A horrific thing happened this week and I have to get it off my chest so that I need never speak of it again: a few nights ago, a wasp went into my earhole and stung me. In the earhole. A wasp!
I have feared wasps for almost four decades. The first five or so years of my life were fear-free, but then, at a still-tender age, I was stung on a buttock whilst squatting down in the rockery to retrieve my Flower Fairies Enchanted Fragrance Mushroom - ironically because I didn’t want the wasps landing in the little open-lidded pots of perfume balm - and after that, I was understandably very wary of them.
(Can we just take a nostalgic moment: did anyone else collect Flower Fairies? The toys were so much better in the eighties! Do you remember the pixies came with little felt suits on, carrying a garden tool? And the fairies had beautiful dresses and the wings that popped on and off? The little Fragrance Mushroom and its pots of perfume was one of my most treasured possessions and I can still recall every scent. If anyone ever sees this set for sale, boxed, please let me know immediately! Why did I ever let it go? Fool!)
Anyway, I paid the price for rescuing my mushroom and was incensed that the wasp sting hurt so much, after everyone always saying
“don’t be scared of them, they don’t want to sting you!”
or
“just ignore them, you don’t need to be scared!”
I obviously did need to be bloody scared, my arse hurt for about two days! And here I find myself, almost forty years later, nursing the same sort of pain but within my ear canal. Honestly, I cannot thank my ear plugs enough - imagine if I hadn’t been wearing them to sleep that night!
But rewind. You need to hear the full tale and suffer along with me.
