Occasional Scribbles

So last night, The Other, who was a little worse for wear having slightly overdone his prescription medication, which he does from time to time afterall, illness is boring and you need a bit of light relief on occasions, though we must not tell anyone or they might take said medicines away; was behaving badly!

At 2am this morning, much to my annoyance, he appeared at my bedside in rather a state.  He’d been up in the attic looking for, of all things, a blue lampshade which I imagine I threw out ages ago and don’t really know what he is talking about anyway or why he should feel the need to find the damn thing in the middle of the night which has still not been explained to me.  In true Blue Peter fashion, a nest I found earlier.

I go balistic!  Afterall some of us have to rise at a reasonable time in the morning and I have not slept well lately anyway. I see him standing over my half alseep form, eyes glinting with the effects of some rather speedy drugs.  He is trying to show me that he has been stung by a bee whilst in the attic and is in a fair state.  After shouting my head off, I go back to sleep.  I have neither time nor patience for this sort of stupid adventure at this time of night and there is absolutely no sign of my sense of humour.

This morning, he brings me a cup of tea, all wide eyed and full of careful cheerfulness, testing the water to see if I am still annoyed about the nights antics.  I ask about the bee sting and he tells me we have a nest in our attic.  Being interested in all things natural and to do with animals and insects, my initial crossness is tempered by curiosity.  We have never had a bees nest in the house.  I get up and we approach the attic hatch with caution, bearing in mind the sting in the night.  The Other fiddles around with a torch though there is a perfectly good light up there.  I climb carefully up the ladder and peep my head into the gloom.  Directing me to look at the far end gable of the house, I see a wonderfully formed papery round ball on the inside of an airbrick.  I see the bees flying around the bare light bulb in silhouette and one escapes down the hatch.  Horror of horrors, it is not a bee, it is a wasp.  “It’s a wasp you idiot, not a bees nest.”  I yell at him.  I hurry back down the ladder and emplore The Other to pull the hatch down quickly.  The Other is usually brave, but the mixture of the speedy drugs, the sting from the night before and no sleep makes him unusually scared.  In fact I’ve never seen him like this and he has dealt with a number of nests while working on other people’s houses.  (He is a musician, but that doesn’t pay enough and before he became ill, he used his other talent to earn money restoring old buildings).  He backs off, worriedly.  I cajole him a bit and point out that there are no more wasps coming down the hatch and finally he manages to shut it equipped with sturdy gloves.  Phew!

“So what did you do up here last night then to get yourself stung?” I ask suspiciously.

“Well I saw the nest and wanted to see what it felt like, so I got a stick and poked it.”

“You B*****y idiot”, I scold.  “You do realise that the wasps could have got furious and chased you and stung you all over, and we could have had them attacking all of us.”  I shudder at this thought.  Memories of being stung as a teenager spring into my mind.  I am allergic to wasp stings.  I have never forgotten being stung.

The time I got stung..I walked into my Dad’s study, years ago when I was about 15.  I rested my hand over the back of his desk chair as I was chatting to a Belgian girl, a family friend, who was staying with us.  I felt a piercing pain on the inside of my finger and saw a large wasp attached, stinging me endlessly.  I was so scared I screamed at the girl to get it off me.  Seeing my panic, she panicked and refused to help.  After what seemed an eternity, I flicked the damn thing off. And then began one of the most humiliating times of my life.  My parents had some Austrian friends staying as well as the Belgian girl and everyone was busy getting lunch set up outside.  There were lots of people around what with the Belgian, the Austrian family and our own family so lunch was a bit of a headache for my Mum who was pretty distracted and not very simpathetic when I ran into the kitchen, blubbing my head off after the sting.  She delegated my father to get the sting, which was still attached to my finger and was still pumping venon in it seemed, to get it out, which he did very carefully indeed.  Crisis over, we all sat down to lunch, me still feeling very upset and shocked.  

And then it happened.  I started to feel itchy all over and I could feel my eyes litereally swelling and bulging in their sockets.  I thought they were were going to pop out.  Seeing my Mum still busy helping everyone to lunch I quietly went up to her and told her that I wasn’t feeling well and was itchy.  Being still rather distracted and noting that it was a very hot sunny day, she told me to go and have a cold bath which I did.  I got in the cool water and tried to calm myself down but the water seemed to speed up some sort of adverse reaction and when I got out of the bath, my entire body was covered in giant round blotches, like wheels.  By this time I was seriously alarmed.  In nothing but a bath towel I tore downstairs, grabbed my mother to follow me into the sitting room and away from the other people and showed her my body.

She finally realised that this was no ordinary reaction to a wasp sting and was clearly very worried indeed.  She got my father to look, who also became worried and he phoned our family doctor. He advised taking antihystermine which fortunately we had in the cupboard and I sat very still in one of the chairs trying to calm myself down.  This is where I was humiliated beyond belief.  My mother felt that I should take my towel off so as not to further irritate the blotches.  So there I was, sat in the chair without a skimp of clothing, just about managing to hide my lower modesty with the towel.  The foreigners, wondering what was going on, suddenly appeared and to my utter embarassment started to examine my body, peering closely at my bosoms.  Everyone had a look, the mother, father, daughter, my brother, the Belgian, my parents and finally my sister came in.  In one swift glance she took in the situation, she saw my mortified face and immediately took charge.  She went and got a light Tea towel and draped it over my chest, admonishing my mother that I hardly wanted to sit there with everyone peering at me with no clothes on.  I was so grateful to her and smiled weakly at her in thanks as she winked at me kindly.

I always wondered later on, why on earth my mother let all those people look at me like that. It was quite the most awful thing for a fifteen year old girl.  Almost as shocking as the sting.  In fact it is that part that I remember most vividly.  I think she was desperately worried that I might go into some sort of shock and it blinded her to everything else.   She was possibly feeling just a bit bad at having been rather off hand, in the midst of her lunch do, when I first complained .  Now, lunch abandoned, she fussed worriedly around me and luckily the antihystermine worked and before too long, I was back to normal.  But wasps are not something I am happy around and I have been very careful indeed ever since that day, to avoid at all costs another sting.

The Other, now a bit calmer and less speedy with the drugs is beginning to behave more normally.  We discuss what to do and he feels, bearing in mind my allergy, that we should get rid of the nest.  I am a bit reluctant.  Inspite of my worry about being stung, I don’t bear any malice to wasps and am intrigued by the fantastic nest they have built and don’t like to disturb them.  They are, afterall, right in the attic and we wouldn’t have known they were there, if The Other hadn’t been on nightime rummage up there.  Now that he is thinking a bit more clearly he feels he can deal with the nest and make the wasps go away as he has done many times before.  I am a bit anxious that he will mess it up and fearful that we could have the wasps swarming and out to attack us so I persuade him to leave it be for the time being.  I’m still not convinced that the speedy drugs have fully gone from his system and we really don’t want him poking around with a stick again!  I think it might be better to find a wasp man in the yellow pages.

Update later on!