Fairly self-explanatory, the game involved the ongoing distribution of a dog-eared slice of chocolate cake, baked by Richard’s mum in August 1988, between the two siblings’ bedrooms. Neither would take responsibility for the cake, and both would rather set fire to their own limbs than admit defeat and take it downstairs. However, what started as a point of pride became something altogether weightier, reminiscent in its strategic planning of the most complex and clandestine war manoeuvre. As the months went by and it decomposed, the cake was secreted in more and more outlandish places – a shoe, a Trivial Pursuit box – often with a long-neglected toy soldier or Lego fireman protruding from it. Once, at the beginning of a Geography lesson, Richard found the cake waiting for him in his pencil case, decked out with rubbers for eyes, a Sellotape mouth and a pencil sharpener nose. Yet he refused to back down, despite the fact that by now, after all its manhandling, the cake had been reduced to a quarter of its original size.
