As you can see from the picture on the right, Hannah and Lauren have lovely long blonde hair. Part of my routine every morning is to comb this and tie it back into a pony-tail. (Well, two pony-tails - one each. But I digress.) The purpose of doing so is supposedly to keep their hair clean throughout the rigours of the school day. And yet despite this, the combing process is invariably a tearful one due to the presence of foreign matter in their hair. After years of painstaking analysis I am yet to positively identify the nature of this foreign matter, although I have reduced the list of candidates to the following shortlist: congealed treacle; tree sap; an unidentified school dining hall substance; epoxy resin.
Every morning, then, we go through the same basic conversation:
H/L: Ow Daddy! Ow! Ow! It’s hurting!
Me: Keep still! I’ll be finished soon! [combs faster]
H/L: OW-WUH! [starts crying]
Me: Nearly done. How do you get all this sticky stuff in your hair anyway?
H/L: [tearful] I don’t know, Daddy!
L/H: [i.e. sister of the combee] I didn’t do it…
Me: Well girls, if you want to have such lovely hair you’ve got to keep it away from sticky things, OK?
H/L: [through sniffs] OK, Daddy.
Me: Because if you’ve got lovely hair we need to comb it to keep it clean. If you don’t want to have your hair combed, you’d need to have short hair like me.
H/L: OK, Daddy, I promise.
Me: Good girl. And then there’ll be no tears tomorrow.
[Repeat on daily basis]