How to...

Instead of travel guides, travellers should be issued with little laminate how to cards for tricky situations that are not covered in guide books. For example in Finland, I managed to find the only pharmacist who didn't speak English and went on an elaborate mime for a condom. It was before I lived here okay... Likewise in the Middle East, I've watched some interesting charades indicating to a toilet keeper that 2 sheets of paper will simply not suffice on this occasion.

My laminate card for Morocco would have to be how to buy sanitary products in an Arabic country. (Apologies to English readers who can't handle this kind of honesty.) I'm guessing here that tampons are seen as Western virginity snatchers (which would lead the advertising folk to have a field day). And anyway the word tampon in French means of the rubber stamp kind, the kind I was supposed to get in my passport on the boat here, but that's another story.

So I started strolling the streets and peering into the shops for some clues. Shops here are very deep and dark. The counter is at the front, and you tend to yell in Arabic in a way that suggests you hate your shop keeper, and they gather the kilo of dried figs and ten kgs of washing powder and pass it to you in a little black bag which then goes to blight the landscape. This makes it impossible to window shop or browse. I got a few strange looks as I peered intently towards the back of each shop and no doubt several shop keepers shouted at me in Arabic, hey lady would you like some figs while I am out the back getting some as I am not going back there again. But alas I didn't understand.

I eventually hit success, saw something potentially useful, hidden under the hairspray and amongst the steel scouring pads. Of course I didn't know the word in French for the item I wanted, or anything next to it. The packet was turquoise. Damn my ineffective French vocabulary that gives me every colour under the rainbow bar turquoise. The closest translation I could think of was I have a ruler which only made me have fits of giggles at my poor French. We managed to gesture correctly via a series of left a little, down a row, no up one and to the right, where I almost got passed a packet of Pampers nappies and finally hit the jackpot. The shopkeeper was far more embarrassed than, scooped up my purchase into the evil black bag and was gone to the back amongst the figs before I could query anything.

Back at the hotel, I learn that I am the owner of some super very very large sanitary pads, the girth of which I am sure there is no natural woman who matches. They are so large there are only four in a packet, which makes them only a stopgap for any poor woman that large anyway. However I am going to lay them end to end at night and see if I can confuse the incoming plane from Paris to land on them as a runway...

And no I am none the wiser on the correct words in French or in Arabic.