NITS PART I

We are at the races. Me, Bloggiana, Jollyosa, Bloggiana’s children and one or two sundry others. Jollyosa introduces us to an international make-up artist with a radiant smile and perfect skin who comments sweetly on how pretty Bloggiana’s daughter is and how lovely she looks with that white hairband in her hair. Bloggiana’s daughter reacts to this pronouncement in an endearingly bashful way, turning her foot round and looking earthwards. Her mother too blushes at the compliment. Simultaneously, a horse roars past the finishing post; betting tickets fly; commentators climax; and a small black insect troops the colour across the middle of Bloggiana’s daughter’s lovely white-hairbanded forehead. The international make-up artist’s smile crumples. It seems it’s the first time she has ever been presented with a real live nit.

No one can be quite sure when our household first became infested with nits but but to be sure, the little critters took to us with gusto. Now it is hard to remember a time when we were not all, at some point or other, itching. From time to time, Bloggiana and I hold a nit-purge. We buy bottles of stuff called Nitwitz or NickerzToNitz or Nitz’R4Twitz and douse ourselves with a substance that is no doubt the equivalent of placing a gastric band around our braincells; then go to bed, our hair plastered chemically to our headz and dream dreams of a nit-free future, where we can hold up our hairbands high in front of international make-up artists, read aloud from the bible of the politically correct and march into school feeling somewhat smug.

But nits will out, as they say, and it is not long before our dreams prove shallow. Fingers are seen to drift upwards once again, towards the hairbands, into the depths of all that luminous nit-friendly growth; and to begin moving back and forth, back and forth in a manner strangely reminiscent of scratching.

Dismissing chemicals, we invoke the help of other mothers. Tea-tree, trills one, it’s the only way! Vinegar, vouchsafes another, never fails! Conditioner, crows a third, they can’t stick to it! Combing, croons a fourth in a voice that reminds us of some baddie from the Temple of Doom, only combing! So we buy combs. Some of them look like combs, some of them like garden rakes. We buy one, five, ten of the things. We sit on the loo, taking it in turns. Bloggiana’s daughter holds a piece of tissue to catch the booty while we eke each little darling out of its snug, delicious, because-you’re-worth-it nest. None of the potions can have made much of an impact because there are hundreds of them, small but immaculately formed. And not only that but there are eggs by the thousand, clinging on for their dear proto-lives, the microscopic birthing glands of their parents clearly inspired to have been nurtured in such an environment.

We comb until we can comb no more. Until each of us has cramp in her very hair follicles. We pull out more nits than we thought possible. Then we collapse exhausted into bed. And await developments.

To be continued.