Having just listened to (and done my best to blot out) the rest, how would Shula have the helpline number without knowing the nature of Jim’s alleged issue?
You have had your revenge for last night’s wine, dere.
Earwigs make me come over all peculiar
A good question. Not too hard for the sanctimonious and interfering besom to have guessed, perhaps, but Alistair has, at the very least, tacitly confirmed that.
I am very cross indeed.
My apologies. It just seemed the obvious symbol of Shula’s “help”
You and Melody the Buxom Barmaid… it’s a long story…
https://abthite.org/questions/earwigs.html
It is, Sparrer. And contains far too many earwigs for my liking. Rsther like a dahlia , in fact.
Not very fond of the Devil’s Coachhorse either
In spring last year we had cockchafers (May bugs, doodlebugs). Never seen 'em before.
One day I shall tell you a story featuring such large, winged beetles. Not a happy ending, sadly.
Oh, disentangling a cat caught by his belly in a rose arch while chasing a stag beetle that was just flaunting himself and whirring at him was fun. In a loose interpretation of the word.
Close to 30 years ago, having never seen a May Bug, I was babysitting whilst Mrs. Shanks was, surprisingly, doing her am-dram thing.
It was dusk. Nights were lengthening &, as is my habit, I didn’t bother drawing curtains or switching on lights.
I heard a scuffling. It was coming from the fireplace area, more attention suggested it was coming from the chimbley. As it went toward it a lump of something fluttery decended, onto the hearth, onto the carpet & began flicking & furtling about.
It wasn’t a bird. It was, just, to small for one. I leapt from my skin, grabbed a cushion, bashed it a few times, jumped up & down on the cushion many times & then left it. In situ.
Whem Mrs. S returned home, surprisingly late, I pointed at the cushion. It hadn’t moved in the intervening couple of hours. I knew it hadn’t as I’d barely taken my eyes off it.
Mrs. Shanks with surprising bravery lifted the cushion to find a stunned, not next yet deceased, small, black, armoured car. Only small as far as armoured cars go, mind you.
It may declared to be a May Bug, an almost deceased May Bug, not as covered in soot as when it decended the chimbley … largely because much of it had transferred, along with squished guts & entrails, onto the carpet & cushion.
When we changed carpets about 5 years ago one of the benefits was that the stain finally disapperated to.
I knew then that May Bugs should not enter houses by chimbleys, nor should they become Home Secretary or Prime Minister.
Coackroaches with a fancier name, that’s what they are. Big 'uns too.
How uncharacteristically girly of you, dere
They’re really very bad at flying (and I speak as a professional). Their navigation seems to be to take off in a straight line until they run into something, then pick a new random direction.
Here we specialise in dragonflies
Bluddy great huge dragonflies that hurt one when they fly into one
I measured one wot was just sitting on my myrtle tree
Eight inches long!!!
Any wonder they leave bruises when they fly into you
Slugs are another of our pests
Really enormous slugs that ooze around as if they own the garden
I am still recovering from the bird-seed with weevils. Weevils in the keyboard, weevils on the light-switches, weevils falling from the ceiling onto my desk…
And an earworm.
Tiptoe through the Tulips
Ph no, Gustard. I am truly a wimp. Don’t do spiderses or bugs in general. Plus a waste of space with heights.
I am crap at earwigs, big scuttly spigers make me scream (although I am well disposed to the brutes), I have an horror of teef-drilling, and am not great at confined spaces, ie my underwear, planes, stuck lifts…
Gurt Big Wimp, me, dahling.
PS: if Gustard is a portmanteau for ‘Gus, you utter bastard’, I rather like it. Mwah!