I was mother to two sons before I became mother to a daughter. A mother of sons knows that Stegosaurus had a brain the size of a walnut. She knows buttons in lifts are for pressing, all at once, so passengers can appreciate the identical landings on every floor. And she knows it’s impossible to pass by a construction site without stopping to gawp.

But when I visited a school fete last weekend, it was my four-year-old daughter who spotted the carpentry tent first. “Hammers!” she shouted to her brother, and the pair of them darted off into the crowd.

I dutifully followed, lugging a bag of second-hand books, a tomato seedling and two half-eaten clouds of fairy floss wrapped around grimy sticks. “The Joy of Wood,” said the sandwich board propped at the tent-front. “$2 per child. No experience required.”