ‘And what refreshments will your father provide?’ asked Nanny Piggins, getting to the nub of what was, in her mind, the most important consideration.

  ‘He doesn’t provide refreshments,’ said Michael.

  ‘What?!’ exploded Nanny Piggins. ‘I know I shouldn’t be shocked by the depths of your father’s depravity after all that I have seen him do. But to invite over guests and not supply refreshments is positively inhumane. How can you be expected to endure the company of cousins, great aunts and, even worse, great uncles, if you are unable to shove a slice of cake in your mouth?’

  ‘That’s the whole reason Father offers to host. That way he gets out of providing refreshments,’ explained Derrick. ‘He provides the venue and tells all the guests to bring a plate.’

  ‘A plate?’ asked Nanny Piggins. ‘Why? Is it a Greek-themed party? Are they going to smash the plates, preferably over your father’s head, because if that is the case I may change my mind and throw my support behind the occasion.’

  ‘No, when you ask people to bring a plate it means you want them to bring a plate of food,’ explained Samantha. ‘Then everyone shares.’

  ‘Just one plate each?’ asked Nanny Piggins. ‘That will be inhaled in a millisecond! Then what will they do? Goodness knows, being Greens they’ll have nothing to say to each other.’

  ‘To be fair,’ said Derrick, ‘Father does provide entertainment.’

  ‘Really? Well, that’s more like it!’ said Nanny Piggins, perking up. ‘Who has he hired? A balloon animal artist? A juggler? A magician? Someone who breathes fire?’

  ‘No,’ said Derrick, ‘he provides the entertainment himself. When the conversation hits a lull he gets up and does a one-hour presentation on the latest breakthroughs in tax auditing.’

  ‘No,’ gasped Nanny Piggins, thoroughly appalled.

  ‘With an overhead projector to demonstrate graphs and charts,’ added Samantha.

  ‘That’s dreadful,’ declared Nanny Piggins. ‘Someone should tell Santa. He would come and take Mr Green’s presents back.’

  ‘Santa only gave him one pair of socks this year,’ said Michael.

  ‘Which was more than he deserved,’ said Nanny Piggins. ‘Santa probably only gave them to him because he can smell the stinky socks he usually wears all the way to the North Pole.’

  (Dear Reader, to be strictly accurate, Mr Green’s feet did not smell that bad. At least, no worse than any man whose wife has mysteriously gone missing and therefore has no-one to tell him off for not doing the laundry as often as he should. But you have to remember that, as a pig, Nanny Piggins has an extraordinary sense of smell, a thousand times stronger than a human’s. So she could be a little overly harsh and judgemental when it came to odour.)

  ‘Well, I’m not standing for this,’ said Nanny Piggins, contradicting her statement by getting to her feet. ‘If your father is going to allow his dreadful relatives into this house then I shall have to take action.’

  ‘Are we going out?’ asked Michael.

  ‘No, I shall invite my own family over,’ said Nanny Piggins.

  ‘All of them?’ asked Derrick.

  ‘Yes,’ said Nanny Piggins, ‘all thirteen of my identical fourteenuplet sisters. They are so extraordinary and brilliant it will counteract the drabness of the Greens, balancing out the potential social disaster and hopefully creating a normal pleasant gathering.’

  ‘I thought you didn’t know how to contact your sisters?’ said Samantha.

  ‘I don’t,’ agreed Nanny Piggins, ‘but Wendy will know.’

  ‘Which sister is she?’ asked Michael.

  ‘Is she the devious computer genius with a vendetta against the chess community?’ asked Derrick.

  ‘That’s Deidre,’ said Nanny Piggins.

  ‘Or the amoral kleptomaniac with a passion for apricot danishes?’ asked Samantha.

  ‘No, that’s Anthea,’ said Nanny Piggins.

  ‘Or the messy-haired biographer who tried to take over the world by stealing your mother’s cake recipes?’ asked Michael.

  ‘No, no, no, that’s Nadia,’ said Nanny Piggins. ‘Wendy is the evil super-spy who tried to throw me out of an aeroplane.’

  ‘Oh, her,’ said the children.

  ‘She uses her contacts in the espionage business to keep tabs on us all,’ explained Nanny Piggins.

  ‘Why?’ asked Samantha.

  ‘In case she falls too deeply into fudge debt and has to blackmail one of us to raise the money to pay off her fudge supplier,’ said Nanny Piggins.

  ‘I didn’t know she had a fudge problem,’ said Derrick.

  ‘I didn’t say she had a problem,’ said Nanny Piggins. ‘I said she periodically ate so much fudge she racked up tens of thousands of dollars in debt. It is very judgemental of you to assume that is a “problem”.’

  ‘Sorry,’ said Derrick.

  ‘And I happen to know for a fact that she has been tapping our telephone,’ said Nanny Piggins.

  ‘Because you can hear clicking sounds on the line?’ asked Michael. (He had watched lots of police television programs so he knew all about such things.)

  ‘Partly,’ agreed Nanny Piggins, ‘but mostly because of the distinctive sound of an evil pig eating fudge.’

  Nanny Piggins lifted the handset of the telephone. ‘Wendy, I know you are there listening . . . Stopping chewing does not conceal the fact that you are there . . . I can smell the fudge down the phone line.’

  ‘Can she do that?’ asked Samantha, worried about the time she had eaten an apple right before ringing her nanny. (Nanny Piggins did not approve of fruit, especially in its raw form. She was suspicious of anything that was good for your bowels.)

  Michael shrugged. ‘Nanny Piggins can do anything.’

  Nanny Piggins continued to speak on the phone. ‘Wendy, I want you to gather all our sisters and have them here are the Green house by 10.15 today . . . What do you mean “Why should I?” Isn’t a polite request from your sister enough?’

  ‘When was she polite?’ asked Derrick.

  ‘I’ll make it worth your while,’ promised Nanny Piggins. ‘If you get them all here on time I shall buy you one box of fudge. The largest one available from Mr Flomberg’s Fudgetorium.’

  The children heard the phone click on the other end as Wendy hung up.

  ‘Now we just sit and wait,’ said Nanny Piggins.

  ‘And eat more friands?’ asked Michael.

  ‘Of course we eat friands,’ agreed Nanny Piggins. ‘Plus we’d better whip up some real refreshments. My sisters are not going to put up with your father’s shabby standards when it comes to hospitality. If there isn’t a large quantity of A-grade cake plus apricot danishes for Anthea, the subsequent riot may very well cause structural damage to your home.’