Kate wants a baby. But she doesn't have one. She never used to want one, but she does now. Only she's nearly forty. She might never have one. So she's cross, and wails in the bathroom at children's birthday parties because everybody else has a baby and she doesn't. Who is to blame for her unfortunate predicament? It is feminism, which led her to believe that women are ever anything other than 'helpless in the face of our biological clocks'. If only she'd known, she would not now be clutching a Prada handbag instead of an adorable 'little bundle'. Bravely and without even a suggestion of self pity she tells her story to The Mail so that others may not be bewitched as she was by the diabolical hand of freedom.

My particular favourite hanky-wringing highlight from this heart-tugging tale:

Looking back, I think I was suffering from delayed maturity syndrome.

A terrible plight that I am sure is filling GP's waiting rooms to capacity in every nook of the country. A nice authoritive sounding, faux medical term to back her assertion that no choices she made were freely her own, and a pretty little example of the kind of abdication of responsibility that sits so well with good parenting.

If after work tonight I go shopping and buy a pair of green shoes, but later discover once I am home that the purple ones would have suited me much better, it is comforting to think that The Mail would be back me in blaming the shoe shop for allowing me to make that decision.