Adrienne recently mentioned the Mooncup as an alternative to disposable sanitary products, which got me thinking. I asked a few friends for their thoughts. Someone who’d tried using it said it was ‘bloody torture’ and had binned it. I often fail when it comes to being ‘good’, and during a period, I’m two-thirds evil. There is a Hindu tradition of women spending time in seclusion during menstruation, away from family duties. The association with women being ‘unclean’ is problematic, but enabling women to get time alone and away from kitchen implements when they are most intolerant and irritable is a great idea. Looking after children during a period is akin to having a woodpecker drilling into the skull. How many domestics are triggered by hormones? I was brought up with the idea that hormonal women are mad, bad and dangerous to know. And quite right too, we are. But so are hormonal men. Testosterone may have a different effect, but it’s no less bonkers. Declaring war on Iraq? Marrying Heather Mills without a pre-nup? During my teens, my dad took me to one side and explained that mum was throwing saucepans because she was ‘going through the change’. She wasn’t. Dad inherited two daughters, and then had me. In our teenage years, he must have lived in holy terror of oestrogen. No wonder he started a youth club. Couldn’t wait to get out of the house. For men who relate to his bewilderment, I offer the following advice: pedantry and premenstrual women are a bad mix, the moral high ground is not worth having without your genitals; be glad the UK has tight gun-control laws; walk softly and carry chocolate at all times.