For the past few months, my three-year-old daughter has spent an hour every week learning a foreign language. She taps along the corridor to a small room in a local school, where she and a handful of three- and four-year-olds spend the next hour dancing to “La Vaca Lola”, a song about a Spanish cow, creating finger puppets to voice what they like and don’t like (me gusta, no me gusta) and shouting out which animals are big (grande) or small (peque?o).

She tells us little about the classes. In fact, for the first few weeks, nothing at all. I begin to wonder if it was a huge mistake (each lesson works out at about ￡9) but then I show her “La Vaca Lola” on YouTube. She shouts vaca with enthusiasm, and with what I hope is a Spanish accent.

The desire to enrol her in language lessons came, like most things, gradually and then in a sudden, panicked rush. In my day job, I read and edit stories about the Chinese economy, the rusting American heartland and Britain’s faltering Brexit negotiations. For a long time, I felt that it would be good for her to learn another language but I had no great plan as to when.