The Tampax Lady (1984)

"Fallen off your bike!"

"On the rag!"

"Got the painters in!"

Encouraged by Trisha, the visiting Tampax lady, the girls were shouting out menstruation related phrases as an icebreaker.

"Jam rags!"

"On the blob!"

"Got my friend visiting."

The last one made me laugh the most, as it seemed such a coy euphemism for the very worldy Tracey Lam to use.

I had a doctor's note excusing me from P.E. and so used to spend two hours a week listening to Tracey Lam and Nicky Foy discussing their sordid teenage sex lives.

"I like it when he pulls it out and shoves it back in again."

"I love to fuck when I'm on glue."

They enthusiastically exchanged pornographic details while we shivered on the sidelines of the hockey pitch. In a typical act of sadism, our P.E. teacher made us wear skimpy gym shorts and t-shirts, even though we weren't playing. So we braced ourselves against the raw crosswind, flapping our arms around to keep warm; Nicky and Tracey's enormous goosepimply thighs, veined and mottled like slabs of blue cheese.

We were enjoying Trisha's visit and the opportunity it provided to discuss discharge, pubic hair and grotesque bodily functions.

"What happens if you forget to remove your tampon?" asked Trisha the well-groomed Tampax representative from the front of the class.

"The blood runs down the string into your knickers," said Nicky.

"You die from toxoplasmosis," I corrected; joining in the clamour for the first time.

Trisha looked momentarily taken aback.

This whole exercise was ridiculous as far as I could see: although it provided a welcome opportunity to skip Geography. Most of us already knew about periods, having started years ago, and, fun though it was, we really didn't need to see Trisha miming the insertion of a tampon into an imaginary orifice formed by the curl of her manicured fingers.

Like the pointless interviews with the careers adviser and the psychometric test which suggested I might want to be teacher when I grew up. It was a typically misjudged and pointless distraction for jaded teenagers, who already knew far too much, and couldn't see past the end of next week.

If we had been granted any foresight, we would have seen that within the year, two of our classmates would fall pregnant at the age of fifteen. Their already narrow options, compressed to an inescapable trajectory, towards nothing more satisfying than twenty Silk Cut; daytime telly; dragging snot-streaked kids around the supermarket and tumbling, pissed, out of the pub on a Saturday night, into a Sunday morning hangover.