It’s breezy out today. Sat here at the dining table, I’m looking out of my front window on a view of car’s, black wheelie bins and a large yellow flowering bush in my garden whose name escapes me at present.
The bush is being gently shaken by the warm south westerly wind, it’s multitude of yellow flowers being tossed like customers on an extreme theme park ride. There is a surreal silence, with barely a sound stealing its way into the living room through an open front window. It’s as if someone has hit the mute button.
The window, one of two on the front bay, is ajar after Karen deemed this an effective strategy to rid us of the wasp, who seems on its last legs ,perched on the window sill. Personally, I’m not convinced it will work as wasps don’t rush straight out through an opened door or window like a cat, dog or an opportunist burglar with your laptop.
To be honest, even if they did, I don’t think the wasp has the energy to return back through the window my spouse thoughtfully, but somewhat misguidedly, opened for him.
My thoughts are that the gaping opening to the outdoors, provided by this section of the window unit, may result in more moribund wasps entering the house. However, but I suspect Gregory (as I’ve baptised the wasp) will expire in our living room.
Incidentally, I haven’t literally baptised our uninvited house guest, it was a figure of speech to indicate I’d named the terminally ill little critter. I mean having Gregory literally baptised would be a ludicrous notion; there is no way I’d be able to find a water font that small.
So it appears chez Strachan has taken over as a temporary apocrital hospice. As I type, Karen is reading Gregory his last rites. Actually, that isn’t strictly true she’s telling him about her favourite holiday meal in Ciudadela in 1999.
I’m not sure it’s perking Gregory up, he seems more pained by being subject to the tale. He flaps weakly, I assume its to try escape Karen’s culinary yarns of vacations past. However, his efforts are futile as frailty dictates his airborne days are over.
I maybe barking up the wrong tree (or buzzing around the wrong lemonade), our dying little visitor my not be trying to escape by flight. The wing movements maybe just an attempt to cover his ears, sparing him from my other half’s yarns of Menorcan food.
Time seems very short now for Gregory, his movement diminishing ever slowly; his life flashing before him. He mumbles he’s had a blast, in which he has been lucky to travel far and wide (well from Colton to Cross Gates) stinging people and annoying them while drinking a beer outside The Station pub.
Through weakening voice he talks of fulfilling most of his bucket list, with the exception of stinging someone outside of the Colton Mill pub. But he has no regrets, apart from perhaps not visiting Ciudadela, as the restaurant Karen spoke of seemed prime for agitating people.
As Karen and I stand in a final vigil for the stricken wasp, he cascades through barely audible tones that he wants ‘Against All Odds’ by Phil Collins played at his funeral. He also asked if we’d tell his uncle Bill he wasn’t welcome there after the incident at the Brown Cow in Whitkirk. He didn’t elaborate on the incident but its obviously left him scars.
I assured Gregory we will uphold his dying wishes and caringly asked if he has any last requests. He paused briefly summoning up the energy to turn his head towards me. He then weakly whispered “Yes, can you shut that bloody window!…. I’m freezing here!”
