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We go on holiday to Dorset, as always. It rains, as always. And wasps wooze around drunkenly, as always. On my Facebook page I update my profile: “The definition of insanity is making the same mistake and expecting a different result.” I’ve been stung so often by wasps in Dorset that I have become allergic and now have to carry an Epipen. At one seafront cafe in Swanage, where even my milkless tea draws these most horrible of God’s creatures like honey, I completely lose it and start swatting, violently, with the local property rag. I kill half a dozen and feel a bit better. Another dozen fly in to take their place. I start attacking them too. I leap over chairs and climb under tables to get to them. I feel my nostrils flare. Then I realise that apart from my half-couple of hound, aka Cavalier King Charles Spaniel, who is now sounding off excitedly, the cafe is shrouded in deathly silence. Waitresses goggle. I make no excuses and leave, head held high, taking out a couple more with my wasp-blood stained Swanage freesheet on the way out. Back home, I hear on the radio that some new wasp protection society has been set up. Can you imagine anyone setting up a society for the protection of peanuts? Perhaps these people don’t know what it is like to go into anaphylactic shock

'The bee is more honoured than other animals, not because she labours, but because she labours for others.'
St John Chrystostum