Whilst we confidentially expect to be posting new misadventures in the not too distant future, let us whet your appetite with a few of our previous misadventures so you know what to expect.
We had had a very productive day painting industrial scenery along the banks of the Grand Union Canal (part of an artificial waterway created about 200 years ago to transport goods and people up and down the British Isles, but now mainly used for sight seeing and leisure). We had just began to pack up when we both heard a very strange noise, which we can only described as akin to an asthmatic helicopter. Being unable to locate the source of this noise we returned to our cleaning up, shortly after this I caught sight of something that made me want to scream in terror (being that I had a phobia of wasps and such like flying insects at the time), but managed to stifle it for fear of making the situation worse.
The source of my consternation was that as Pat turned away from me to sort out her materials I saw that on her back was the largest insect I had ever seen. It was about three and a half inches long with an orange and black body, but what had really scared me was that one and a half inches of its body length was made up of a sting. Having alerted Pat to her unwanted passenger she began to scream at me "Get it off of me", but I was still paralysed with fear "Oh your useless" she proclaimed and began to take matters into her own hands. The insect by this time had began to crawl upwards towards her neck and started to traverse down towards her backside.
By this time she had decided quite rightly that I was going to be of little or no help began to take a couple of paces forward shaking her hips as she did so in the hope of dislodging her marauding passenger shouting at me "Is it off" to which I replied regretfully "No". Pat repeated the exercise with no further success. Seeing that Pat was having no luck dislodging her unwanted passenger I decided I had better do something, because if it was there much longer she might get stung. So despite my phobia I found heavy duty plastic bag and wrapped it around my hand and upper arm. I then proceeded to aim sweeping movements towards Pat's backside in the hope of flicking the insect away into the canal. All told we must have looked quite a sight to those travelling up and down the waterway with Pat doing her little shimmying dance I seemingly striking here bottom to make her repeat the movement (come to think of it, its a wonder someone didn't call the police). Inspite of our best efforts, the insect remained quite unperturbed then suddenly flew off with the same distinctive noise. After a great deal of admonishment from Pat about my late and rather ineffectual arrival to the rescue we continued clearing up and made our way home.
Over the next few days we did some research (this was pre-internet, so involved libraries and reference books) and discovered that the insect in question was a female wood wasp, which is twice the size of the male. Apparently, it is harmless to human beings the large stinger is in fact it's ovipositor. The obviously the short sighted insect having taken a detour from its native woodland habitat on a passing canal boat had mistaken Pat for a tree and was testing her as a suitable site to lay her offspring. Well anyone can make a mistake, especially as she was wearing a brown dress with a bark like design, no wonder the poor insect was confused.
The picture at the top was the nearest variety to what we saw we could find.
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