I love a little collective hysteria. I think it can be quite a bonding experience, and to tell the truth, I even get a bit of a kick out of the hearsay-taken-as-fact about the transport strike. Everyone has a little titbit of (mis)information that is taken as gospel and traded on the street for other bits of groundless gossip about when we will actually be able to catch a metro again.

The only “scare” that I don’t like is anything involving lice. I don’t think this is overly prudish of me. One of the children that I work with came home from a school camp recently with a note in hand, warning about the outbreak of headlice amongst the campers. I’m not squeamish about blood or any other goo, but on that announcement, I noticed myself backing away slowly.

Because headlice are a pain. Especially when you don’t have your own mother around to painstakingly comb out the clinging eggs. I can say this with absolute authority and clarity of memory, because the first time I came back home from Russia I was accompanied by a stowaway headfull of lice.

I had been staying just outside a town called Yaroslavl, in a barrak (a sort of a storage unit on the outskirts of town, mainly used for converting into garages to store and tinker with old cars) that had been converted into a squat. There were two double beds, and up to thirteen people sleeping there of a night. The long-term residents were mainly boys; their female companions lived with their parents and visited during the day to run errands like bringing jam to mix with tea, and washing the boys’ clothes (!) After four days making street busking fire-shows and visiting the golden sites of Yaroslavl, I left, never to return. Unfortunately a little slice of Yaroslavl was to remain with me…

Back home again, it took a determined effort on the part of both my mum and I to expel the headlice. A colleague of my mother’s was also going through the same lice problem at the time, and they found themselves chatting about it.

“Oh really”, my mum said, “and how old is your daughter?”

“Six”, was the reply.

I think mum rapidly changed the topic rather than reveal that I was twenty-two…

It makes my head itch just thinking about it.