Now, wasps have a habit of disappearing just when you don’t want them, meaning that an unexpected reapparence is always possible. This did indeed happen, as I looked down, and found it had made itself comfortable on my shirt. “FUUUUUUUUOOOOOO” I screamed, in a particularly camp way. All eyes turned to me, as I once again, danced around like an idiot.

The wasp, once again, possibly laughing to itself, disappeared. I mentioned that it’ll disappear, and reappear when we last expact it.

An hour or so passed. We were chatting amongst ourselves, when IW suddenly mentioned the wasp. He was spot on. It had lulled us into a false sense of security, thinking we’d forgotten about it. It was spotted seconds later, buzzing around one of the lights in the office. It was newspaper time. Eventually, it landed on a desk, and with a presicion blow with the Hartlepool Mail, our waspy intruder was no more. The body was disposed of, and was never thought of again.

Earlier this morning, another wasp flew in. This one was huge. Unfortunately, the Hartlepool Mail was not available, as I’m the one who normally brings it in, but I’d not been shopping. Thankfully, a replacement Daily Express was found, and the attack began on our second winged war-monger in two days. Many attempts to crush it with the afore-mentioned publication only resulted in wasted efforts, and a possibly angrier insect.

Thankfully, the second incident one again resulted in death before it had a chance to release its pheromone-based “scream”. With a well-timed and fatal blow, Dick Brown, webmaster of soon-to-be-a-domain-placeholder dick-brown.com, struck our striped stinger with such a well-timed blow, that he managed to crush it underneath a light fitting and its support.

Obviously, two wasp attacks in two days mean that there’s a large chance of the same thing happening in the very near future, meaning that tonight, I’m going to have to spend the whole night in Employment Palace with every window shut…. Grrr.

So… why I dislike wasps. I have memories of my mother absolutely hating anything that was stripy, and had wings. It may have been something to do with that. I also had a repressed-memory which exploded earlier tonight. I was in my primary school. I had returned from having my dinner at home, which was the norm for me. I was such a fussy eater that school dinners were totally out of the question. Anyway. I remember heading over to my friends who were playing over on the field. One of the fads at the time (if you can call it a fad, I must have been 7?) was to pretend to insert an insect down each others’ necks for the whole experience of watching the victim child squirm, much to the amusement of his/her watching “chums”.

In this particular instance, I’d been told I’d received a wasp down the back of my neck. Of course, used to the old joke by now, not believing it, I laugh it off, only to feel an odd sensation on my back, like an insect about to inject me with venom. It happens.

If you are lucky (or in my case, protected) enough as a 7-year-old to experience no more than a few cuts and grazes , your first insect sting is a wake-up call of what pain actually can be. Right in the middle of my back, I had a white-hot pain that I simply couldn’t get rid of. I was crying my eyes out. I remember running over to the dinner ladies, one of them consisted of the lady who lived (and still does live) two doors away. I seem to remember getting the afternoon off, and we went strawberry picking at a place called Sessay. This used to be an annual day out for our family, and I have no idea why it coincided with a school day, and how my parents managed to get me the afternoon off. It’d never happen these days!