More Tales of Bee!

With a title like that I can't help but feel that I am some pulp fiction writer, or that perhaps it should be written in a wavey, bloody font beneath a picture of a terrifying behemoth of beedom, threatening us all. Shamefully neither is the case. I just have a few more bee-cidents from my past to unload on your my poor capitve (and sadly rather small) readership.

[Less captivated, More captive, but I've capped it off, more or less]

But anyway, first a brief rundown of the day. It was not such a fine example of it's ilk (what a word!).

1) 'Tried' to revise

2) Discovered that my wallet was missing

3) Searched for wallet

4) Had to cancel cards as wallet was nowhere to be found

Ergo, material absentmindedness is the new procrastination. Q.E.D.

Aside from that most annoying of events, the day was pretty normal. I read a little, continuing my slow but steady (well it is at the moment) plough through frank Herbert's 5th Dune novel, Heretics of Dune, and dabbling a little in the introduction of my collection of H. P. Lovecraft's short stories. I tried to watch Land of the Dead, but concluded the disc was scratched beyond help (bought that way, receipot was in my wallet, sucks to be me). I also played a little more 24 and discovered that stealth is easily beaten by running around like a madman with a machine gun. Games: 1; Reality: 0.

The evening was spent at the CWS end of term party as arranged by Enthusia. It went well, we even managed to socialise. A triumph perhaps? had to leave a little early as Eruntane had sleep-before-work considerations and I felt obliged to return to write in this lovelly thing (for a redership this small? I must be mad!).

Anyway...

More Tales of Bee!

Bees threaten my very existence. I mean it! No this is not the insane ramblings of a man who believes all bees are Killer Bees and that the swarms are marching ever northward to this lonely grey city. I merely mean that my fear of them is life threatening.

To give an example of the phenomena I'm referring to, I shall tell you the tale of the one man who's death was undeniably because of Vampires.

Police, investigating the home of a man who had not been seen for several days, broke down the door to his house to reveal a pile of unread mail. Beyond, in the hall, was a mysterious trail of salt. Crosses hung upon the walls like jumbled up picture frames and the stench of garlic was everywhere. The chief inspector was puzzled and followed the trail of salt through the house, checking each of the rooms it passed. In every chamber the same sght could be seen. Crosses, salt, ropes of garlic. It was clear that the man who had occupied the house was obsessed with vampires.

Eventually the trail of the salt lead to the bedroom. Even beyond the stink of garlic the inspector could smell the stench of decay. He pushed open the door and there, pale as moonlight, lay the man, stretched out on his bed, hands gripping the matress in a final death struggle, frozen as rigor mortis set in. Tentatively the inspector made his way to the bedside, smudging a carefully laid circle of salt ont eh carpet as he did so. Covering his nose he stared down at the man's face; contorted, eyes left wide open in horror, mouth the same. All around the bed, crosses of every size, material and quality watched on impassionately.

Concerned now the inpsector superstitiously checked the man's neck. No marks! But there was soemthing else. A hard lump that could be felt through the decaying flesh of the man's throat.

Carefully the inspector held the man's mouth open and dipped a gloved hand inside. Feeling around eh foudn the lump and managed to prise it free, carefully pulling it up the oesophagus and into the man's gaping mouth. It was a large, slightly decayed, clove of garlic.

The man had effectively killed himself by overprotecting hismelf from soemthing he feared was real. In a similar way, my reactions to bees and wasps in the field, so to speak, has occasionally left me in some rather precarious positions.

The first such example occured when I was about 9 or 10. Back in Northern Ireland I live by the sea. There is a long beach stretching away from my house and visible from most of the upstairs windows and beside this there is an area of rocks. This is where I spent most of my childhood, clambering about across the rocks and trying not to fall into rockpools, usually succesfully, but then again, every now and then I would come home dripping to a mother who wasn't too appreciative of a salt-water-drenched son. Still we ignored such risks, and the ever present fear of strandings, without really caring. Some of the rocks, especially those uncovered by the highest tides, were quite impressive. You actually ahd to climb rock walls to reach their tops and then the way back down would require a gerat deal of care and attention.

Then one day, whilst standing atop such a rock, like a prince surveying his kingdom (in my imagination it usually was), a wasp decided that it wished an audience.

I did what I always do on such occasions, which is to freeze up completely out of absolute terror. This is normally followed by a minute of panicking and then some mad bolt for safety, however here I was atop a rock where the descent was great enough for a mad bolt to be rather dangerous, so I remained frozen. Then I realised the tide was coming in. I had a choice; stranding or running. Unsurprisingly I remained frozen still, too terrified to contemplate the narrowness of my options.

Then, when my friend (also scared of wasps) informed me that we really needed to get going and I should just make a dash for it, I obliged, leaping across the top of the rock and scrambling somewhat dangerously down the side of the rock before running across the ankle-sprainingly uneven surfaces of the rock and shale towards the safety of home.

Somehow I didn't get hurt. I have no idea how.

On a second occasion, much more recently, I was walking up along a road throught the university campus with my headphones on when a bee or wasp suddenly began buzzing around my nose. I froze. I stepped back. I tried to shaked my ehad. Still it hovered there, taunting me, so I made a mad dodge to one side, trying to get out of the thing's way.

A horn blared through my music and I realised I was now standing in the middle of the road in front of a car that had had to brake quite suddenly to avoid running me down. Ok it was a small cobbled road and the worst I could have expected was a(nother) broken leg, but the fear and embarassment from such an incident made me walk the rest of the way up the street in shame (and also very quickly). I just felt so stupid. With the music and the fear I had completed forgotten that other people (and their cars) actually existed and acted like a complete (and suicidal) eejit in front of them.

I think the Tales of Bee vaults of terror are empty now...