Tick...

.....tock?

It concerns me that I don't have a biological clock. I can't recall ever feeling an inclination to squeeze out a spawn. Does this make me really abnormal? I've been thinking about it quite a lot because a) a lot of my friends seem to be reaching broody age b) a lot of people around me seem to be pregnant.

Baby clothes leave me cold. I can't do the squealing that most women seem to communicate with when they see them. Baby takkies are cute though... mostly because I like to pretend that my fingers are the legs, doing the can-can with really big shoes on them.

When I see a pregnant lady, I don't think: "Aaaaaw... you're gonna have a baaaabeeeee." I think: "Oh my god... do you know that your belly button is inside out?"

One of my new colleagues was showing off a picture of her three-year-old kid. This is honest-to-god the ugliest mo-fo I've seen. Think Kobus Wiese, with moles on his chin... Poor bugger is in for a tough life. Fortunately, before I could pull back in revulsion, another colleague jumped forward with enthusiasm and assured the adoring mom how pretty her kid was. I can't lie like that. I can barely manage a grunt.

We went for dinner with one of Mills's cricketing pals and his South African wife. Lovely couple... and boy, can that man cook a fine meal. The Saffer wife is about 9 and a half years pregnant by the looks of it. She was enthusiastically showing us the baby room, and the furniture, and the clothes and the colours and blah blah blah... all the time my brain was screaming, "OH MY GOD, HAVE YOU SEEN WHAT THIS CHILD IS DOING TO YOUR BODY?"

What happened to my biological clock? Don't the laws of survival state that, by nature, I should want to reproduce? I think puppies are cute. I go mushy at the sight of baby animals. But when I think offspring, I think distented torso, cankles, sweating, labour, screaming, crying, pooing, feeding, exhausting... what an effort.

And then after all of that, you risk the chance of the child turning into a terror, a mass killer, being kidnapped, or a red-head. (sorry, had to throw one ginger joke in there)

Seriously? People seriously want to make babies? Why?

I'm not trying to be all hard-core and unfeeling about this. I genuinely don't get it. Some people don't get why I don't get it. It's not a case of keeping the human population alive, 'cos last time I counted, China had that covered. If it's a case of evolution needed to be reproduced, it's fairly narcissistic to presume that my genes are that important to human survival. Don't you think?

I know it's selfish and insensitive. I know people out there are actually trying to have babies. But I just can't relate. And I feel like I am a freak because I don't squeal when I see a pair of booties.