Human Quarry
DESPITE the intermittent triviality that characterises the normally unintelligible minutiae of my day-to-day existence, what you are about to read is absolutely true. More than nine years have elapsed since I decided to emigrate to Portugal and during that time I have been engaged in a bitter and loathsome feud. What can only be described as a rancorous clash between two hated adversaries first began when I was attacked by a huge bluebottle outside my home. These unwarranted acts of violence have continued to this very day and, between the months of July and September, whenever I leave my house and follow the winding cobblestones up to the local high street, I am consistently dive-bombed by a winged menace that strikes twice a day in the very same spot. Given that the lifespan of the average bluebottle is just six weeks, I have calculated that this buzzing monstrosity should have perished sometime in early-August 2015. However, year after vicious year I have been subjected to an aerial barrage during which this irrepressible scourge of the insect world attempts to consume as much of my perspiration as possible.
Not only does my overgrown nemesis launch itself at my face and neck with all the passion and persistence of a bad-tempered rottweiler, but it continues to pursue me for a distance of up to fifty metres. Due to the fact that each brutal ambush is launched from behind the stone wall of a nearby orchard I am absolutely convinced that one and the same bluebottle is responsible. Spending my summers flailing my arms around like a drowning man, therefore, has finally brought me to the conclusion that one of my late enemies has reincarnated as a calliphora vomitoria and is determined to drive me insane. As the Irish playwright, John Guinan, once said: “Feuds are forgiven, if not forgotten, in the hour of death." I can't see myself outliving this indestructible swine, let alone forgiving more than eight years of psychological trauma, so I might have to invest in a small bag of napalm and bring the whole sorry episode to a close.
Postscript: If you found this tale interminably dull - and I did warn you - then please spare a thought for my long-suffering wife, who has been forced to listen to it for the past eight years.