Why I hate wasps...

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I went to a barbecue at my parents place on Anglesey at the weekend. I took some of my home-made cider and whilst I was eating a wasp flew into my glass and proceeded to drink himself to death. Now it is hard to have much sympathy for wasps, they are, at the best of times and as far as I can see, of little useful purpose - unlike honey bees. They sting a lot, are easy to annoy, have a very loud buzz, and generally cause havoc around picnic tables on warm, sunny days. You can always tell when a wasp is stalking some poor picnic-er’s food as they usually jump wildly around, flap their hands, and frantically move plates and glasses from one futile spot to another.

Now I was always told that if you leave wasps alone that they will leave you alone. How untrue. As a child I seemed constantly stung by wasps, and bees, and nettles, and bitten by ants. Calamine lotion was a permanent fixture in the bathroom cabinet in our house and I was permanently pink, aromatic and sticky. Getting stung was a big part of my childhood, a badge of honour amongst my friends who would walk barefoot , barelegged, and without shirts through nettles as a dare – rather like Indian fire walkers except without the fire. Of course they ended up badly stung and sore… but that was all part of the passage.

I remained perpetually stung until I went off to senior school and started wearing long trousers and long sleeved shirts. There was little chance of getting stung by a wasp in a school where you weren’t allowed to take off your tie, remove your jacket, or even roll up your shirt sleeves under your jacket, until the temperature was up to boiling point, and even then only with individual permission of your house master. It almost made you look forward to the cold showers that were insisted upon after the six mile Morton Village run.

I remember the last time that I was stung by a Wasp. I was sitting in ‘Chunky’ Gould’s English Lit lesson, double period, jackets on, ties on, and hot, very, very hot. We were discussing the role of fate and coincidence in Tess of the D’Urbervilles. I was bored and far too warm.

The class swot, Thomas Jenkins, was burbling on about the juxtaposition of day and night and how Hardy often used these two extremes to signal the approach of good or evil, when suddenly I felt an excruciatingly sharp pain in my ankle. I leapt to my feet shouting a string of swear words and slapping at the cuff of my trouser like a manic Morris dancer. I jumped around so much that I knocked over my desk and the boy in front of me (Trodd I think) jumped to his feet to avoid being hit by it, knocking over his desk and chair as he did so. Within seconds the class was in uproar, boys laughing and shouting at each other and ‘Chunky’ looking at me all red in the face and furious.

With a look of total contempt he marched over to me, grabbed me by the collar and frog-marched me out of the classroom to the headmaster's office. I tried to explain about the wasp, the sting, the pain - but ‘Stosh’ was having none of it. Apparently being stung by a wasp was not a good enough reason for using a string of words that included anatomical, procreational, biological, metaphysical, and all highly descriptivical oaths.

‘Stosh’ delivered a stiff telling off and gave me a string of double detentions to be taken on both Wednesday afternoons after class and on Saturday mornings for the following four weeks.

Harsh, particularly as I was rather hoping for a suspension, but no such luck.

Anyway, back to the wasp in my glass of cider.

I left it to drown in a pleasantly hazed drunken stupor. But before he died I took this photograph; placing my camera phone on top of the glass and pressing the ‘snap’ button. Good picture isn’t it? (Click it and see it huge.) The wasp is surprisingly sharp, and my Mum’s blue plastic, woven, outdoor tablecloth looks startling, such a contrast to the gold of the cider.

I suppose I could have fished it out and set it free. Watched it as it flew a not very straight line into the sunset. But I didn't, I let it die - and I don't feel any remorse at all. I hate wasps and this is why...

During my four weeks of detention I was sacked from my Saturday morning job at the Ironmongers for not turning up, lost my place on the first fifteen for not attending practice on Wednesday evenings, and my girlfriend (blonde hair, blue eyes) dumped me. (I'm not sure if that was directly connected to the wasp and the multiple detentions, but it may have been).

Reason enough? I think so.

Now, I'm not one to bear grudges, particularly ones about things long gone, but... Rot in hell wasp.