Bookworm

When I moved into my house in July of last year I inherited the VSO library – a collection of over 150 books built up over a number of years going back to the days when there were as many as a dozen VSO volunteers in Mae Sot. From the copious quantities of dust, cobwebs and lizard droppings all over the books and shelves, it was clear that no-one had taken an interest in the library for some time. In the interest of cleanliness and creating shelf-space I decided to carry out a radical downsizing operation, and after carefully selecting around thirty books that I liked the look of, I gave the rest away to a local organization.

When I lived in the UK and Italy, the only time I ever tended to read was in bed before going to sleep. In fact, I would often fall asleep reading, and would then have to go back and re-read the next night to remember what was going on. (I read the whole of “The Name of the Rose” in this fashion, at a time when I must have been especially tired, managing only a page or so at a time. By the time I got to the end of the book, I had absolutely no idea what it had all been about. Thank goodness for the film and Sean Connery!)

Here, with a slightly different pace of life and priorities, I have rediscovered the joy of spending lazy afternoons lying on my bed with the dappled sunlight dancing through the window, getting completely engrossed in a book.

These are the books I have read and, with only one or two exceptions, thoroughly enjoyed – testament either to the good literary taste of VSO volunteers or to my ability to pick out books I will like. (I suspect the latter – some of the ones I got rid of looked like complete rubbish!)

Middlesex – Jeffrey Eugenides

Adventures of Sherlock Holmes – A C Doyle

The Bean Trees – Barbara Kingsolver

Me Talk Pretty Some Day – David Sedaris

The Long Song – Andrea Levy

A Week in December – Sebastian Faulks

The Slap – Christos Tsiolkas

Shakespeare – Bill Bryson

The Help – Kathryn Stockett

The Book Thief – Markus Zusak

First Love, Last Rites – Ian McEwan

The Big Snow – David Park

Beatrice and Virgil – Yann Martel

The Pianist – Wladyslaw Szpilman

A Fool’s Alphabet – Sebastian Faulks

When a Crocodile eats the Sun – Peter Godwin

The Lacuna – Barbara Kingsolver

Moral Tribes: Emotion, Reason and the Gap Between Us and Them – Joshua Greene

Status Anxiety – Alain De Botton

The Gathering – Anne Enright

A Kestrel for a Knave – Barry Hines

Burmese Days – George Orwell

The Constant Gardner – John Le Carre

Winter in Madrid – C. J. Sansom

Started Early, Took my Dog – Kate Atkinson

Prodigal Summer – Barbara Kingsolver

My Life as a Fake – Peter Carey

Any Human Heart – William Boyd

The Finkler Question – Howard Jacobson

Dead Famous – Ben Elton

Parrot and Olivier in America – Peter Carey

Map of the Invisible World – Tash Aw

Message from an Unknown Chinese Mother – Xinran

Restless Souls: Rebels, Refugees, Medics and Misfits on the Thai-Burma Border – Phil Thornton

 Perhaps I should make it a resolution to make more time for reading when I come home…

You know it's time to come home when... Part 4

...you have a dream about McVitie's chocolate digestive biscuits.

No idea where that came from. I can't say I've been pining for them all this time. But clearly my brain is starting to think about coming home!

A sting in the tale - the sequel

Several people have commented expressing surprise that I was being so tolerant towards the wasps that had made their nest in my front yard. Those who know me very well, my family in particular, know that I have a very strong aversion to the type of wasps we have in the UK, and had it been those I would have lost no time in eliminating the horrible beasts as soon as I first noticed them. But this species is quite different. They are very much smaller and more delicate and dainty looking. They fly around in a dreamy, floaty, dangly-legged sort of way, with none of the aggressive, buzzing persistence of their European counterparts. And unless they feel threatened, for example by someone recklessly waving items of laundry around in the immediate vicinity of their nest, they seem remarkably placid and keep themselves pretty much to themselves. The biologist in me was fascinated by their behaviour, and it wasn't until their increasing numbers and their agitated state began to worry me that I felt the need to do anything about them.

Ropalidia marginata - Red Paper Wasp

 

After the destruction of their nest, there were about a dozen remaining individuals that reassembled at the nest site. I watched them closely to see what they would do. At first they seemed rather dazed and confused, but after a while they began to engage in undefined but apparently purposeful activity, and I was concerned they were going to start rebuilding the nest. I decided I needed to get rid of them once and for all. I had noticed that early in the morning, before the day warms up, they were very dopy and sluggish, so, working on the principle used by police officers when going after gangs of criminals (i.e. catch them in bed with no clothes on), I decided upon a dawn raid.

 

There was no problem with getting up on time for the attack on Sunday morning, as I was already wide awake well before 6.30 due to loud talking and laughter coming from neighbours down the road (more on that later). I dressed myself in the most protective clothing I have here - jeans, denim jacket and even a pair of gloves that I brought with me because VSO insist that you should wear proper protective gear on your motorbike. The gloves had previously never been put to use, VSO's policy being completely inappropriate for motorbike riding in a hot country, but now they were about to come into their own as an essential item in my wasp-sting protection gear.

 

I went outside and, with an unlit straw broom in my left hand for emergency swatting purposes, I let rip with my can of cockroach spray. Some of the wasps fell immediately. Others flew off. One came straight towards me, so I sprayed again, and then realised I needed to relocate to the other side of the yard before I choked myself to death on the toxic fumes within which I was enveloped. One wasp landed, wriggling and writhing on the front step, so I gave it a few more squirts to try and finish it off quickly, but sadly I know from experience that this stuff takes time to work, and that the poor wasps will have died slow, twitching deaths.

 

Here's one I killed earlier

 

Once I was sure they were all gone, I gave the nest site a really good clean with my kitchen cleaner spray to deter any unlikely survivors from returning, and then went back to bed, hoping for a bit of a Sunday lie-in. Silly me. After a short while, loud, booming music started up down the road. I tried to ignore it for a bit and then decided to do the unthinkable and go and tell the neighbours responsible that it was far too early on a Sunday morning for such a racket. One is not, of course, meant to make a fuss, but hey, I'm leaving in a couple of weeks.

 

I dressed again and went down the road to investigate. The noise was coming from the new apartment block that my landlady has been building. They were getting ready for the official opening ceremony and had installed a massive sound system in the front yard which was responsible for the cacophony. My resolve crumbled as I realised that protest was pointless, so I returned wearily and lay on my bed for a while, listening to the thumping music before finally getting up. The celebrations down the road went on all day with music, speeches, monks tunelessly intoning and, in the evening, painful karaoke, all generously blasted out over the sound system so that the rest of the neighbourhood would not feel excluded from the fun. It eventually went quiet around 10.30pm, which I was very relieved about, as I had visions of it continuing into the small hours.

 

As for the wasps, there have been no returns. I occasionally see a lone individual flying around, but the nest-building enterprise has been brought to a definite halt. I still feel sorry about it - I hate to destroy nature, but on occasion it seems to be the only sensible choice.

 

UPDATE: when I came home at lunchtime today, what should I see flying around but one of those horrible hornets. I guess they must have a nest somewhere nearby as well...

A sting in the tale

For many months I have been watching with interest the progress of a small group of wasps that had started building a nest on the clothes drier in my front yard. At the start there were only about four of them, and for a long time the nest remained so tiny and insignificant looking that I doubted whether it was a serious enterprise at all. I thought maybe they were a small band of deluded outcasts, or that the nest had been abandoned and they hadn't realised and were continuing to tend it in vain.

Nevertheless I continued to watch them with some fascination. Their activities seemed mostly to involve lots of leg-waving and abdomen-waggling - possibly in order to try and regulate the temperature of the cells? Gradually the nest increased in size and there seemed to be a few more individuals working on it. I could clearly see now that many of the cells had been sealed over, no doubt containing the larvae growing inside. The workers seemed very tolerant of my presence, and I continued hanging out my washing without any thought to the possible consequences.

 

Last weekend I had hand-washed a shirt and took it outside to hang up. We are continuing to have occasional rainy spells (most unusual for this time of year), so when I went out my poncho was draped over the lower rungs, having been placed there the day before to dry. I moved it over to vacate a rung for the shirt. Then, as I lifted the shirt to hang it I suddenly felt two painful stings on my arm and hand. I yelped and looked up to see the wasps descending upon me. I ran helter-skelter back into the house, waving the wet shirt lasso-style behind me to ward off the wasps.

For a moment I went into panic thinking that maybe Thai wasps are super-venomous and that I was about to die. Then I got a grip on myself, took an antihistamine and went on-line to get some information. My research seemed to confirm that taking an antihistamine was a sensible response and also suggested I should wash the sting sites and apply antibiotic cream, which I duly did. I monitored myself carefully for any signs of an allergic reaction, but the antihistamine did the trick and the local pain and swelling disappeared very quickly.

I began to wonder if perhaps I should do something about getting the nest removed, but I was reluctant to do so, having watched their industrious and meticulous labours for so long, and in any case, I thought, I only have a few weeks left...

A few days ago I came home to find a huge, black, hornet-sized creature at the nest. At first I thought it was the queen laying eggs. However, the massive disparity in size between it and the workers made this unlikely, and on close inspection I saw that it was rolling something between its legs and eating it. Further fascinated research (where would we be without Google?!) has led me to the conclusion that this was one of Thailand's various species of massive hornet, (this one? or this?) and that far from contributing to the reproductive endeavours of the colony it was attacking the nest and eating the larvae. The poor little wasps were unable to mount any sort of defence and simply cowered at the edge of the nest waiting for the intruder to disappear. It was back again the next day for dessert.

Not a very clear picture (I didn't want to get too close!) but you can make out the hornet hanging upside-down from the frame on the right.

After these attacks the wasps seemed to redouble their efforts. Suddenly there seemed to be a lot more of them and their activity was more frenetic. I began to wonder again more seriously about getting the exterminators in. I was beginning to feel distinctly nervous each morning as I manoeuvred my way past on my motorbike and when I parked up again in the evening. Also, I began to think it's all very well that I'm leaving soon, but what if the next person to live in the house turns out to be allergic to wasp stings and they accidentally disturb the nest because they don't realise it's there and end up dying from anaphylactic shock. Then I would be responsible for their death through my negligence about resolving the problem.... Once thoughts like that start going round in your head, you can't really ignore them!

So today I asked at work if there was such a thing as pest-control professionals who would deal with such things. The response was confused laughter, so I guess not! At lunch-time I came home and the wasps were looking more lively that ever. I phoned the young lady who acts as go-between for me and the landlady and tried to explain the problem. Her English is very good, but the conversation was hampered by the lack of a few key words - such as "wasp" for a start. I explained that it is a type of flying insect that stings, but "sting" was also unfamiliar. My explanation that it's a bit like a bite but from the other end didn't really seem to help very much. Anyhow, I managed to get across that the situation was very dangerous because there were loads and loads of these ferocious beasts in my front yard and that they were likely to attack anyone who came near them and that it would be necessary to get someone in who knew what they were doing in order to eliminate the threat. Ok, maybe I exaggerated a bit, but it did the trick. She rang the landlady immediately and then phoned me straight back to say that someone was on their way NOW.

Sure enough, a minute later someone appeared at my gate. No doubt one of the workmen from the apartment block the landlady has been building down the road, he was scantily attired in a flimsy vest, shorts and flip flops and was armed with a very tall ladder. Rentokil he certainly wasn't!
Looking at the ladder, I wondered just how much had indeed been lost in translation and what he thought he was coming to confront. When I showed him the nest he made a noise that would probably translate as "Oh, right!" He then put down the ladder and indicated that he would be back in a minute. Meanwhile, I retreated back inside the house and positioned myself to watch the proceedings in safety from my bedroom window.

He returned shortly, armed with a traditional Thai straw broom. Somewhat alarmed, I thought for a moment he was planning to bash it down with that, and I thought he must be either incredibly brave or incredibly daft. He turned out indeed to be brave, but not daft. He produced a lighter from his pocket and applied it to one corner of the broom until he had an impressive flaming, smoking torch burning, which he promptly applied to the nest. Some of the wasps were killed outright, but many flew off and my saviour leapt nimbly back, brandishing his broom as several of them went for him. He swatted a couple more dead before re-lighting his torch and going back in for a second round. Once there appeared to be no more active wasps in the vicinity he reached up and plucked the nest down. At this point I gingerly emerged from the front door to thank him, and after a few more swats of his broom at a couple of persistent individuals he picked up his tall ladder and went on his way.

I had a meeting in the afternoon, so I decided it was best to leave the house quickly before any of the survivors came back to survey the damage. When I came home, I discovered that the problem has only been partially resolved. The nest is gone, but the remaining workers, of which there are quite a few, have regrouped and are clustered sorrowfully at the old nest site, clearly totally disorientated and wondering what to do with themselves. I did contemplate whether I should try the flaming-broom technique myself and get rid of them completely, but I fear I lack the nonchalance of Man-In-A-Vest. And anyway, I feel terrible for having brought about the destruction of their enterprise. I wonder what they will do next. Will they start again with a new nest, or will they eventually wander off and go their separate ways? Cold season is on its way, so perhaps they were due for hibernation soon.... Clearly I don't know much about wasp life cycles and seasonal habits - time for another session on Google perhaps?!

You know it's time to come home when... Part 3

...your Wye Valley and Forest of Dean calendar is showing your home town:

Che nostalgia! as they say in Italy