WARNING: you’re about to enter the teeming, itchy, drool-soaked world of head lice.
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Yeah. Nits drool. It’s their saliva that makes you itch.
And if bug slobber isn’t enough, think of the infected tots who scream blue murder as their parents paint their heads with medicinal gunk.
Happily, Newcastle is home not only to nits – which, for the record, don’t have a ‘season’ but arrive in waves – but a kids’ hair salon committed to fighting them.
Opened in November in Charlestown’s Hilltop Plaza, Ziggetty Snipits has a dedicated Nitpro de-lice-ing salon where poppets with pets in their hair can seek specialist treatment. And they get de-liced in style.
In years gone by, having nits meant being teased at school (possibly being poked at with a long stick). Now, kids get to watch DVDs and chill out on plush chairs while hairdressers armed with fine-toothed combs fight the good fight.
Owner Karen Way, a mother of two and grandma of five, is a nit-picker.
‘‘The idea came to me when I used to work in a salon where parents came in all the time with their kids, and you’d see eggs in their kids’ hair and have to call them over and discreetly tell them to leave,’’ she said.
Apparently, health rules stipulate that regular salons can’t touch lice-infested tresses.
Karen says most products on the market aren’t tough enough to fight lice, which can return a week after treatment if a single egg is left intact. She wouldn’t divulge her remedy: ‘‘It’s a bit like KFC’s 11secret herbs and spices’’.
The website wikiHow recommends trying alcohol or dogs’ flea shampoo, and we’ve heard of people using mayonnaise.
Which remedies have you, or your parents, tried for head lice?
Surfboat sabotage
PETER Hope, of Cessnock, remembers the 1960 Australian surf titles, when the sea gods – possibly Neptune and Poseidon – battered Merewether Beach.
In yesterday’s Topics, Col Richards revealed that he and his Nobbys teammates sabotaged their surfboat in a bid to stay out of the boiling sea.
Peter, a ‘‘newly arrived Pom’’, was there as a spectator. He’s kept a Sun Herald report that tells how:
– ‘‘The Merewether boat was smashed to pieces on rocks before the carnival began.’’
– ‘‘Two Wanda crew members were carried to the casualty room on stretchers.’’
– ‘‘The Redhead crew had a lucky escape when their boat nosedived 25feet into the sandbank.’’
Peter’s never forgotten the frantic scenes of that day.
‘‘I remember Bill Clymer, the sweep of the Manly ‘A’ crew, frantically gripping his sweep oar, which had swivelled around so that he was suspended mid-air behind the boat,’’ he recalls.
Nosh on Good Friday
YOU might have tomorrow off, but we don’t.
And now that you’re brimming with sympathy and guilt, here’s a dramatisation of what happens to us every Good Friday.
Topics: ‘‘I’m going to get coffee, anyone want one?’’
Colleagues: ‘‘Nowhere’s open.’’
Topics: ‘‘Oh. Well that’s OK. But I need to eat.’’
Colleagues: ‘‘You can only get Macca’s or Subway.’’
Topics: ‘‘In that case, I’m off to drown my sorrows. Bottle shop, here I come!’’
Colleagues: ‘‘No dice. Bottle-oh’s shut.’’
Maybe you can help us break the vicious cycle. Where’s open in Newcastle and the Hunter on Good Friday? We’d like a place to get coffee, another to have a sit-down meal and somewhere we can get a beer. Email us, and we’ll share a few on Friday.