Category: Lifestyle

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Project 366 Day 5/365 – Summer Sun

Summer Sun – we go to a club every week that we help run.  For my special needs child it really is his lifeline out of school.  With other children that he can relate, he doesn’t have to worry about what is said or done.  If another special needs child says something out of turn, it really is because they just don’t like each other, and nothing to do with their disabilities.  It is lovely to see these kids acting like kids, and the mums get to have a coffee and a chat with other mums that “get it”.  Friendship is fabulous.

It’s nice to see kids making the most of the sun, even it if it is just to laze about on the grass.

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Traditional Scottish Oakcakes

Oat cakes, normally known as oatcakes in Scotland, are a traditional Scottish food.  I’ve heard there is a version in England that is more like thick pancakes, and I’ll have to look for those to try in the future.   The Scottish oatcakes recipe is simple and quick.

Oatcakes are a great accompaniment to stovies, corned beef hash, or any slow cooked meal, stew or stroganoff.

A Scottish breakfast could also be found using the humble oatcake with butter, cheese, or jam added to the top.

Most Scottish food is relatively easy to make, and to smash the assumption that it is all deep fried mars bars up the Aberdeenshire neck of the woods, I suspect that adding more traditional Scottish recipes to my blog could be a good idea.  Sorry to disappoint the deep fried mars bar brigade, but I’ve yet to meet a Scot whose eaten one.

To make oatcakes, make sure you buy proper oatmeal, preferrably pinhead as more rough versions can be harder to work with.

Please don’t be tempted to try porridge oats, buy oatmeal – every time.

Oatcake Recipe

  • 8 – 10 large oatcakes.
  • Preparation, 15 minutes
  • Nutritional, oatmeal is a good source of dietary fibre.

Ingredients

  •  200g pinhead oatmeal
  • 35g butter
  • half teaspoon of baking powder
  • half teaspoon of salt
  • 6 – 8 tablespoons of water

Method

  • Heat the butter and water in a saucepan or the microwave.  I blast mine in the microwave for 10 seconds at a time until the butter is melted. Mix the oatmeal, baking powder and salt in a bowl.
  • Add the melted butter and water to the oatmeal mix in your bowl.  Mix together until it forms a stiff dough.  You may need to add a little extra water to make the dough form.  If you need more water, add half a teaspoon at a time,  and don’t be afraid to get your fingers in the bowl to make the dough work.

  • Dust a clean surface with some oatmeal to roll out the dough.
  • Use a cutter to cut oatcakes into circles, or whatever shape you have available.  If you don’t have a cutter, just cut them into triangle or square shapes.  I used a sandwich cutter for larger sized oatcakes.
  • Grease a heavy bottomed frying pan or griddle.  I have a cast iron pan that I use for things like this.  The oatcakes should be cooked on a low heat for approximately 5-6 minutes each side until they begin to go brown.
Being new to the foodie community, I’m making my oatcakes my first entry into best of british – Scottish Challenge
Rules:
 The full rules are posted on The Face of New World Appliances. However, here is a summary of what you have to do to enter:
  • Post your recipe on your blog with a link back to The Face of New World Appliances AND to the hosting post.  Visit the host post to find out how to enter fully.
  • The round-up of entries will be posted on or before the 20th July.

 

 

 

 

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My Top 5 iPhone Apps for Blogging. How to keep up blogging on the move.

There is only one thing that all bloggers like to do, and that is to write. How we write, how often, and how well is not always something that is planned. For spontaneous moments, our mobile pocket gadgetry and good iPhone apps are very handy indeed.

Having written about the top iPhone apps for cooking over on Yahoo, it’s easy for anyone to see that I am a huge iPhone fan, even though I only have the old style 3GS version. I haven’t felt the need to upgrade yet, although I suspect I might be tempted by the next version which will be due out in a few months.

When I do move over to a newer and better model, there are some fabulously good iPhone apps that I would be making sure I copied over to the new phone.

I love to write, and writing is becoming my passion. As a prolific blogger, the best iPhone apps are going to be ones that I can use day to day to record my life, and any anecdotes or fleeting inspirations which come my way.

WordPress

An all important app for me to organise my life on the go as a blogger, has to be the WordPress app. There are times when it has worked, and times when it hasn’t. As a rule, it is there to help me to write a quick blog post, or store one as a draft for writing up later on my laptop when I have time.

If I just want to upload a quick picture when I am out and about, it is just snap, click and it’s in my media library on my blog.

Statistics are also important to any blogger, no matter what bloggers say. We all like to have our work recognised, even if we pretend that we don’t. The WordPress app had a pretty nifty section where I can check how many people have read my blog, which words were used in search engines to find my blog, and what posts they read.

The app seems to allow us to add up to 8 WordPress blogs, and they can either be the free WordPress.com blogs, or the self hosted WordPress.org variety.

Photo

The photo app that comes with my iPhone is invaluable. If I want snaps to add to my blog posts, then the built in camera does a fabulous job to make sure I have a regular visual material to add to my writing, and ensures that the image is topical, recent and relevant.

Notes

The second of the built in apps that I couldn’t be without for blogging, is the simple notes feature. Quickly opening it up and adding a note means that I never forget anything that might pop into my head when I am taking the kids to school, or waiting for them to finish an activity.

Time that would previously have spent idly people watching, now turns into planning, plotting and organising.

PayPal

If I am doing any updates, or Internet shopping, then my PayPal account is needed. I use it to pay for my blog hosting, stock photos for projects that need them, and for any extras that I decide to buy. I also need it for any payments that I take in for advertising and sponsored posts.

I have found that is far easier, and much quicker for me to use the PayPal app to check my balance or pay blogging bills on the go.

E-Wallet

This is my last, but I’d also say the top of the top apps for iPhone for me on my mobile. It is where all my blogging usernames and passwords are. Inside the deceptively simple e-wallet, I can separate private, work, and blogging, into separate categories with their own passwords.

Inside each category, I can choose to assign and give any item a name. I can split into credit card, website, id, username, phone and address details, passwords and much more.

I can also customise the fields to say what I want them to say, and I never lose my passwords. They are updated on my iTunes account so they’ll be on whatever device I want them to be, and the app is no use to anyone else.

I feel a bit safer about the prospect of my personal information being secure, just in case I lose my phone.

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Robert Gordon University, Aberdeen. Best of British Show in aid of The ARCHIE Foundation – 25th May 2012

I’m happy to host this guest post from the fashion management students at my old Uni, The Robert Gordon University, who are raising money for The ARCHIE Foundation for children.

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Since it began in 2008 the annual charity fashion show at Robert Gordon University has raised tens of thousands of pounds for deserving charity foundations.

Now into its fifth year third-year fashion management students are hoping they can raise more money than ever before.

On the night of May 25th the Aberdeen Business School will be transformed on to accommodate 400 guests for what is hoped to be a marvelous and memorable evening of fashion, shopping and entertainment, with The ARCHIE Foundation being the sole beneficiary of the show.

This year’s show takes on the theme ‘Best of British’; rather fitting in the year of 2012 which sees both the Royal Jubilee and the London Olympic Games and plenty of patriotic celebrations along with them!

Catwalk themes including the British seaside, countryside, music, sport, people, designers, royals and the traditional tea party will showcase the very best of British style, and what’s more guests will be invited to enjoy a whole host of other entertainment on the night too.

Alongside the fashion catwalk there will be some fantastic on-stage performances and the opportunity to indulge in some of Britain’s finest foods and not to mention lashings of cocktails too!

Guests will have the chance to browse and buy within a unique shopping area dedicated to hosting a variety of local retailers; from fine wine to fashion there is something for everyone.  To add to the mix there will be a both a silent auction and a prize raffle on the night too.

With everything from cocktail mixology sessions to designer handbags, restaurant vouchers to fitness memberships, there are some fabulous prizes up for grabs and plenty of chances to win. With all proceeds going to The ARCHIE Foundation the students are determined to raise enough money to make a considerable contribution to the charity and its work.

As the official charity of the Royal Aberdeen Children’s Hospital, the Children’s Wards in Inverness and Elgin and Community based Child Health throughout Grampian, Highland, Orkney and Shetland, the ARCHIE Foundation is dedicated to making a difference to the lives of sick children through providing state of the art medical equipment, specialist staff, funding into research and of course lots of toys too!

The ARCHIE Foundation is so incredibly deserving of financial donations.  Its work really is invaluable to sick children and their families.

With the aim of surpassing last year’s total of £11,000 the third-year Fashion Management students have been up to all sorts in order to raise money in the lead up to the show. We’ve had our measuring scales and mixers out to host bake sales on campus, and we’ve put our creativity to the test too with kids’ crafts and face painting at the Bon Accord.

We’ll be proving our knowledge with a special Best Of British pub quiz, be doing supermarket bag packing and we’ve been out and about in the pubs and bars of Aberdeen promoting the show and collecting donations too all whilst planning what is sure to be the biggest night in Aberdeen’s fashion calendar.

The Best of British Fashion Show will be held on May 25th 2012 in Aberdeen Business School, Robert Gordon University, and Garthdee Road, Aberdeen.

Tickets for the show are priced at £15 each, or for VIP ticket priced at £25 guests will receive special goody bag, front row seats and access to the exclusive VIP room, and are available by contacting:

fashionshowrgu@gmail.com

We announce all of our exciting news and fundraising updates on Facebook and Twitter too:

Facebook

Twitter

We also have a Just Giving page where online donations to The ARCHIE Foundation can be made:

Donate to The ARCHIE Foundation

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We’re jinxed…. Just send us the bill….

You could be forgiven for thinking I’ve thrown in the towel and decided to be Miss Misery Guts this week.

Looking back on it, it’s not going to be all plain sailing to fix, but hey, we’re all alive, and I can afford to put food on the table for my kids.  So – why on earth have I been finding myself almost biting my nails and nervously chewing my hair with appliance breakdowns?

Answer me this, just who invented the full moon phase?   Whoever that was must have been a wizard of epic proportions to be able to smite us down with such a wave of an electric wand.

I’m not in the slightest bit paranoid for thinking that the lunar phase of the mood is responsible for the breaking down of electrical currents, and the shortening of the lives of our favoured and prized household machinery gadgets.

Starting slowly, the trouble brewed gently.  A fridge that doesn’t keep food cold is no use in a home where you need a week worth of school dinner ingredients on those hallowed cool shelves.  Buying fruit on Friday and having it go rotten by Monday really hits home about how we depend on our American Style Fridge Freezer.

After three weeks of looking for a side by side American style fridge I could afford, I admitted defeat and signed on the dotted line for an early delivery on Thursday this week of a regular American style fridge freezer.

The dishwasher chronicles have gone on for a while, so it was no stranger that it decided to give up the ghost and join the old fridge freezer in the graveyard for electrical appliances.

That would be enough for most people, wouldn’t it?

Not for us apparently.

With a rare blast of sunshine on Thursday, kidlets went out into the garden to play a little footie, as you do when you’re an adolescent boy wanting to show off your newly found testosterone injected strength.

Good neighbours are hard to find and we’ve got two.  Thankfully neighbour across the fence next door understands the problems with middler, even if we rarely ever see or speak to them.  Middler had decided to start bullying them, which ended in two broken windows in their newly (expensively) built extension,as he decided to use their window as target practice for the chuckies around our patio.

Profuse apologies and embarrassed conversations led to taking measurements to get the toughened glass window units replaced.  Thankfully we have contacts who have given us the units at cost, and we can also fit them for zero labour charge.

If we’d had to pay labour, we’d likely have been into the thousand bracket instead of the hundreds to fix.  Middler is now grounded for the rest of his natural born existence.

Friday morning came and went in a flurry of activity and under breath muttering as I blamed the man, completely unfairly, of switching off the boiler before he departed for money making activities.

Getting the kids ready for school with chattering teeth and cold showers really made the start to my day complete.  With massive foresight, I refused to go for a combi boiler when we installed our last one and insisted on the dual, so we still have the gas fire in the lounge and electric for hot water.

The engineer has been and he’s not sure if the fan has gone, or if it is just the transformer so another 3 day wait for a teeny transformer.  If that doesn’t work, there’s no point in getting the fan as it costs about half the price of a new boiler.  What’s worse is that the boiler is only about 7 years old, and I’m gutted at the cost implications, especially as the one I grew up with chugged along for over 20 years.

Tuesday came and I decided to vacuüm the lounge.  This proved to be an exercise that needed much wrestling with tube, hose and uncoupled couplings care of Dyson jigsaw puzzle hoovers.

Determined not to get to appliance 4, and disaster 5 of the week, a pair of sugar tongs managed to shift the contents of the last hoover user, a 12 year old whose top drawer is likely to have been vacuumed, as it is the hiding place he stuffs empty sweetie wrappers he has illicitly procured from the kitchen.

What more can possibly go wrong?

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Undercover Elder Care on Panorama – Abuse of our Elderly – Rant Corner

I’ve just finished watching the Panorama programme about Elder Care, where a woman tells her story of how her mother with Alzheimers was abused by the very people who should have cared for her.

Suspicious about bruises that had appeared on her mother’s body, she recorded video footage from a hidden camera which showed her mum being more or less thrown into her bed at 5.30 pm by two carers from the Philipines.  They talk in their native language and manhandle her poor arthritic body disgracefully.

Several carers come and go and don’t really speak to her.  The TV is switched on and off for the carers benefit and in the morning, she is bathed by the same carers who saw her last 13 hours earlier, slapping her hands away when she protested in pain.

One carer complained about the low wage at about £6.50, so what we have is a culture of angry people taking care of difficult patients that the carers really can’t be bothered with.

The breakfast carer ignores Maria, and she is speed force-fed by a carer who doesn’t speak to her.  The carer puts on the TV to watch it for herself, and switches it off again when she leaves.  Maria is left to stare at the ceiling for most of every day.  They treat Maria as no human should be treated.

Maria’s daughter said that she had lived in that environment for a year.

Although against company policy to have a male carer alone with a Client, a single male carer treats her roughly, twists her arm, hits her and swears at her.  There is no compassion, no care, and no help from the people she needed to help her.

He lifted her by her head and when she cried out, he slapped her in the face.  He hit her 6 times in while he gave her a wash in the morning.  Recruited from overseas to work as a nurse, he was trusted, and failed the woman he was paid to care for.  Maria, unable to shout for help, in permanent pain from her arthritis, and a victim of sustained and deliberate abuse, was a helpless victim and an easy target.

By the end of that programme, I found myself crying for the predicament Maria (and the hidden sufferers) find themselves in.

I’ve touched on abuse in homes before, when I blogged about the Castlebeck Affair, and I recognised that it is likely this type of thing goes on in care homes up and down the country, but Castlebeck had warning signs that people ignored.

This is from a home that had a good reputation.

Why did the home allow this to happen?

Ash Court responded that the abuse Maria suffered was an isolated incident.  Well, I’m not going to apologise for saying that an answer like that really doesn’t give me any confidence that our kids, elders and disabled are really being protected from abuse when the Companies are employing cheap labour who can hardly speak the language, let alone have proper training to care.

The CQC report doesn’t seem particularly helpful either, and this is where I struggle.  Those of us whose relatives need residential care need to know our people are being cared for.  It’s inexcusable to say that if they had found abuse they would have taken action.  The majority of hopefully isolated bullies carry out their abuse when nobody else is looking.  Where this gets worrying, is that it was 5 different carers in 2 days carrying out the abuse.

I do strongly believe that all carers involved in looking after any of our people should be paid a fair wage to attract good quality carers.  They should also be able to speak the language of the people they care for, to a good enough level to be able to communicate with the people they are looking after.  The last stipulation should be that they have a minimum specified amount of training on how to treat vulnerable people.

When I was much younger, I once walked past a care home and an elderly man was banging on the window and shouting help from a second floor room.  Instead of acting, I walked past as I saw a carer enter his room, thinking that he would be properly cared for by the staff.  I want to kick myself for that now, as the care home had a bad report a short while later.  I wouldn’t make the same mistake again.

I am glad that my grandparents were both cared for at home.   My mother drives me batty at times, but I would struggle to let her stay anywhere that I think she might not be looked after.  I also know that for every bad care home, there are probably dozens of fabulous ones, but we don’t know what is going to happen when we put them under someone else’s care, do we?

As a teen, I did some work in an old people’s home for my Duke of Edinburgh Award.  Yes, I hated most of it.  I was very young, and in a place that stank of wee and poo, and with old men and women ordering me around.  I wasn’t disrespectful, even when an old woman called me her servant, although I tried with all my might to avoid helping out in her room.

I did enjoy the common rooms and talking to the residents when they had lucid moments, and reliving some of their lives with them.  I regularly helped an almost bed ridden cancer patient get his illicit baccy supply, and I’d get him up into his chair and wheel him out for some fresh air while he puffed his lungs black.  It was a sad day when I turned up for my shift and he was gone.

For many vulnerable inmates and residents, there is nobody to care.   For goodness sake, even our prisoners get treated better than lots of our vulnerable citizens.

Controversial, yes, truthful, yes.  I am not ashamed of that.  There must be valid reasons for the human rights of our care home residents to be treated with respect, and have their time filled and occupied by people who actually know what a heart is.

The concerns in my Castlebeck Panorama blog post haven’t changed, and every story like this just puts the notch of anxiety just that little bit higher on the top list of things to worry about for special needs children through their lives.

People are so cruel, but others are so kind.  I don’t believe in the retribution from God things, or all things happen for a reason.

The only things I believe people have to fear from in this world are :

1 – Other People

2 – Other People

3 – Other People

4 – Natural Disasters & Unforeseen Circumstances

I don’t actually blame all the carers who find themselves in this vicious cycle as they’ve generally been failed too.  They are often put into situations they have no idea of how to act in, and often work unsupervised, untrained and very understaffed.

I do completely blame the stupid money grabbing greed of the corporate investment and capital finance world who insist on making care a business with huge profit margins to make.

If the corporate big wigs took less profit, carers could have more training, go through more rigorous recruitment schedules and see care as a “career” and not just as a temporary stop gap that they fully resent until something better comes along.

I also appreciate the wonderful carers who do exist out there, and for whom people who act like those in Ash Croft and Castlebeck give a bad name.  How must they feel to see what goes on in the no hope homes?

Yours disgustedly at seeing more evidence of senseless abuse.

Scottish Mum Blog

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A visit to John O’Groats should be OFF the Bucket List. It’s not worth the effort.

Hyped up over the inflated egotistical corporate self promotional drivel, my family and I were taken in, and began a journey related to the appreciation of the Northern Territories of Scotland.  At the very top of Scotland, we began with a journey to see the topmost camping sites in Scotland, and visit John O Groats (or Jon o Groats depending on where you come from).

John O Groats is the place that end to enders from Lands End start and finish. The distance from Lands End to John O Groats is approximately 874 miles and is technically the furthest distance points for our little UK island

Dunnet Head is the actual furthest point, but John O Groats is the place that has turned commercial.

Pretty leaflets and alluring descriptions pulled us to striking an item from our family bucket list.  Come to think of it, we may have to rethink the drivel in our bucket if this is what we are reduced to.

Should’ve stayed at home……or should we?

“Are we nearly there yet  mum?” every five minutes in a three hour hour journey with 100 miles of driving, drives us a little into brain mush.  “I need a pee” seemed to resonate with any one of the three of them needing to stop off at the entry of every little village we passed along the way.

“Muuummm” a voice calls in panic from the loo.  Racing into the gents and expecting goodness knows what, a little boy pipes up that there’s no loo roll.  Running off for some leaves at the side of the road isn’t the most enjoyable way to spend five minutes on a car stop.

Visiting any toilet as a female is an effort of epic proportions as there is always the problem of what to do if there isn’t any toilet roll !!!   When the boys were smaller, pants were known to be disposed of in a toilet bin when loo roll was in short supply.

“There’s nothing to see,” eldest says in disgust as we roll up to the car park with the aura of excitement waning.  We see the signs for John O’Groats.  Expecting gorgeous views and unspoiled beachy areas, we parked up in silence as the exact nature of the place became clear and the heavens decided to rain on our parade in buckets and spaces, with cats and dogs to spare.

Disappointment abounded.  I know the season hasn’t officially started yet, but come on, there were dozens of cars there in the short half hour that we stayed for, so they should have been a bit more prepared for people this close to opening season than they were.

Grudging the 60p it cost for three boys to take a leak, I pushed them through a tatty turnstyle with skewed sign on it. With the amount of 20 pees they must take, surely they could afford a decent sign and a clean of the toilet floors now and again.

Promising littlest who is museum daft a browse of the “last house in scotland,” I finally admitted defeat in the tattyness and sheer pointlessness of the visit.  The “last house” was shrouded in scaffolding, as was the tearoom thing, the hotel, and it seemed like almost everything else there.

Harbour John O'Groats

 

Most of the shop units were empty and looked deserted.  The deco pieces looked skanky and dirty.

From its workshop, Caithness Candles looked like it does a roaring trade in what looked like penis shaped candles.  As a chandler myself, I gave their showroom a miss.

The caravan site looked nothing like website pics and I was pleased that we left the van behind to come up for a look.  Staying there would have been soul destroying.

Caravan Site John O'Groats - View 1

Caravan Site John O'Groats - The Lone Van

 

The only two places worth a small visit seemed to be the gift shop and the ice-cream shop but be prepared for extortionate prices for an ice-cream cone.

Craft Shop

 

“Horrible,” eldest summed up and he was quite right.  The harbour is skanky and miserable.

It’s a pointless visit if you want to see nice scenery and I’d advise going to either Dunnet Head or Duncansby Head.  We didn’t have time for Duncansby Head, but I’ll tell you about Dunnet Head in another post as it would spoil it to have it added here.

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What to do about head lice and nits.

You know the feeling when your child comes home from school, or club, with a nits and lice letter.

Your heart sinks as you know that you need to give their heads a good going over to make sure they don’t have headlice. At the same time, you smugly know that someone, somewhere in their life has a good head of lice and you instantly start to scratch at your own scalp, even though you know there’s nothing there.

Okay, it’s not a very nice subject to talk about, but I see parents looking horrified and holding their hands up in shock and disbelief if a child’s classmate ends up with any sort of head lice. I’m not sure what kind of prejudice that holds, but head lice like any head, so don’t feel awful because your child has ended up with lice or nits, as they have simply been a nice new head for them to live on.

A head louse is usually a small greyish insect that clings to hair and lives on blood from their host. The biting of the scalp and moving through the head tends to make the scalp itchy. An itchy scalp might be what makes you notice that there is something wrong.

I remember sitting in front of a girl at school and seeing her hair move on its own, which freaked me out as a ten year old, so I think it’s important for us to let our kids know that head lice are common, and it doesn’t mean the other kids is dirty.

Head lice can lay eggs that settle very close to the scalp and are difficult to remove. They can hatch about a week later and the leave a gluey shell (nit) that site along the hair.

Last year, Boots gave us one of their Electronic Head Lice combs for use in children of 3 years plus. We’ve not had the chance to try it out, but with a friends two children getting head lice, we actually had a chance to see if it worked. It did, – pretty well, although she did still use the shampoo, just to make sure.

More about head lice

Schools are common places to pick up head lice, as are buses, shops and anywhere that there are crowds and children might touch heads. Lice can’t jump or fly, so when kids huddle up close, lice can walk along the hair and transfer to a friend’s head. Lice will live on clean or dirty hair, so it doesn’t mean children are dirty.

How do we know a child has head lice?

The itching from bites is a tell-tale sign, but by the time that happens, the lice might have been there for quite a while.

It’s worth checking children’s heads frequently. I used to look regularly when my kids came over for a cuddle when they were smaller. The lice will hide away, but the little eggs might be noticeable if there are any.

I suspect my child has head lice so what do I do?

I remember when I had head lice as a child and my mother had me sit with my head over newspaper to catch any lice and nits as they fell off my head while she combed my hair. I was thankful that she took the time and made the effort to find them, and shampoo my hair as some friends who were infected had their hair cut off to get rid of them.

  • Brush hair to take out tangles.
  • Use lice comb to find and shake out any lice and nits onto the sheets of paper.
  • Start at the top of the scalp and work out and down from roots to tip of the hair.
  • Check the comb for nits and lice at every pass and clean them off.

Getting rid of head lice – What next?

Check everyone in the family to make sure they haven’t already got head lice and nits.  Let the school and clubs your child attends know, so that other children can be checked. If you don’t, your child could easily be infected again.

Shampoos and lotions

Chemical shampooing is recommended if there are live lice. There are prescription and chemist strengths. Make sure you use enough shampoo as a child with thick hair will need more. The instructions on the bottles are very good, with step by step methods.

If you only use chemical treatments, you will have to let the hair dry naturally and repeat the process at weekly intervals for a while to make sure that no lice survive.

Wet combing

Using conditioner on wet hair allows the nits to slide off the hair more easily. Using a fine toothed comb for about 30 minutes every few days for a few weeks will remove lice and eggs until they are all gone.

Electronic lice comb

The electric lice comb says it destroys lice without chemicals.

The principle is that it uses a small electrical charge to kill all head lice that come into contact with the comb teeth. It has to be used on dry hair and gives out a buzzy noise that lets you know the unit is working.

The comb gives a moment of silence when it has found a louse and destroyed it, which is slightly disconcerting, but also reassuring to know one has gone.

Results

From talking to parents and people who have suffered head lice, they prefer a mixed approach to getting rid of any infestations.

The electronic lice comb was indeed helpful, but to get kids back to school quickly, using it in combination with a chemical shampoo would be how I would move forward if my kids get lice.