Testing Santa Claus is always a dangerous game, one that you are bound to lose. Leaving something off your Christmas wish-list in the vain hope that old St Nick knows you well enough to plop it under the tree anyway will in almost all cases produce the same outcome: severe, agonising, mystifying, faith-shattering disappointment. Either he forgot, or Mr Grinch got his grubby hands on that select item.
Just ask my eldest: the Nintendo Switch that was supposedly symbiotically agreed upon never materialised. In fairness, had it been flagged on the official document, I may have had a quiet word in the ear of the jolly arbiter of presents that would have left him scratching his great white beard. I, for one, am not yet ready to give up the one person in the world who will laugh at my jokes to the contagion of gaming zombification just yet.
For the second year running I, too, however, failed to let on that my sock drawer was running so dangerously low on ammunition that a fold-inside-out manoeuvre is becoming almost as likely as having your bloods taken in the canteen at an A&E department this winter.
