A handy travel hack that needs to be used carefully or people might think you're a bit strange – Susan Morrison

Here is a handy little travel hack, as my young friends say.

Wearing pants on your head has a number of uses, including, in this case, showing support for a Big Brother contestant called Anna (Picture: Toby Melville/PA)

You are in a hotel and you want to start the day with a nice shower, but you don’t want to wash your hair.

It’s on the longish side now, and it's a faff standing about with the dryer for yonks, when you could be in the car speeding home to your bosom of your family, whom you assume to be unaccountably fond of you.

Mind you, when I returned victorious from Leeds, I discovered they had barely noticed I was gone.

My husband remarked that he thought he probably just had very waxy ears for the last two days. The house, he said, was very quiet. He thought he had gone deaf.

Back to you, trapped in a hotel room, trying to shower without getting your hair wet. Shock, horror, there appears to be no complementary shower cap.

This is surprising. This hotel room was not cheap, on account of there being a rail strike, the English playing something called cricket nearby, and the hen and stag-do market being booming. This lack you will obviously highlight in a Tripadvisor review of an otherwise happy stay.

How to keep that hair out of the water's way? Easy-peasy. Like most women, I pack more knickers than is reasonable for a one-night stay in a mid-range priced hotel. Pop a clean pair on your head, with the big bit for your bum at the back and pile all your hair in there.

I am fortunate in preferring the larger, roomier pant myself, and also having a larger, roomier bahookie, thus ensuring that my undergarments are large enough to go around my head several times. Could be a problem. They could just fall down, but they don’t.

Take a pencil or a toothbrush, and I will admit to preferring a toothbrush for reasons that will become obvious, and thread it through the leg bits. Wind it around several times, push the end of the toothbrush through your hair and voila, hair safely pulled back and free from the danger of accidental soaking.

Leap from your shower, refreshed and ready for the road. Brush your teeth, and in doing so, you will take the toothbrush from the pant/hair arrangement, thus ensuring that you will not spend the day with your knickers on your head, although to be fair, I have done that.

Simple and effective.

Dress, and toddle down the stairs to reception, avoiding the lift. Get those steps up before a long drive home.

The receptionist was a lovely young lady who seemed startled to see a guest moving about so early on a Saturday morning. You rarely see the hens and stags at 7.45 in the morning. Well, not unless they are coming in from their frivolities at any rate.

She asked me if everything was alright. I said it was, but had a long drive back to Edinburgh. She still had a baffled expression on her face.

Bounced into car, sorted out seatbelt, glanced in rear view mirror.

Somewhere in Leeds, there is probably a lovely young woman who tells her friends of the strange Scottish lady who turned up at her reception desk to drive home to Edinburgh with a pair of knickers around her neck.