We generally try to make our own decorations for our home-made Christmas cake. We used to attempt traditional scenes of snowmen, sledging, fir trees, snowballs etc. In recent years, after icing the cake, we’ve switched to making animals out of the leftover icing.

Each year furnishes its own themes.  During lockdown, an otter appeared on Dunsapie Loch high up on Arthur’s Seat, delighting all the walkers with its playful behaviour in the loch and at the water’s edge. That Christmas our cake was an Otterfest with otters made of icing.

This year, the football World Cup just having finished with Argentina becoming the champions, we made Lionel Messi the centrepiece of our cake in his number 10 stripey shirt. And an assortment of sugary giraffes, bears, cats, and birds clustered around him admiringly (see photo).

Now we can’t bear to cut the cake into wedge-shaped slices. This year is particularly difficult because Lionel Messi is actually stuck on to the top of the cake. So in order not to disturb him or his menagerie of fans, we have started cutting delicate slivers from the edge of the cake, leaving him in peace for as long as possible. I wonder how many Christmas cakes in Argentina have little Messi figurines adorning them this year?