Hard boiled eggs used to be me and my brother’s favourite thing when we were younger. I try and get in to the spirit of eating them as an adult every now and again, but it’s just not the same anymore, and nothing I can do seems capable of bringing back that old time magic. And it’s nothing to do with the actual eating, because, if anything, my hard-boiled egg cooking skills are now honed to perfection and as good as mum’s when she was younger (if not better, but keep that to yourself please). No, my reason for not taking the same joy as I once did is simple and sinister in a child-like way. I am talking about the most horrible, awful, outrageous trick in the world, of course. The one where you eat the victim’s hard-boiled egg and then turn it over in the cup–

The worst thing about this trick is that it never stopped catching me out. I could never tell if the egg had been messed with or if it was actually fine. Because of this I would sometimes get in a rage—my brother would smile at me as if to say did it again ha!—and bad things would happen. Like the time I slung the egg on the floor and stamped on it, only to discover that it was a full one and I had executed it!

For this my brother suffered a great deal. I played many tricks on him in return, such as a) putting honey in his running shoes, brilliant. B) putting honey on his hands while he slept and c) doing a small wee on his bed so it looked as if he’d done it! That was always my favourite one. Ah–how time flies and things change. If only we could rewind the clock–