Tennis or Croquet?

Tennis or Croquet?

The weather is fantastic. Usually we can guarantee that on the 27th and 28th September is will pour with rain and probably we will have a thunder storm. This year, the weather has been completely different to the usual pattern. When Britain was almost sweltering in the summer of March this year, our island had about treble the usual amount of rain. June was as warm as it usually is in July. The scorching, continuous heat of August started in July and for the whole of that month and August we did not get the house temperature below 34' day or night. Temperatures on our patio even reached 52' whilst a friend of ours measured 58' on his sheltered balcony.

September temperatures cooled to around 28' and it was time to get working again. On the 18th September we had our first rain shower since April and it was followed by an amazing 12 hour thunder and lightening show devoid of any rain. Since then, the temperatures have steadily increased again and the past week it has been a constant 35' again. Today, for the first time, the light breeze has turned to wind which blows anything not fixed down - usually into the swimming pool - and even manages to turn over the fully loaded and weighted down drying frame located on our kitchen patio.

This long standing heat after the rain has brought forth a lot of flies. I have learnt to ignore them, and succeeded, except for the occasional one landing on my nose. Waldo, however, is quite different. Depending upon where he is, he has three chosen weapons: plastic fly swatters of various sizes and state of completeness, any tea cloth or rag that comes to hand, or a can of fly spray. The fly spray is the lazy approach to fly killing; simply reach for it, remain seated, wait until the fly is in sight, aim and press the button. This is banned around food, my desk and in the bedroom but, otherwise, it does have the advantage of being effective, one fly at a time.

 The tea cloth or rag method requires more energy, but Waldo can remain seated. He simply simple flicks the cloth back and forth, like some mini punkah wallah. Occasionally a well aimed quick flick might stun or even kill a fly, but the method is not particularly effective. It is quite good for wasps and Waldo seems to have trained them to go back out of the kitchen door to the patio when he flicks at them from the kitchen table. Otherwise it can only deal with one fly at a time, does not take into account the crafty little diptera (from the Greek di = two, and ptera = wings) that buzz around to the other side of his body and attack from that side, nor the really clever ones that fly between flicks and aim straight for Waldo's face! I have tried to ban this method in the kitchen, to no avail. There is always the risk of a jar of honey, lemon curd or jug of milk landing on the terrazzo floor which is completely unforgiving. However we have not had any breakages  - yet!

Now the real exercise is gained with the fly swatters. We have about 10 of these items. The ones that were in the house were an manky collection that had seen better days and so were relegated to the garage, workshop and outdoor patios where they would get more wear and eventually break up through being hit or by the sun just baking the plastic to cracking point. I bought new ones, colour coordinated them as best I could; green for the green guest bedroom, blue for the blue bedroom, pink for the kitchen, purple for the lounge, pink for our bedroom, blue for Waldo's turquoise office. This of course involved months of shopping in various village shops  and I must have struck lucky that year because I have never since seen pink or purple; the 'made in China' designs focus on primary colours of red, blue and yellow with the occasional white or green. Fly swatters have clearly not yet reached the heights of designer home accessories for, in addition to the basic colours, there are just two styles: long handle with a circular fretwork end or long handle with a square fretwork end. We did find an amazing one in a hardware store in Cardiff. It's thick white handle is about 70 cm long and the plastic lattice square end in pink is about 20cm x 20cm. But the attachment fixing the pink plastic to the white handle has not been thought through very well and one hard 'swish' leaves the pink square flying through the air like and badly balanced Frisbee.

It never fails to amaze us how a piece of plastic many, many times larger than a fly can whizz through the air at high speed and still miss the spot where the fly has landed. Such is the sensitivity and survival instinct of the beasts that they can sense the air moving towards them as danger and move away in time.  I guess it all adds to the feeling of success when one actually does hit an offending fly! The kitchen was the main battle ground but, since last Tuesday this is not the case. I urged Waldo to look for some good old fashioned fly paper; the long spiral of yellow sticky paper that is a memory of a childhood on a farm. I have not seen any such things for sale for years, but Waldo found a pack of six for just 2 Euros in one of the local supermarkets. I immediately hung one from the light in the kitchen and within two days there were no less than 23 flies sticking to the thing. It does not look very attractive, but there were no flies buzzing around the kitchen. No matter of anti-fly sprays, time release capsules have worked in the kitchen because we tend to keep both doors open all day which dilutes the impact of any chemical.

Our bedroom is a different matter. Whilst the window is left open day and night, it has a wire mesh cover through which no insects creep. But, to Waldo's continual annoyance, one fly seems to follow us to bed every night! Without glass jars to tip over, this is where the real fly tennis takes place! I am as lazy as Waldo is active. From the time he opens his eyes in the morning he starts talking and never stops until I go to sleep, and often he is still talking then until he realises that I am asleep! He is the only person who can carry on a one-sided telephone conversation for a good twenty minutes after the lines has been cut off, without realising! Thus, I lie in bed, reading my book, tyring to focus on it rather than the nightly tennis game. Waldo is one of these people who, if left to his own devices would probably have been left-handed. But he was brought up at a time when this was not acceptable and he was forces to be right-handed. However he will play cricket and use a spade as a left-handed person. Similarly he holds his fly tennis racket in his left hand and often holds a can of fly spray in his right hand, the latter of which is banned from the bed area and can only be used near the window or in the en suite.  The ceilings of our rooms here are high, even standing on the bed, it is impossible to reach the ceiling with the fly swatter, but it can reach almost to the cement. So once I am in bed and Waldo has changed into his pyjamas, battle commences. the chase is on and Waldo has a good 15 to 25 minutes exercise as he runs around the room, into the en suite, back again, leaps onto the bed, trampolines up and down for a while before leaping off in another direction and following the dratted fly. He moans about such a little thing not getting tired as he chases it everywhere. The fly even takes refuge in one of our over bed lights, but always manages to escape when Waldo covered the front. Eventually  the wall behind our bed, the wall near the door or one of the wardrobe doors becomes a killing field. Waldo mops up and gets rid of the squashed mess and climbs into bed, exhausted!

The other evening I had laughed so much I had to get out of bed and go to the loo as Waldo was clearing up. On the floor, just in front of the toilet seat was a young grass hopper. I don't know how he had found his way in and it was unlikely that he would be able to find his way out. I shouted to Waldo who came, armed with his weapons of war. I urged no to kill the little things, but to gently encourage it out of the door. The fly swatter was immediately changed into some unusually shaped croquet bat with which the little grass hopped was lightly tapped from behind. The inevitable happened and he hopped out of the way - but of course not in the right direction! The little immature orthoptera was not tuned in to where he was supposed to go and it soon became clear that he needed not one, but two guides. I reached for a second croquet bat and between us, amid gales of laughter, we gently tapped the little grasshopper until he literally hopped out of the door. Waldo closed the door quickly so that there was no fear of his return. We have a huge hall and he would spent all night trying to find some way hour of there. he must have done so for we have not seen him since.