I still can't see a wasp without remembering my first wasp sting. We were sitting in deckchairs on the front at [I think it was] Brighton. It was about 1936 when I would have been 4. A wasp suddenly stung me under the left arm. I naturally screamed quite loudly and then sobbed and cried. A man in a nearby chair frowned at my mother and asked, none too politely, if she couldn't keep that noisy child quiet. My mother's brother Dave, a stout and successful self·made cockney businessman [I think he was in trading-stamps at the time, tho ultimately dealt in wine & spirit imports in Eastcheap till he died of a sudden heart attack on holiday in Torquay in 1954 aged 54] leapt immediately to our defence. I can still hear my Uncle Dave saying loudly to the officious by-sitter. "Pity it didn't bloody-well sting you!"

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