I f you feel there are not enough people in your life making bizarre pronouncements on your character, might I suggest deciding to be childless. At the age of 34, and having felt for my entire adult life that I do not want to procreate, I have heard most of them, from the infuriatingly condescending – “don’t worry, you will one day!” – to the vaguely hostile – “so you don’t like children?” My own family have mostly resigned themselves to the knowledge that I have self-selected to be the future strange uncle, who plays a vital role in my niece and nephew’s lives by recommending cool records during adolescence (can’t wait to force a teenager to listen to Metal Machine Music in full.) But a dizzying number of people ask me about my plans for children, from strangers to friends.
Making my decision to be childless caused me no stress. But it does, for some reason, cause stress to others. Sign up for Guardian Australia’s breaking news email A way of responding to this stress in those around me was given to me recently, in the form of the low-hanging branch of a tree, over which noisy miners kept flurrying.
I was up the coast with my partner, and we would spend much of our time there stretched out on a blanket in the yard, reading. It was while we reclined in the sun that we noticed an unusual amount of bird activity taking place above us. There, worryingly far out on the branch, sat a bird’s nest.
Care must be taken not to disturb Australia’s native bird.
