Dear Mary… | 1 April 2006

Q. I look after 60 little girls at a boarding prep school. We have an ongoing struggle with headlice and nits. Combing these pestilential creatures out of long hair with nit combs and conditioner is almost a full-time job. (The parents do not want us to use organophosphates.) What can I do, Mary? Even if I do manage to get each girl’s head cleared, as soon as they go home one of them becomes reinfested through contact with a younger sibling and the whole thing starts all over again.
Name and address withheld

A. It is much less time-consuming to perform the treatment in a backwash sink. A company called LSE which supplies the luxurious furniture to the Jo Hansford salon in London’s Mount Street can sell ‘one-offs’ to non-hairdressers. Their website is www.lsehair.com. But there is a very promising new headlice removal product on the market. Hedrin — which uses no organophosphates — has the same effect on headlice as mayonnaise, namely it suffocates them. Leave on the hair overnight and, in the morning, count the corpses on the pillow. Those nits remaining glued to the hair shaft can then be easily dislodged with a nit comb and conditioner and hosed down the backwash sink in no time.

Q. A friend of mine, a pacifist, has recently returned from Iraq where he was being held hostage by kidnappers. My friend spent months tied up and blindfolded at the mercy of murderous Iraqi nutters before being rescued by the SAS in a brilliant and daring raid. It was a great relief for us all, but I have a new problem now, Mary, which is this. Despite owing his life to the special forces troops, my friend has only offered a few, very grudging words of thanks.