Yes, it is August. Yes, I know. I don’t make the rules.

Can we talk a bit about the mad variance in Santa pricing and experience, and how the two don’t link up at all?

I’ve just spent nearly £50 booking “breakfast with Santa” at a local garden centre because, despite being nearly fifty flipping quid, it isn’t that much more expensive than breakfast for the family without Santa at the same place, and also includes games and balloons for the kids.

There are places near me that sold out last year offering £10 per child for a quick sit on the lap and the customary cheap tat, and had the brass cheek to charge a tenner per parent as well. They couldn’t possibly allow parents to see their child goggling in awe as the God of Christmas asks them what they want without monetising that experience, could they?

Not so much from me. It’s fun, but I suspect once I’m done I’ll not return to it. But from my four year old daughter. She’s had a passing interest in daddy’s hobby before. With the auto driver on, she can hold interest in few laps of Mario Kart. She liked the execrable Bluey game. Everything else holds no interest.

Until Bananza. Three days straight now, she has asked if she can watch me play the monkey game. Not when I was playing it. At entirely separate times! Tonight, watching five minutes of Bananza was sufficient reward for behaving at bath time. She shrieks with laughter when his eyes turn into bananas. She cheers when I earn a banana. And she offers suggestions for where I might punch to find bananas. She’s totally enraptured and she’s not even the player.

Maybe at some point I’ll show her how to use the second controller function. But for now, it’s just a delight to play the money game with her.