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!

OMG!  Mum is driving me nuts (see post below).  Just because the Skwarking Feathers that think they own the garden, got a bit of a fright today, she’s been jumping about like a cat on hot coals.  Every time she does this, I wrongly think she is taking me out for a walk.  I can’t tell you how many times I’ve been disappointed today.

So I take my large cosy bed ouside; this is no easy thing to do.  I get my teeth into the edge of it and drag it along the floor to the back door.  Somtimes the door is shut and I have to go through the catflap, stick my head back through and pull a three foot wide bed through a half foot wide cat flap.  Actually, I tell a lie. I have never managed to do this, it always get stuck and instead I have to find mum and wine until she realises she needs to open the door.  I’ve become pretty good at getting my bed out into the garden.  Oh it’s lovely you know.  I pull it around a bit until I find just the right place, in a bit of sun but with a bit of shade which I find under Mum’s other pup’s trampolene.  Sometimes, it is not such a good place as mum’s other pup jumps up and down on it and very nearly bashes my head.  Occasionally I decide to join in the game and so I duck down and bite just at the right moment when I sense a bottom is approaching.  It’s really quite fun.

So getting back to today.  I’m sitting in my carefully laid out bed in the sunshine.  I’m listening to the wind rustle through the leaves, watching the birds high up in the sky, half dozing I am, not thinking about an awful lot since I mainly think about walks and food and it’s not the right time for either.  My breakfast bowl lies nearby as I always carry it outside too and today, I really couldn’t be bothered to get up when I saw that cheeky Blackbird pinch my biscuits for the umpteenth time.  Truthfuly, I don’t awfully like the biscuits, that’s why they get left in my bowl, but that’s not the point. The other day, I got my own back on this pesky bird; I chased him and just nipped a few tail feathers before he flew off.  Now he flies in a wonky line.  Serves him right. 

So I’m not thinking anything in particular, when all of sudden, my peaceful serene morning in the sun is disturbed by the most awful racket coming from the Feathers again.  Mum rushes out and I can see from her face that she thinks I have chased them again.  That accusing look and open mouth, ready to berate me for having a bit of harmless fun.  But today, it is nothing to do with me, absolutely nothing.  The feathers, who are really, really stupid, got scared by a fox yesterday.  I tried to tell her as I was wining and yelping at the gate, that if she let me loose, I’d sort out the fox but she wouldn’t let me out of the garden for some silly reason or another like, perhaps, I might run off into the road, or in front of the tractors or something.  Really!  The feathers are making such a song and dance about it, anyone would think the fox actually caught one of them, but he didn’t.  He probably just wants to join in with the game I play with them.  I mean, there is nothing so funny as chasing a top feather around the garden.  You should see how they run.  They go off all over the place with no thought to where.  They get themselves trapped in the green house, or up against the fence when if I wanted to (or Mum didn’t intervene), I could easily get them. Personally I think they like this game. I know we haven’t exsactly discussed the rules between us and occasionally I go a bit far by stalking them surreptitiously before leaping out in front of them and sending them scattering, but that’s part of the fun.  Now if the fox and I worked together…um, that could be really fun. 

In the interests of a peaceful home life and my bottom, I have though, almost given up this game.  The penalties are too high if I get caught which is why I have found mum so annoying today.  Hasn’t she realised I have put away my pupish games.  I am afterall nearly grown up and it does now seem to me, to be rather undignified behaviour for one so lovely and graceful as me.  All the same, Feathers, don’t push it.

I am in a state of nervous jumpiness.  Not because I am still worried about my Teen, (see post below) who is starving in New Zealand, no.  Though no mother ever escapes worrying about their children in one or way or another, so that is a perpetual niggle that has made it’s nest comfortably in the back of my mind as opposed to the nervous jumpy one at the fore.

The nervous jumpy one is as a result of the constant squawking from the loud mouth Cockrel.  It started yesterday morning when I heard a cacophony of noise outside and leapt up to see what the problem was.  When I got outside, there was no one in sight, chickens that is.  They had all scattered in different directions and I assume the nasty Mr Fox has been back for a visit.

Unable to find the chickens I leave it for a while.  I can hear the loud mouth far off in the distance possibly  coming from the direction of the churchyard which lies behind our garden.  As all the weeds have grown back I can no longer see into it.  A little while later, I peer out of the window and spy two lads hiding under the Yew hedge.  I know they are safe.  I wonder where Flo is as she is rather pathetic and my fears grow as I see Speckle, her adopted mum running frantically along the path under the window looking for her, (they do lokk funny when they run)!.  I really hope the fox hasn’t got Flo

Flo with new babies

 as she has been so hard to look after, what with being abandoned and brought up by the confused Daddies who the fox eat last time he visited.  In the back garden, I see one black hen with the three babies but I can’t see the other black hen who is always with her.  I decide that she must have been eaten this time as she is nowhere to be found. 

I go inside to break the news to The Other who is disappointed too.  “There’s only one thing to do you know”, he says.  “What’s that then”?  I ask.  “Well, we need to put a damn great sign round ‘loud mouth’s neck, saying, ‘I am a loudmouth, please eat me’”.  I have to laugh at this.  It is quite true that the fox always gets the hens.  The Cockrels whom we really don’t need, always run off and leave the hens.  Very naughty as they are supposed to look after them.  But then, imagining myself in their place, I think I would run too.

So at bed time, I look in the chicken shed.  It has been pouring with rain all afternoon and inside I find a sorry looking group, all wet and miserable and subdued.  I’m about to give them a sypathetic talk about the loss of black Henny when I spy her snuggled between two of the lads up on the perch.  Oh what relief!  She must have run away somewhere and returned later, unnoticed.

This morning, however, all the chickens are very nervous and this is what has made me nervous-jumpy.  I let them out fairly late as it is Sunday and they are entitled to a lie in as well, (which in fact they hate, but I like).  They come out gingerely and I warn them not to stray too far out of the garden.  Don’t they know that Mr Fox waits in the same place?  Duh!  They immediately take off to the back of the garden, far away from Mr Fox which is a good sign.  But - all morning, loudmouth has been shouting his head off.  Oh I could ring that neck of his.  I realise he is only doing his job, that it is his place to warn the others if anything untoward occurs, he is afterall top cock, having taken his natrual place in the pecking order, what with the other three being eaten.  I find myself leaping up every time he shouts.  I look out of the window thinking that Skinny is terrorising them as she quite often does, but when I see her, she is lying in her bed which she has taken outside into the sunshine as she does each morning.  She looks at me all innocently for she knows I am about to accuse her but this time she is not to blame.  It is clearly a case of the willies.  Loudmouth, having failed to protect his brood, is really overdoing it this morning.  I hear you loud and clear, you numbskull, pea brain.  Shut up, before I have a nervous breakdown!