In our first year every girl in the class was given a book. The title is silly – we all call it The Book. The first hundred pages are full of forewords and such, written by people with so many letters after their names to fill half a page each. The rest of it describes what noble things we should do, like having a family, when we reach the age of hundred and two. But woe to us if we try these things beforehand; we would catch awful diseases and be cast out of society and worse.
However it does not describe these things, noble or otherwise – no pictures – useless. What we need is a book called “What every girl needs to know about sex”. But no such luck. We remained ignorant. I had high hopes in the biology lessons. We had done the human ear, the human eye and the human heart. We were getting there slowly. But no, we got the reproductive organs of the rabbit. Useless! I mean, who wants to have sex with a rabbit – they're too small.
This was very frustrating. We were supposed to read The Book often and discuss it in class. We asked The Teacher if she had had The Book when she was young; she said no she hadn't and that it had ruined her whole life.
And the boys in the other school also had a similar book, probably written by the same wodges (I don't know what a wodge is either but Bunny would not let me use the word I wanted).