Today I had my first irritating encounter this summer with a wasp. It attempted to share my prosciutto and melon with me while I kept trying to swat it away. Ignore them and they'll go away, I was told as a child. I did, it didn't and then stung me. Since then, I am a whirling windmill of arms but they persist in buzzing back and often I retreat indoors, defeated.

My Mum kept a jamjar by the back doorstep, containing the final dregs of strawberry jam mixed with water. It had a hole in the lid just big enough for a wasp to crawl in and then to become trapped in the stickiness. We would shake it up and watch in fascinated horror as the wasps got angry but could not escape. Such are the things that shape us!