Head lice and naked men are always there

We have hit the school holidays.

Super FBI Detective Grit has tracked these 4 clues.

1. Tesco is stocking its Back to School range. All is formidably exciting, as ever. The colours of service: black, white. (Why bother? After the first wash it will all be grey.)

2. I have seen a woman walking our High Street with a pained expression. Small children were following, beating the crap out of each other. And howling.

Ladies, you must realise this is normal sibling behaviour. You can put up with it, threaten to smash Thomas the Tank's face in when you get home, send the kids to improving, educational and energetic activities (residential only), or say things like I will give you something to cry about in a minute.

I have tried them all, and none work. Except the last, obviously, because I am all motherhood superior of moral good, and totally gentle and kind and caring. (Though it is true that all Thomas' faces were attacked by giant plastic-eating moths with a bite like a hammer.)

3. I have seen children of all ages in the streets! Yes! Amazing but true!

Seeing people of all ages makes our locality look nearly like a real society, where one third of the population doesn't herd the small-people third into big buildings and then padlock the gates. (The gates are padlocked, I have been told, against the remaining suspicious 'others'. Possibly the third of the population who we do not want on the premises.)

4. In my secret stat counter (shhh) one of the most popular searches (apart from headlice and naked men) is how to survive the school holidays. So we must have arrived at that special time when the schools shut up shop and the teachers go travelling to Brazil or have a breakdown.

Then here. Have it. It has taken true learning from me, and is my gift to the nation. Hopefully it will allow the fizzog of pain to be eased, and Thomas to be spared.