My blog will have to wait. So here’s a pretty picture of Ribblesdale instead. You see, I was trying to work at the computer but was being distracted by a particularly annoying bluebottle that was purposely dive-bombing me. It did several fly-pasts before landing on the keyboard just millimetres from my hand. I swished at it but only knocked my cup which splashed tea over some abandoned paperwork. The bluebottle saw my feeble swatting attempt as a challenge and it fizzed around my desk with renewed enthusiasm. By now I’d totally lost the thread of what I was writing. I looked at the cat who in his youth would have been at my side fighting such battles but today he half-heartedly tried to scratch his chin with one of his back paws before sighing and curling up in a contented ball. The stupid bluebottle continued its frenzied attack which I was starting to take very personally. I stomped off for the fly spray and like some crazed 1930s gangster in a bar with a machine gun I splattered the room. In my frenzy, screen, windows, lamps – you name it – got coated in the vile-smelling chemical, so much so that I feared my attack would prompt an American airstrike. The startled cat sneezed and ran out of the room. The bluebottle eventually spiralled to the floor like a broken world war two bomber, offered a few defiant shakes of the legs then expired. For a split second I felt a tinge of guilt – what if it had family? I could hardly breath because of the killer spray so I opened the window… and within a minute a wasp flew in.
