WHEN I sat down to write last week's column about the dreaded concept of ovulation, I must admit I did wonder how people would react to the mention of such an unnatural topic.

But I never imagined how much of a chord it would strike with the people around me.

Barely had the ink dried on the Evening Press last Wednesday when colleagues were coming up to me to tell me I was far from being the only person ever to have had a get-together with a pal cancelled because the time was right for a much more important date.

One woman said: "I don't know. All my mates are at it (trying to start a family, that is). I'm just not interested myself, but I'm a bit worried that I'll be the only childless woman left in a few months' time. And they all stress about it so much!"

There were quite a few other comments in a similar vein, so much so that it got me thinking about child-rearing and the seasons.

It may be true that the spring is when a young man's fancy turns to thoughts of love; but it seems to be the autumn when his partner thinks about kitting out the nursery. I wonder which is the busiest month on the maternity wards?

There were many, many tales of men being badgered to respect their partner's timetable, right down to those being summoned home from the office in the lunch hour in order to meet the demands of human biology.

I'd always thought we women were the romantic ones, but it seems the pragmatic, scientific approach being favoured by some determined wannabe mums might be putting off their more delicate partners.

Take the hollow-eyed, haunted-looking male who came up to me and confided: "You don't know the half of it.

"My missus is forever telling me when she's ovulating.

"You women don't realise what effect that has on a man.

"I mean, we're not machines, you know. Why can't things just take their natural course?"

And he's not the only man allergic to that particular "O" word.

When I got home last Wednesday night, I was told quite firmly that my column had only been scanned that day, due to my reckless references to female fertility.

Why so squeamish? It's just a word, after all... but there's the rub. It's not just a word, and there's definitely something wrong with the mention of the subject it covers.

In the course of last week's column I mentioned, in passing, a common, minor surgical procedure associated with childbirth.

Ladies and gentlemen, for whatever reason, it didn't make the cut.

When I looked through the paper after it had gone to press, I found the reference had been neatly excised from the finished version.

It's a bit peculiar in a newspaper, such as ours, which I'm pretty certain has discussed the play The Vagina Monologues, and which has definitely reviewed The Puppetry Of The Penis on more than one occasion.

Perhaps I've just gone too far. It's more than possible for me to do such a thing, and I promise next week I'll talk about something else.

But in the meantime, I can't help being filled with wonder that the human race has ever managed to reproduce itself when we're all so bashful.

Thank God for the stork and the gooseberry bush.

Updated: 09:22 Wednesday, November 16, 2005