Last night, I was at an event, minding my own business, when I was jellyfished. For those of you who haven’t watched Bridget Jones’ Diary, a jellyfishing is when someone you hardly know approaches you (usually at a social event) and proceeds to sting you by bringing up uncomfortable or possibly sensitive topics.

After peeing on your parade, they then usually proceed to tell you how well they’re doing and how they’ve found the cure for cancer while simultaneously giving birth to the Messiah and getting their nails done.

If you’ve never encountered a jellyfisher or don’t know what I’m going on about, you probably are one and should just stop.

But yes, back to the champion jellyfisher du jour. She approached me tentatively as if she were stalking a much more rotund version of Bambi, and out of absolutely nowhere asked me the two questions every woman over the age of 25 gets asked religiously by her grandmother every Christmas and Easter: “When are you getting married?” And my special favourite: “When are you having children?”

Only, unlike my grandmother, this particular creature thought it prudent to tell me that “my time was running out and I should get on with it”. I remember a time when this used to mildly shock me; now, I either simply ignore the conversation or say something biting back.

I don’t know when it became OK to go up to people you don’t know and start asking them personal questions which they’d rather eat dung than answer

I don’t know when it became okay to go up to people you don’t know and start asking them personal questions which they’d rather eat dung than answer, but if the conversations had at me rather than with me are to be believed, plenty seem to think it’s perfectly OK to go up to random strangers and interrogate them about the finer points of their chosen life.

What’s more, if you don’t give them the big standard answers, the assumption seems to be that there’s something rather wrong with you. You’re then subjected to a sermon about why you should want to have 20 children, while you start to eye the waiter frantically so at the very least, you won’t have to listen to this dribbling, self-serving and rude diatribe sober.

I know that it might come as a shock to some, but life is not an extended straight-to-DVD sequel of Mean Girls or a convent school playground, and if you choose to see it that way, then too bad for you.

Whether you’re rich, poor, married, unmarried, a mother or childless, all that matters in the end is that you’re happy with your choices. If you are truly content, you’ll just let everyone else get on with it without having to remind them how great you are at every second phrase.

Honestly, if any of you out there are reading this and feel that it’s about you, then it probably is: check yourself before boring the hind leg off someone else.

It is no-one’s job to positively reinforce you at parties after a day’s hard work. In a world where you can be anything, be kind.