The down to earth and practical item on periods on today’s BBC Radio 4 Woman’s Hour is the inspiration for today’s post. If you are squeamish maybe this one’s not for you. Click here for a link to the item on their website.

I’m guessing I’ve now alienated about half of the readership of this blog and I apologise. The programme struck a chord, however, for your blogger fully recognises fully the taboo and shame that surrounds a normal bodily function with which half of humanity deals for around a quarter of their lives during their reproductively able years. Contrary to what many men, and Woman’s Hour, seemed to think, the women I don’t know hardly ever talk about their periods and the programme has unleashed a flow. Of thoughts. Sorry.

I was given a predictably scant amount of information about puberty by my mother. I suppose that I had any was a miracle and, to be fair to her, it’s much more than most mothers of her time and culture imparted to their children. Even now, according to a fairly recent survey, 62% of girls in India know nothing about periods before they have their first. Sanitary towels were never bought by my mother, who seemd to have at best a haphazard attitude to parenting.

I’ve only told a few people this and now I share it with the Internet: I had no pocket money – my parents did not believe in it – and I routinely stole pennies from her purse to save up for one big packet of sanitary towels. I was so embarrassed to buy them that I planned the trip weeks in advance. I’d walk home from school and visit a chemist further from home, where they didn’t know me, and I’d pick a huge bag of the cheapest kind off the shelves and take it straight to the counter and pay with the loose change without making eye contact with anyone, least of all the person on the till.

Disposal of the used towels was problematic. you couldn’t flush them – though once, on my German Language exchange to Frankfurt I did and completely blocked my host family’s loo – and I couldn’t, simply couldn’t, use a bin at home. – I must explain here: these were the days before we even had a supermarket in Chislehurst and there were certainly no reusable plastic carrier bags – so I’d riffle through my mother’s few department store carrier bags, or wrap them in loo paper and then throw away the used towels in a bin in a more secluded place away from home. You can imagine that having to go through this palaver every time meant I used as few towels as possible. Very few towels. Later, very few tampons. ICK, ICK, ICK.

I have no idea what my mum thought was happening. Perhaps she thought I had ripped up the cotton saris that I didn’t wear to soak up the blood and washed them in the dead of night so she didn’t see. I imagine, she didn’t think of it at all. It was probably easier that way. She never said a thing, about periods, about sanitary towels, about the money going missing from her purse. It’s much easier than facing difficult issues, isn’t it? I have based my own approach to parenting issues on my own experiences: in most cases I have done the opposite to how I was brought up!

This whole, huge, part of women’s daily life is cloaked in so much shame though, isn’t it? The adverts for sanitary products always use thin blue liquid to illustrate the absorbency of towels or tampons and they soothe us into the false premise that everything will be OK if you just use insert brand and product here. Helpfully, they’re wrapped in discreet purple to disguise the contents.

I was once particularly moved by an ad in France that asked what proportion of women and ever been let down by their sanitary protection. It is a trust issue of course. Some of us devote inordinate amounts of worry to how we look from the back and I don’t mean about whether our pert tushie has suddenly expanded. I thought that sort of stuff only ever happened to clumsy, ignorant me. Goodness, I’ve had such poor self-esteem in my life.

Part of the Woman’s Hour item addressed leakages too and it’s clear that it’s not just me. There are so many horror stories out there. Particularly since MsDD was born, I don’t mind telling you, there is one day a month where I MUST be within sprinting distance of my own ensuite bathroom. I have had serious leakages over church pew cushions at choir practice; in St. Mark’s Square in Venice; in several hotel beds; during Romeo and Juliet at Covent Garden, all over the place. No amount of protection will help against a sudden gush and you can forget about wearing tight white jeans. Oh yes.

And here is a story that I have NEVER shared with anyone until now: when I went to visit my late cousin in Singapore, the night spent on the plane was, inevitably, the heaviest day of my period. I use a Mooncup these days, but still need extra towels and I had placed one of these, that had soaked up a huge amount of blood, demurely in its own little discreet purple plastic baggie. But how to dispose of it? Being post-menopausal, and not wearing make-up, my cousin had no bins in her bathrooms. Fine, I thought, I’ll ask her discreetly tomorrow, and I tucked the bag away in my dirty laundry, freshened up and went downstairs for dinner with my family.

I discovered that there had been a diplomatic incident. Raffles the Beagle, who was then not even a year old, had crept in through our open spare room door and taken a shine to OH’s straw panama hat. He’d taken it downstairs and chewed it up while we were out at dinner. Nisha’s husband Mark had just finished clearing up the debris but I noticed a telltale smear of red on the floor. Chilled, I went upstairs to check, and my carefully-wrapped bloody sanitary towel had disappeared. I spent the night thinking that I’d poisoned their puppy with my alien menstrual blood and noxious absorbent gel. To this day I don’t know whether he ate it or not but it’s just another intimate tie I have with him, I guess.

Now I realise that if you’ve read this far you must be feeling quite queasy. Here’s another heartwarming story as told by my friend Jeannie and always remembered by me.

Jeannie once shared a train carriage with some male and female soldiers in uniform who were obviously coming off duty on leave. When they all disembarked from the train in London, one of the male soldiers quietly whipped off his camo jacket and gently tied it around his female colleague’s waist. She smiled at his kindness. This is how to treat people, don’t you think?

I’ve nearly finished now. I have a joyful (!) parents’ evening ahead of me and I must be #mumtaxi for a while first. But here’s a link to a Vice article that gave me pause for thought yesterday. If you ever donate stuff to a food bank, and our local Waitrose has a collection box, maybe think about putting in some sanitary towels? Your blogger notes on 14/2/15: I’ve recently been told that charities often don’t accept donations of tampons because of the temptation to eke out the wear time. Women rationing themselves to, say, one a day because of the cost run the risk of developing toxic shock syndrome. So maybe it’s best only to donate sanitary towels.

The last word to my GP’s lovely practice nurse who, at my last MOT remarked, “You’re still having your periods? Good. Think of all that lovely oestrogen keeping you young and healthy.” Another way of looking at it then.