Wasp Factory
ramtops and I pootled down to Nailsea Folk Club on Friday night, to see Reg Meuross and Phil Beer. A very fine night it was, opened by Mike Scott whom neither of us had encountered before for all that he's been working the folk circuit for some 30 years: anyone who can sing a song about Brenda finding a floater of a morning must have something going for them. Reg and Phil worked well together; we've not seen them together before, in fact we've only seen Reg once, playing with Miranda Sykes at Trowbridge two years ago, but he writes a good song: deceptively simple and well crafted. Recommended.
We got home just before midnight, decided against a whisky and episode of B5 and headed for bed. In the bedroom we found a wasp: large, yellow, going "bzzzzt"; this is suboptimal, so by the careful manipulation of light switches, we persuaded it into the bathroom with door shut and window open. By the morning it was gone.
Saturday, we needed to do a bit of food shopping, so headed to North Street and did so finishing by indulging in a lunch at Café Ceiturica (which astonishingly still doesn't seem to have its own web site; perhaps we should pimp ourselves to them). Good food, served by friendly staff in an unpretentious environment, as always. Mac had a monstrous tower of split bagel, salad, burger and goats' cheese; I had Persian lamb curry with butternut squash, roast lime, prunes and lentils. Looking at the specials board, they were serving Barramundi cod accompanied by, amongst other things, aubergine caviar: I think I should suggest to ursulav that she paint eggplant rising up a stream to spawn.
After an afternoon and evening of B5, drop scones, tea and cake, we found the damned wasp back again, in the study this time. Enough. This time, as it finally headed into the bathroom (as opposed to buzzing against the glass pane above the door), ramtops helped it on its way with a few squirts from the cats' can of Acclaim. She found it lying on the floor with its legs in the air this morning, so it seems that flea spray works on wasps too.
What I don't understand is what a singleton wasp was doing in the house, twice, in the late evening. I don't know how to sex wasps, and don't particularly want to find out, but I do wonder if it was a queen scouting out for possible nest sites; if so, I'm glad the thing is dead: I've witnessed wasp nest disposal once in my life, and that will suffice. Thank you.