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From Rae Duke, Religion and Ethics teacher and broadcaster:
I can be a real sucker for an online personality test. Whether it promises to shine further light on how I think, work or communicate – they’re just a bit of fun with the potential to boost that all important self-knowledge. The most recent one to grab my attention - and to then eat-up 6 minutes of my day - was the Â鶹Éç’s ‘How eccentric are you?’ test. It kicked off with the question; what’s your favourite mode of transport? - With the options of car, bike or Besaddled Llama as available answers. 
It was at this early point, that my hopes of a high-ish score were dashed… I had wondered whether my brief dabbling with an 80’s esque mullet aged 14, featuring a shaved section above my left ear no less, was evidence of a masked eccentricity. Alas no, this ill-advised hairdo of the early noughties was just not going to cut it here. The quiz came off the back of a documentary highlighting that though the individuals who sprinkle a bit of eccentricity on the vanilla of life are idolized by us, they’re increasingly rare to find – and this is no good thing. Because what our more basic understanding of the term ‘eccentric’ looses sight of is that the word actually describes those who are entirely original, who do not sheepishly follow the crowd; those with a strong conscience whose principles and beliefs, though sitting on the edges of society to begin with, end up steering us in new and better directions.
In his latest book, Dominion, the historian Tom Holland explains how Christianity – despite being a small, revolutionary - you might say eccentric - movement in its infancy, singlehandedly transformed the West; without it, for instance, we’d have no ‘All you need is love’ lyric. We may live in an increasingly secular society, yes, but many of our ideals remain undeniably Christian. I’m definitely of the thinking that, much like the mullet of my youth and that poor Besaddled llama, many of life’s gems are to be found ‘out of the centre’ and that, as Greta Thunberg’s example so stunningly demonstrates; no one is too small to make a difference.