Waspish

Just lately, there have been quite a lot of weird noises around my flat. One of the first things I noticed when I moved in was that the advertisement hoarding on the end of the building was audible in the night - sounding very much like breathing as it rolls to one ad, then the other. When the tarpaulin was installed over my roof to protect against rain leaking through (which is still working successfully!), any amount of wind would set it rippling and rumbling (which tends to suggest there's next to no insulation between my ceiling and the roof!), frequently sounding like a person or large animal walking about up there.

...Just last night, I was catching up on some of the television I'd missed during the week (having a Freeview box that records is precisely as cool and as annoying as I'd predicted) when I started to hear a peculiar buzzing sound. Naturally, my first instinct was somewhere along the lines of "OMG, MY COMPUTER IS SPARKING AND IS ABOUT TO EXPLODE!"... yet when, in a fine display of common sense, I moved closer to the computer, I realised that the buzzing wasn't even in my lounge.

Moving out to the hall, there was nothing but silence... But something clicked in my head about the nature of the noise. It sounded very much like a fly butting itself against a lightbulb. I've had moths before, and plenty of those little flies that always occupy the centre of the room, darting back and forth, and the occasional bluebottle, so I was quite prepared to remove this new interloper... I just needed to find it.

And then, I saw it... a bloody great wasp. And I mean a really big one. I'm not exaggerating when I say it's about 2cm long. It was resting on the lampshade near the front door, then flying out and battering itself against the lightbulb for a few minutes. Panic started to set in... Flies and moths I'm prepared for, but a wasp? A large, potentially aggressive, multiple-stinging insect?

Surprisingly, I was able to use my usual trick - wait till it's standing still, coax it into a jar, then close the jar - and the matter was very much dealt with. The only question that remains is how the hell such a large and noisy insect got into my flat undetected in the first place.

And, naturally, such powerful imagery as a massive wasp in my hall managed to penetrate into my dreams... I was staying (or living) in a large, probably single-floored house. Everything was very nice and bright, the sun was shining outside... and there was a large section of collapsed ceiling in my bedroom, right above my bed. It actually looked suspiciously like the hole in my real-life bathroom ceiling, but on a much larger scale, and with light pouring through from a mysteriously lit loft containing all kinds of mysterious things.

Including a wasps' nest.

I don't remember much of the dream beyond leaving the room (and closing the door behind me) to report to someone "Aaaaand there's a wasps' nest in my room".

Very shortly going out to my folks' place, since my sister and niece are visiting... I'm told that their appointment at the hospital yesterday went so well, she won't need another check-up for six months... Potentially right in time for my birthday.