There, that's how COVID has changed me. I've stopped wondering about the obscure longing I used to feel every time I saw a particularly nice tatt, interrogated it, concluded that I too would like one, realised there is almost nothing stopping me from doing it, and taken steps to find out how to go about perhaps moving towards the prospect of having one too.

I've always wanted a tattoo, ever since an overseas exchange I spent in Montreal, where I shared an apartment with the most unspeakably glamorous person I've ever met, before or since. She slept most of the time, smoked unfiltered cigarettes, could read a book in a day, and regularly turned in A+ essays she had begun writing an hour before deadline (she is now a prominent literary critic in New York). And she had several tattoos, all of which, on her mocha-toned skin, looked incredible. It's worth pointing out that I was 21 at the time, and she was 19. There were many years ahead of me in which I would come to understand, gradually and then all at once, that personal style cannot be emulated, but rather evolves to suit the person.

And besides, hers were imbued with meaning; I understood, intuitively, that she had led a more interesting life than me, even at 19. To my credit, even in my most angst-ridden early 20s, I could see that I had nothing - yet - of which it was even remotely worth creating a permanent reminder.

And need I even point out all the other reasons one shouldn't get a tattoo in one's early 20s? Body issues, early-stage career options, morphing tastes, intense life experiences that fade in intensity almost as soon as they have exploded into one's consciousness - I shudder to imagine the kinds of things I might have tattooed on my perfect, supple, smooth young-person's skin had I been less sensible, less painfully self-aware and less self-critical.

It's now more than 20 years later and, perhaps in sync with a lot of playful 90s nostalgia that's in the air lately, I find myself looking back more fondly on my younger self than I did a decade ago. I still really, really wanted a tattoo - but what of?

In 2020, in the early, intense days of the first COVID lockdown, desperate to form meaningful memories, I took the kids out to a garden shop to buy a bird feeder. This was despite having read - and been told, repeatedly - about the havoc caused by people feeding wild birds in their garden. Complex ecosystems be damned: from the moment the birds started arriving in our courtyard in tiny, twittering droves all day long, it was clear that this was not something I would regret on my deathbed.

From where I sat at my new, painstakingly carved-out workspace in the already-crowded living room of our small apartment, I could watch the birds of Canberra - 10 separate species on any given day at last count - play out their daily rituals, feeding, bathing, bickering, for all the world as if there were no global pandemic at all. It was, and still is, deeply comforting.

And so, when the day came that I revived my long-buried yearning for a tattoo, it seemed clear what it would be.

Of course, getting a tattoo of a bird is hardly original. Birds - the avian motif, that is - are a well-known symbol of self-conscious good taste in fashion and home decor, at least for hipsters, and hipster parents, especially in the early 2010s. There's a whole Portlandia sketch based on this entire phenomenon, called "Put A Bird On It" that pretty much sums up the cringe factor.

And yet, it was clear that for me, it was time to put a bird on it.

That was six months ago. It took weeks to find the right artist - the imperturbable Janet Thatcher at Sisters Inked in Civic - and, once I'd told her what I wanted, I faced an unsurprising waiting list at least six weeks long. Then COVID intervened.

Last week it happened, and from the moment Janet pressed the first line of ink into my forearm, the process felt inevitable and pre-ordained.

The result? A perfect willy wagtail, perched on a eucalypt twig, right there above my wrist, where I can see it any time, and be reminded that life is too short, and too unpredictable, to put things off for too much longer.