Over dinner a younger friend said he thought I was “gender fluid”. I was taken aback. He was, I suspect, half-joking. But his inference was clear. I’m quite a “strapping” build, I rarely wear heels, I’m stroppy, opinionated, I hate shopping and like muddy boot camps. So, by modern definitions, I can’t be wholly female, rather somewhere along a spectrum between female and male.

I’d never thought about my gender identity before. It hadn’t occurred to me that not being a “girly” girl meant I wasn’t 100 per cent woman. The point, I’ve always believed, is to expand the categories “man” and “woman”, to tear down pink and blue prisons. So a little girl can like trucks, spacemen, getting dirty and still be a girl;