This morning I fell to reflecting on the numerous different ways I have been abruptly wakened over the years. Alarm clocks, of course. Fire alarms, thankfully only in practice. Telephones. People with whom I live. People who live next door. People delivering lectures or presentations, or acting in plays or films, or singing in concerts or operas.
Then there are the self-waking ones - needing a pee, needing to throw up, suffocating with bed-clothes in mouth, freezing with bed clothes on floor. There are the extraneous outside noises - sirens and pneumatic drills (that happened this morning), car alarms and burglar alarms, aeroplanes, and lorries reversing, yuppie cow at the back yelling down her phone in the garden, church bells, hedge-cutters and lawn mowers, refuse and recycling collections, street sweeping vehicles and helicopters.
Thunderstorms and high winds and deluge of rain. Bomb, once (I woke very suddenly one Saturday morning and glanced at the clock. It was only when I switched on the news that I realised it was no coincidence that my clock had said 10:26). Earthquake. When I was very small I was woken in the middle of the night by a sparrow in my bedroom. I still have a phobia about birds indoors.
And this morning, at what seemed like the middle of the night (although was only half an hour before my alarm would go off on a work-day) I woke with a searing pin-prick-like pain in my leg. I scratched it but it wouldn't go away. I inspected my leg and saw two bright red marks resembling pimples but yet, not pimples. And one further bright red spot surrounded by an area of swelling about the size of my hand. I heard a buzzing, and, still not fully awake, I thought 'oh, I've been stung'.
I went to the loo and reflected more. I have been stung, probably by a wasp or bee, whilst lying in bed in the 'middle of the night'. My leg is swelling up. My leg is swelling up so badly that I will probbaly be paralysed for at least a week and will probably have to go to A&E pronto. and I might even die. I then remembered a bottle of TCP in the bathroom cabinet, so I daubed it literally over my leg, then read the instructions which suggested first washing one's hands!
I returned to the bedroom and considered what to do about the wasp. I realised that I had better not shake the duvet in case it agitates the wasp. I then remembered the only other time I have been stung by a wasp, when a whole family of them made a nest in the spare bedroom. I considered spending the rest of the night on the sofa. Then, to my relief I saw a half dead wasp crawling along the bedroom floor, so I finished it off with a shoe and retired to bed.
When I was later rudely awoken by a pneumatic digging up Gert Cottage Boulevard (Victorian Water Main Renewal), all that lingered were three minuscule pink scabs and a hint of aroma of TCP. Lasting effects - no more significant than a heat or friction rash.
I have been stung by wasps twice in my life, both in my house, both times the wasps having emerged from duvets. I suspect that that might be a slightly freakish statistic.
