At first I thought I was getting spots before the eyes.
Now what, I wondered peevishly, had I got to go with the osteo-arthiritis and the erratic blood pressure and the looming attentions of Dementia, Greek Goddess of Forgetfulness?
Was it cataracts? Macular degeneration? Alcoholism?
Whatever they were the spots appeared only when I was in the bijou residence.
I didn’t see them anywhere else. There was only one answer. I was not alone.
They were living creatures who had decided to become co-habitees of my residence.
I realised this when I saw one of the spots on a white work surface in the kitchen.
It was black and in consulting my old school ruler I decided it was about two millimetres across. Also it was moving, crawling purposefully.
I killed it. I had a fly swatter handy and I got it in one.
Then I saw that there was another one in the kitchen, in flight this time.
Soon afterwards I realised that there were more of them elsewhere in the building. I was outnumbered.
The question now was, why had they moved in with me?
At first I thought they might be baby flies and I had a highly fecund family of grown-up flies busily procreating somewhere out of sight.
Did this mean they were trying to take over the property for themselves?
I had to fight back. I resolved to declare war on them and began carrying the fly swatter at all times.
But they were not always sitting ducks, or sitting flies I suppose. They are more likely to be on the wing, zooming suddenly into view and then out again.
The fly swatter was too cumbersome a weapon for this method of attack.
I tried slashing madly at them with a kitchen towel but this didn’t seem to work either. There was no discernible body count.
In the end I tried clapping them between my hands, which calls for fast reflexes. I am getting good at this with enforced practice.
This time there is a body count possible. The corpses are there, crushed in the palms of my hands, to be flushed down the toilet. Now I have two compelling reasons for washing my hands afterwards.
Unfortunately there is no sign that I am gaining the ascendancy. Their numbers are undiminished.
This made me reflect that they had to eat and drink to stay alive which meant they had natural functions to exercise. My kitchen is now scrupulously clean of even the smallest scraps of food lying about the place.
But paranoia is setting in. Why me? What have I done to deserve this persecution? What can I do to survive?
Well, I suppose I could go out and buy an aerosol of fly killer. That should sort it.
But what if it doesn’t . . .
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I collect business names to be seen on vehicles in the Isle of Man.
For instance, ‘Ironing Bored’ by someone offering to do people’s ironing for them and on a driving school car ‘Pass Masters.’
But my favourite is on a painter and decorator’s van – ‘Mr Bit.’
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A religious group in America professes to worship pasta.
Pastafarians?
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This week’s weird website is for an information base called Therapist Finder –www.therapistfinder.com