Country life
That itchy feeling
Leanda de Lisle
Just as the biblical Egyptians had to cope with plagues of locusts and boils, so modern families in Old Rectories have to deal with lice. You may have thought that such things belong to the era of Charles Dickens and the Victorian slum, but you'd be wrong. This is the era of the super nit, and every- one seems to get them. Well everyone who is anyone. A glamorous blonde at the Ritz summer party assured me they are a 'must have' in the world of glossy magazines.
My new acquaintance is Wendy Holden, a former editor at Tatler and the author of a glittery novel called Simply Divine, which is to be published in January in what promises to be a 'blaze of publicity'. This will certain- ly include a fashionable party, but I doubt anyone will report much gossip about lice. They remain a conversation for the cognoscenti, since outsiders might not understand nit chic. I have to say I didn't understand. Why are lice smart, I asked? Because, Wendy explained, you get them at smart boarding-schools, where children hud- dle together in dormitories, and not at the local comprehensive, where children sleep at home in more civilised circumstances.
All I can say is I wish I'd known this when one of my children came back from school with nits. At the time it didn't feel smart at all. Particularly when my own hair began to tickle. 'It's paranoia,' I assumed, but washed my hair with the children's organic anti-lice shampoo just to be sure. The itching subsided for a day or two and then came back. 'This really must be para- noia,' I decided, but asked Peter to inspect my scalp just to be extra sure. After picking though it like an orang-utan, he declared me quite clean, and thereafter I chose to ignore any unwelcome sensations, which were certainly a consequence of too much sand, sea or the need for a hair cut.
Unfortunately, as the days passed I felt increasingly like a schizophrenic trying to block out unwelcome voices. 'It's not an itch. Yes it is. Well, it's a phantom itch,' I reasoned with myself, and scratched behind my ear. Oh, the shame! Oh, the exquisite pleasure! Oh, the double shame! Everyone says that lice like clean hair, but I think that's just a part of the drive to make the affliction as socially acceptable as the afflicted. When one of the boys got nits at their perfectly unsmart day school a few years ago, we parents were told that fre- quent combing helps keep lice at bay (it breaks their legs, you see), and I guiltily wondered if I combed my hair as much as I should.
I don't do 100 brushes a day like nice young ladies were once expected to, but I did start combing ferociously. If there were any nits in my hair they could expect a good knee-capping and a lingering end. One morning, I looked down at my comb and saw two insects the size of my little fin- ger nail dancing on a couple of long blonde hairs. My screams will haunt this house for 100 years. Forget about organic shampoo. I blasted my head with every insect killer short of sheep-dip. I've heard they are developing an immunity to treatment, and if it had come to it I would have willingly shaved myself like a Turkish eunuch. As it was, by the time I'd finished every hair on my head stood out like hedgehog spines.
Shaken by my experience, I confided in my friends and colleagues. One of the latter told me that her children had given nits to her mother, who didn't know anything was wrong until she went to have her hair done at Nicky Clarke's where she was informed, 'Madam, you have nits.' A single girlfriend shrieked with disgust and then laughed at me. I am happy to say that when I spoke to her last she had nits. Furthermore, if she had caught them here she would have had to have had them for about two months. A thought which will recur to her for a long time to come. 'Conclude any treatment with plenty of conditioner and a nit comb,' I told my lousy girlfriend. 'It's the only way to get the dead eggs unglued from the hair shaft.' That left her feeling close to nature. Something else that's very fashionable in media circles, or so I'm told.
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