[From the Lucy Field vault]

I nearly put my back out again a couple of weeks ago.

It was pouring with rain and it was bin night. So there I was gingerly stepping down the mossy, concrete slope when I slipped and lost my footing. It was quite a spectacular effort actually. The bin slammed into the metal fence with a loud bang, my umbrella went flying  (I have no idea why I bothered with the stupid thing in the first place) and I fell very ungracefully onto my arse.

It was not my finest moment.

After a uttering a few expletives, I scrambled up thinking that karma had just paid me back rather unpleasantly. Just minutes earlier I’d been thinking very ungenerous thoughts about a recent ex so I guess I deserved to land on my arse. Although you’d think karma could give me a break…after all, isn’t anger part of the healing process??

Anyway, as I retrieved the bin and began edging my way down the hill again (making sure to keep below the fence-line in case a neighbour decided to investigate the racket – I was now coated in random leaves, dirt and damp patches so I didn’t really want to be seen) I began thinking cranky thoughts about the annoying things you have to do when you’re single.

Taking the bin out is obviously one of those things. At least if there was a man in the house we could toss for the ‘bin privilege’ and I’d have a 50 percent chance of escape. Okay, that’s a lie. I would want him to take out the bins (be quiet my feminist heart!).

And then there’s the grocery shopping. Actually I don’t mind doing the shopping so much. My issue is more about getting the groceries from the car to the house…in the rain.

I can’t tell you how many times those bloody bags have split and tins have rolled down the hill. Or I’ve ended up with muddied and bruised tomatoes as my hair is plastered to my face while torrential rain claims me as a victim again.

I often wonder what my neighbours think when they see these types of the ‘incidents’ in my front yard.

Until recently they could view something I called a ‘metal sculpture’ on my lawn. Although if I’m honest, its art value was probably minimal. In fact, my neighbours probably referred to it as ‘that old garden pergola eyesore that looks like it’s been through a cyclone’.

I’m just grateful the ‘sculpture’ was located elsewhere last year when I had to sprint across the lawn to flee a horde of wasps. One of my neighbours patched me up with some calamine after that experience but my injuries could have been more severe if I’d had to hurdle twisted metal as well.

The wasps had built their nest under the ant-capping at the bottom of my front stairs. There they buzzed and gathered to launch attacks on unsuspecting passersby.

I had no idea how to get rid of them.

I did consider trying to smoke them out (I can remember Dad doing that when I was little). But, knowing me, I probably would’ve burned my house down in the process so I decided against that approach.

I also didn’t have anything in my wardrobe resembling a beekeeper’s outfit, so getting close to the wasps wasn’t really an option.

I mulled over the problem for a few weeks and only used the back door to get in and out. The wasps had staked their claim and I had no counter-attack.

Eventually I came up my own ingenious solution. And so operation Wasp Carnage began.

One sunny day I backed my car alongside the nest and climbed into the passenger seat. Then, while tightly gripping a can of insect spray in one hand and uttering a silent prayer that I wouldn’t die of insecticide inhalation or a targeted wasp attack inside the car, I began rolling the automatic window up and down rapidly and spraying inset spray through the gap. I did suffer some minor hand bruising during this escapade (kept jamming my hand in the bloody window).  And the rosemary bush immediately underneath the nest didn’t survive the poisonous deluge. But those wasps were no more.

Who says women can’t do everything!

PS. Thank you to all the kind friends who have subsequently provided me with several sensible strategies re wasp eradication. I will now be better prepared in the future.