There was a news story the other week that horrified me to such a degree that I almost sealed up all of the windows of my house, never to be opened again. As far as news stories go, it wasn’t even so bad; compared to the mass-murders, government-sanctioned violences and natural disasters going on around the world it was positively tame. Regardless, it seemed to trigger an overreaction in me and I went straight home and disinfected all of my work surfaces and hoovered the shortbread crumbs off the stairs that had been lying there for a couple of days.
Because Llanelli, a town in Wales, had been plagued with a repulsive fly outbreak. (At time of writing, it’s still going on.) People were having to eat their supper in their cars with the windows tightly shut. Residents on the radio gave anecdote after anecdote about just how many flies there were and the more they spoke, the more anxious I was to get home in the car and give the house a thorough bleaching before wrapping the whole thing in a giant sheet of cling film. One lady in Llanelli cared for her very elderly next door neighbour and had to go in every few minutes to clean the flies from her body; another had gone to a kids’ party and the food, children and balloons had all been covered in flies. (Weirdly it was the balloons part that got me. What a horrible image! Perhaps I’m a sociopath, because surely old ladies and children trump balloons in the compassion stakes, but there you go.) I’m...