As this summer wore on I became aware of wasps in my bathroom. There would be a remote drone, and then a wasp would be flying at me, at head-height, on its way to the window, there to cling, finding itself shut in. Entrants multiplied, but without stinging. They just clustered at the source of light. When not expelled or allowed issue, the wasps simply curled up and – unhurriedly, with twiddling of legs and little angry buzzings – died. After a day at work I would find a dozen, after a week’s holiday a hundred, of the dead and dying, where they had dropped or crawled; and would hoover them up, or scoop them, for defenestration, onto the offprint of a friend’s article. I postponed calling in pest control, however, till the first sting. Baths and showers became occasions of suppressed anxiety; my invaders emerged from any number of orifices in the cupboard containing the boiler, which overhangs the tub. But their numbers declined with the onset of autumn. Soon I thought myself relaxed. One day, though, reading in the bath, I glanced down from the page to see a large one busily doggypaddle towards me: and weeks of submerged panic surfaced with a splash. I hurled the book into the air, expelled the wasp, sent half my bathwater onto the floor and subsided again into what remained within a couple of seconds, pulse racing. That seemed the climax of the infiltration. Now, though, I have the impression that even if no more than one or two any longer crawl out in person, or in toto, black bits of wing, of sting, of tiny leg or thorax or mandible, can be seen flowing from the taps. I am bathing, shaving, brushing my teeth, in a decoction of wasp.’
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As this summer wore on I became aware of wasps in my bathroom. There would be a remote drone, and then a wasp would be flying at me, at head-height, on its way to the window, there to cling,...