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My first thought upon hearing that another of my ex-girlfriends is pregnant, especially one I liked, is invariably, ‘Great, more perfectly decent pussy ruined by childbirth’.

Don’t worry, you don’t need to admonish me for this. I am already well aware of how lousy a person this reaction makes me. I know that a well-reasoned, generous response would probably be, ‘How lovely for her and her husband/boyfriend, they must be thrilled’. But I resigned myself to being something other than well-reasoned and generous a long time ago.

In my defence, I am not being misogynistic. I am not casually referring to womankind as ‘pussy’; rather, I am referring specifically to the vagina. I actually mean that their warm intimate centre, a small, friendly place I once knew fairly thoroughly and - now that I am prompted to - remember with a certain fondness, will be irrevocably sullied by childbirth.

It should be pointed out that I am only really guessing here and, having never knowingly been involved with a woman who has experienced life’s greatest miracle (if you like that sort of thing), don’t actually have much of a clue about the subject at hand. None of which alters the facts surrounding my instinctive reaction to Shauna Farmer’s cheerful, over-long and slightly smug email full of exclamation points announcing the expected arrival of yet another human being on planet Earth sometime towards the start of next year.

Which indicates, I suppose, that I still see women as sexual rather than maternal. That even well into my thirties and married I place more value on pleasure than the continuation of life, and see a clear delineation between the two.

Jeff is staying in tonight, miserably embarking on an antibiotic-enforced ten day confinement of sobriety. He broke the news to me two days ago when I called him to arrange a trip to his local pool hall.

“Thing is,” he said. “I thought I’d at least feel healthy without alcohol but I just feel like shit since I stopped drinking.”

“When did you stop?” I asked him.

“Last night,” he said, sighing, so I hung up.

And since Lydia is away, my brain has taken it upon itself to start asking some serious questions about my place in the world. Questions that cheap Scotch won’t quell. There is a joke in the Patterson family that we peak when we’re fourteen - a joke I always laugh at - but the sad truth is that I actually peaked when I was eleven. That was the year that I got 99% on a year-end maths exam; that I won the Kent cubs cross country race in a course record; that I kissed the prettiest girl I ever have and will; that I bowled out the last man in the school cricket cup.

The next year I discovered that I couldn’t comprehend algebra; I graduated to the scouts and finished fifty-eighth in the district race, thus failing to qualify for the county finals; the prettiest girl I have ever kissed and ever will didn’t recognise me at the athletics club barn dance; I wasn’t picked for the school cricket team.

By the time I was fourteen I was past washed up and was put in the back of the kitchen cabinet next to the mugs no one uses cos they’re all chipped and stained brown from stewed tea but no one throws them away because they hold undeserved sentimental value. Or something. And pretty much the only thing that has changed about me since I became an adult is how I pronounce the word ‘salt’.

Just before she went away Lydia once again brought up the subject of having a baby. Luckily I had prepared and memorised a melodramatic response for just this occasion.

“Darling,” I told her. “The only thing you can be sure of when you create a child is that one day it will die. So the act of conception is also an act of murder. We bring our children into the world knowing they will suffer untold fear and pain and loneliness as we have until it is their time to expire.”

She looked more alarmed and upset than I had planned. “I don’t feel lonely. Do you?”

“No,” I said, backtracking cowardly. “I’m just saying. It’s strange to me to think that when my sister and brother and my cousins and I are dead, no one will remember our grandparents at all. They lived for an average of seventy-five years and yet they made no lasting impact on the world. They fought in world wars, worked in offices, probably had crushes on people other than their spouses and possibly acted on them, made music, stayed up together through personal crises, made and spent tens or hundreds of thousand of pounds, but all is forgotten with the passing of the people who knew them. And even if we have children, the same thing will happen to us when their children die. Unless, you know, my novel gets revaluated and I become a celebrated author.”

Lydia pursed her lips and glared at me. “We’re having a fucking baby,” she said and stood up and rolled her suitcase towards the door. She opened it and hesitated. “Only a very small amount of people make a lasting impression on the world, Daniel. But while we’re here we touch the people around us, and we try to do that for the better. Try to put things in perspective.”

And today I went to the Griffith observatory and watched a presentation in the planetarium that hammered home the idea that we are merely specks on a speck in a galaxy of other specks in a universe of specks and maybe the universe is just a speck in something else and so on and that really it’s a miracle we’re even here. In other words, it's probably not worth worrying about whether your socks match your shoes.

Of course, understanding that our place in the whole scheme of things is of total insignificance is all very well when we’re in the peak of health, drunk at night gazing at the stars with the new Part Chimp album on the iPod. But it’s a bit trickier when we’re on death’s door in bed in a hospice racked with pain, shivering and terrified and unable to draw a satisfactory breath. Or trapped in the mangled wreckage of a car, bleeding from multiple crushed appendages while fire licks worryingly at our feet.

I tell all this to Lydia on the phone after she finishes moaning about her hard day at work. She lets out a long sigh that I suppose it intended to signify weariness. “Jesus Daniel,” she says. “Most people think about this and put it past them when they're still kids.”

“I was too busy playing Fighting Fantasy,” I say quietly.

“Think about the things you have to look forward to,” she says, and then I can visualise her lips stretching into a vindictive grin as she adds, “Isn't Sid visiting soon?”

I decide to diffuse her satisfaction by faking enthusiasm. “Well that's true. Yeah, at least I have that...”

But she doesn't buy it and I am forced to hang up on her mid-cackle.

I finish the evening by writing a short, polite reply to Shauna's email, summoning the right words that I've heard before on TV to congratulate her, knowing that I shouldn't have to be simulating happiness at other people's joy and therefore, somewhat worryingly, feeling more and more like Dexter.