The first time my dad ever found out I had got my period was when my mother told him, over dinner, the night it first happened. “You know the agony she’d been in, the last couple of weeks?” “Yes?” asked my extremely worried father. “She grew up. That’s what that was about.” My father nodded in acquiescence, asking my mother to let him know if I should be taken to a gynaecologist soon.
I know this because I asked my mother what he had to say about it the next morning. His opinion mattered to me, it still does. Through spiels on failed relationships and successful friendships, the idea of telling people to “fug off” (dad has always merrily misspelt common curse words, believing that they add extra vitriol) when they try to tell you what women should and shouldn’t do – and a whole arsenal of ‘sorry dad’ jokes, he’s just been, well, there.