Warm dry evening: the luxury of

not having to bring in the washing

Total change of subject 1: Today I was given a free ticket to the Foodie Festival in a large Oxford park. I am not a ‘foodie’ but thought I’d go along to look. Very strange. It was quite like a normal festival – i.e. there were plenty of stalls selling Thai and Turkish food, liquorice, hog roast and alcohol, but such little music as there was, was dire and in place of fairy wings, sun-hats and hippy chic there were people selling cast iron pans and chopping boards. And not even a decent photo to be had.

Total change of subject 2: Yesterday evening I decided to find out what the internet said about my having put vinegar on my two wasp stings. There was some quite convincing biology – to do with quantity and position of venom – arguing that the old wives’ tale of vinegar for wasp stings and bicarbonate of soda for bee stings was nonsense. So in the interests of science I subjected myself to another wasp sting and rather than dirt-cheap malt vinegar I used an insect sting-relief cream with anti-histamine. Guess what? Instead of the pain disappearing after about an hour, I can still feel it 24 hours later. I see four possible explanations:

1. it was an especially venomous wasp
2. vinegar works
3. liquid evaporating on the sting works by keeping it cool and water would have been as good as vinegar
4. the people who sell the sting-relief cream write the wikipedia articles.

I am a small sample. If you are unfortunate enough to be stung, please do join the experiment.