I love that my almost 10-year-old makes balloon umbrellas, rehearses tricks for Halloween “just in case”, curls up in bed at night reading Lord of The Rings and befriends snails.

I can’t think where she gets it from. I mean, I remember my dad giving a speech at my 21st birthday marvelling at my odd-bod childhood and seeming a little startled that I’d turned out perfectly OK …

But there’s nothing odd about a teenage girl deciding she’s from a planet near Alpha Centauri called Andromeda and devising a whole language for it … is there?

Nah. Perfectly normal.

Or wearing tartan gymboots, a green raincoat and a red cap to high school … accessorised with a black armband when Split Enz broke up.

Everyone does that, don’t they?

It’s funny the histories you write yourself. The way I tell it I was a shy little flower in my youth. But I might need to rethink that: perhaps “introverted with a streak of wacky” is a better way to describe it.

I look at my eldest and that’s exactly what I got with her – introverted with a streak of wacky.

And I’ve decided it’s not odd-bod at all. It’s fun.

And way more entertaining than social conformity.

She’ll turn out OK too. And I won’t be startled at all.

Are you an introvert or an extrovert?