Something narsty in the woodshed…

Such adventures when you’re least expecting them! We were peacefully finishing breakfast when the doorbell rang. The postman. He could just have left the post, but he had news to impart. My son’s gardener who was also the postie’s gardener had confirmed his (the postie’s) suspicions about the shed in the garden. There was a wasps’ nest therein. A large one. Don’t go in, he warned. As if …

Fast forward a few hours. We had been given the charge to greet and pay The Wasp Men. I’d just started lunch (there’s a pattern here) when they came. With a confidence I was far from feeling I told them to carry on, and five minutes later they rang again. They wanted to show me … that thing in the large plastic tub in my blip. The finger on the left is pointing at the Queen; ranged above her are all the cells containing embryonic wasps, on the point of emerging. What, I asked, we’re they going to do with it? Apparently they use the infants for fishing. “Waste not, want not,” one chirped. I paid them and we parted in great amity.

And it’s not even our shed…

We were at the younger grands’ school leaving ceremony and prize giving in the afternoon. They do it very well, with all the Primary 7 children filing out shaking hands with their teachers and the Headmaster, then, through the double doors at the back of the hall, with the boy and girl School Captains of the Senior School, symbolically welcoming them to the next step in their lives.

And then there were strawberry tarts …