I don’t know if this is revenge on my earlier post, but we certainly seemed to be more plagued by flies than usual this year. It’s actually not too bad on the bike, as long as you move above a certain speed, but trying to do anything in the garden has become a nightmare. I’ve tried to cultivate a zen-like patience around them but then they just start crawling over your face. And it’s their persistence that really gets me. I’m beginning to suspect that I have my own personal cloud of flies which lies in wait for me just outside the door, ready to resume their favourite activity: driving me clean out of my mind.
This morning, for example, all I had to do was pick some (or rather as much as I could reasonably fob off on them) salad to take to my parents. I started off – bloody fly – carefully selecting a variety of – aargh, bloody fly – different types of – gerroff fly – lettuce leaves, trying to balance – I said, gerroff bloody fly – not harvesting too much from any one – sodding bloody fly – plant while not picking leaves that were too – AAARGH gerroff – big and therefore bitter and avoiding – I SAID GERROFF fly – ones that had been too munched by the slugs – bastarding sodding flies – or too small and assessing – AAARGH GERROFF YOU BASTARDING SODDING FLIES – which were in danger of bolting and picking out the – RIGHT THAT’S IT I GIVE IN FLIES YOU WIN I’M GOING IN YOU BLASTED SODDING BASTARDING FLIES.
Which is why my parents were presented with a whole cos lettuce this afternoon, torn up by the roots.
Midgies? Pah, I’ll take midgies any day of the week over flies*.
* Just one more in a long line of statements I know I’ll come to regret.
Flies have the same effect on me…it must have been all those long drives in Tanzania when we were 12, trapped in the back of the Landrover with all those flies…Remember?
I remember babymother leaping clear across the landrover when the hornet got in…