In The Child Whisperer, Tracy Hogg describes the “textbook baby”, the one who develops new skills right on cue, exactly when the manual said they would. My Curly Girlie just turned four and, like clockwork, she’s turned into a little girl. Make that Little Girl - there’s a definite capital-G in her Girl now that she’s reached the grand age of four.

“I am only friend with girls,” she announced yesterday.

“What about Khan and Timo?” I said, “Your best friends at creche?”

“They’re girls.”

“Um, no, they’re boys.”

“Ah.” *Thinking* “Apart from Khan and Timo, I am only friend with girls.”

That’s clear, then.

Curly’s favourite colour is... sigh... pink. When she was only three, it was “rainbow”, but the clockwork child has dropped red and yellow and green and settled, predictably, on pink.

I’ve never been into the pink. In fact, I’d say I’ve actively encouraged a diversity of colour: her bedroom is painted bright red, her coat is deep purple with a red and white polka dot lining, she’s currently wearing a sky blue top with white stars.

But the pink has arrived, with the inexorability of death and taxes, and we shall endure it until she enters her equally inevitable purple and then black phases.