Homing Wasps

My grandfather had trained wasps.

Yes. It used to be traditional among ex-miners to have a shed out on the allotment to keep their wasps in. They used to breed them and race them - you have seen the great swarms of homing wasps on the big race days haven't you?

My grandfather, of course, was not satisfied with just breeding and racing the wasps - even the almost legendary 'Speckled-Blue Vicious Bugger' that old Stan 'Stained-vest' Megglethorpe was rumoured to have bred back at the turn of the century.

My granddad wanted a wasp that could: 'do something, instead of sitting around looking pretty like those poofy bloody show-wasps, or just bloody racing.' He wanted a wasp that could help him with his beer; a task that kept him so occupied that sometimes he did not emerge from his cellar for several days. It was only from the muffled sound of his singing that prevented us from fearing the worst during those lost days.

So, after many seasons of heart-breaking failure, he - at last - managed to breed a wasp that could carry a hop back from a field. Only one at a time, but he planned whole swarms that would leave the shed first thing in the morning. Then, using that wondrous homing ability that wasps have which enables them to locate a jam-encrusted child from the whole crowd on a beach, to seek out a hop field and then to strip whole rows of the plants before returning back to the allotment shed as dusk fell.

On the morning when he felt that his first 'hop-fetching' wasp (My grandfather had an uncanny knack for picking the apt and memorably descriptive phrase. For instance, the shed was known, wittily, as 'the shed' and the allotment as 'my allotment'. Many was the time he would leave us laughing and smiling as he said, with a straight-face, that he was 'going down the bloody cellar to get pissed'. Not, I think it is safe to say, since Oscar Wilde have these islands produced such a naturally witty man.) Anyway, it was a tense time as he and I stood watching the wasp fly off into the early morning sunlight, watching until it was less than a speck in the distance - even my grandfather with his keen wasp-racing eye, lost sight of it after what could easily have been a dozen yards.

Needless to say that seemed to be the longest day of my life. Countless cups of tea were consumed by both of us as we waited - at one point I was even sent out to buy another bag of sugar. Even with the retelling of all of my grandfather's favourite stories about how the world had been such a far better place when he was young, about how good it had been during the war and how ungrateful the younger generations were these days, time seemed to crawl slowly and cautiously. Much like, in fact, the way my grandfather himself would crawl from the cellar a few days after 'just popping down to check on the beer.'

Eventually evening came and the sun began its long slow descent towards the summer's horizon. My grandfather paced backwards and forwards along the full row of his prize-winning cabbages, pausing at each end to scan the sky with his sharp wasp-racers eye and listening intently for the telltale buzz. I stood on the step of the shed, glancing back every now and then to see if the kettle was boiling, as we waited... and waited.

"The bugger's coming back, get the tea on," my grandfather said. I still could not see or hear anything, but I trusted his word. A few moments later, I was testing to see whether the tea had stood for long enough, by seeing if the spoon would remain upright in it, when I heard the buzz, faint and distant.

Something was wrong! The buzz was not right! It sounded more like a teenager on a moped than the proud full-bodied roar of a thoroughbred racing-wasp in its prime. I raced outside to the landing window, where - it seemed - all the other wasps had gathered too.

My grandfather was there too. "Bloody fly-spray! I knew it," he said as he gazed off several feet into the setting sun. I could see it too as it flew erratically towards the shed window.

"He's not going to make it!"

Before grandfather had even finished speaking, I was racing down the row of cabbages towards where I had seen the speck tumble from the sky. When grandfather arrived, I was easing it off the cabbage leaf where it had fallen.

"Bastard!" I screamed as the wasp managed to summon the strength, from somewhere, for a final sting. I dropped the wasp and to my surprise granddad stepped forward and brought down his heavy miner's boot on the still trembling form.

"Why?" I said. "He was dying; he didn't know what he was doing. It was a reflex, nothing more." I stared up, through my tears, into my grandfather's hard and uncompromising stare.

"Once they go that way, there is no bringing them back, no saving them," he said. "Once they get the taste of stinging human flesh then that is the way they'll allus be." He turned away and trudged heavily back up the row of cabbages to the shed and a consoling cup of tea.

The ruins of his dream lay squashed and shattered at my feet. I looked down, and there, half-hidden by the deepening shadow of the cabbage leaf, was a single hop. Smiling and laughing I picked it up and ran to the shed.

***

(One of my earliest – see here, and here for example)