I’ve never really been brilliant at imaginative play, as hard as I would try. Vividly I remember, at five years old, asking two girls in the playground who were spinning on the spot, arms reached out like propellers, eyes closed, and heads dropped back in delight, what they were playing and if I could play too. “Yes” smiled one, “we’re playing Peter Pan, you just need to spin around fast and hold your arms out”. I tried it out and didn’t feel the same joy – I actually felt a bit silly – but I carried on anyway.

Feeling silly and carrying on anyway is something I’ve had to keep practicing since then. Why do some people find it so easy and in fact, comforting, to be silly? Am I missing that playful, let loose bone? Maybe this is a symptom of being the youngest of four with an eight-year age gap to the oldest? All of my siblings watching me play is hardly the easiest setting for imaginations to run wild! Or maybe I am simply more practical, needing inspiration from real, tangible life events to get my creative cogs oiled up for turning?

Either way, feigning silliness has become part of my repertoire. It sounds a little sinister and insincere, and also implies a huge degree of stiffness and seriousness, which is frankly utterly boring and uninteresting. While I love seeing trivial, frivolous folly in others, I just can’t find it in me, sincerely, and so I pretend that I can be a character from another place.

It’s not all that bad though: that to-the-point explainer in the playground turned out to be my lifelong best friend, so faking it worked out well on that dizzy, underwhelming morning.