I was on holiday last month in 35°C Aruba, and was on my period for half of my time there. Knowing that it’d come in my second week, I packed a stack of period pants, my Mooncup and various navy coloured bikinis. And you know what? It was totally fine.

Sure, I felt a bit like a beach ball a few days before it arrived (thanks, premenstrual bloat) and that didn’t exactly make me feel amazing about flashing my flesh, but once my period began, I just cracked on as usual. In fact, I’d argue that being somewhere warm and not having to deal with the stresses of home life and work made that period far easier to deal with – to say nothing of being able to float, weightless, in the sea.

But it wasn’t always like this. Back in the day, my holiday prep began with hoarding enough of my pill that I’d be able to backpack it for weeks on end to avoid having a period. And before going on contraception, I used to ask to be prescribed period delay tablets whenever a holiday was on the horizon. Towards the start of my menstruating life, I free-bled on a 36-hour coach trip back from Portugal, and after that, I was prepared to do just about anything to stem the flow abroad.

Why do we still see periods as something to avoid on holiday?