As I blog, a new friend of my youngest is in the house. "Oh!" she cried, walking into my office: "a leopard printed lion! How fantastic." I turned to see if she was being funny. She wasn't. "Oh I'm so stupid," she said when the penny dropped. "Leopard print's in fashion at the moment so I didn't think it was actually a leopard." She asked to inspect our shoes. Ancient footwear. "I love Timberlands. And Shellys!" To divert attention, I asked what she'd like to eat. "Salmonella," she replied. My daughter corpsed. "You mean salmon?" I asked. "No. Salmonella." I had to show her the difference on Google. "Oh," she said sadly. "That's why everyone laughs at me:-(" Moving swiftly on: yesterday I did creative writing with teenagers in Tooting. List your dreams, I said. One girl wrote "To be a doctor." Another: "To be an architect." That's an ambition, I said. You'll clearly both pull it off. Think up a dream - something that's much harder or even impossible but makes you feel good. Like curing all illness, or building an underwater city... I dream of marrying Johnny Depp, I added helpfully. No response. The boys however, came up with cracking scenarios - they were going to be galactic footballers, to mechanise the moon and stars, and one little lad wanted a school made entirely of self replicating sweets. Is that why men still dominate the big picture, while women are at the coalface as social engineers?