Commencement to this wonderful Monday morning saw me being stung by a bee. The attack took place at 8:00am in the palm of my right hand (towards the thumb) whilst I was on a motorcycle heading for a two-hour trip back to Athens to go straight to work (the culprit was never seen by the victim but a search is out for a perp having the following description: approx. one inch long, yellow and black stripy body, wings, bad temper and missing sting). I’ve never been stung before and it had naively crossed my mind that I may get to go through life without ever experiencing it.

For whatever reason (bee it that I heroically saved a bumble bee drowning in the pool yesterday by providing a little life raft in the form of a leaf which it climbed on and I dragged out to safety; bee it that I re-christened one of the characters in my book “Bea”; bee it that I removed a wasp nest from my balcony door by way of a plastic supermarket bag and a broomstick), bees seem to have dominated my week resulting (unfairly, in my opinion) in me being savagely attacked. I thought the fact that jumbo mosquitos had declared war on my body all weekend was bad enough but this was before having been bee-stung.  Sticking my hand into a live electrical socket is the closest thing I can think of that would probably feel similar.

During the rest of the trip home (with a red swollen hand and a tear-stained face), I was trying to think of adequate words to describe the pain of a bee sting when all I could come up with was, “it was like, BAM and then, what the? Like, POW… then THROB, THROB, THROB,” which is not very impressive for a writer. In my defence, I was trying to simultaneously (a) concentrate on staying alive on the motorcycle going 200km per hour since I was only holding on with one hand (OK, I wasn’t driving, but it’s still scary) and (b) trying to be aware of whether or not I was going into anaphylactic shock. I’m still in shock (of the regular kind; not anaphylactic) and actually impressed that I managed to come up with that whole ‘electrical socket’ comparison. Blame the bee.

On a happier note and to draw focus away from violent insect attacks for a moment, I did manage to write 1000 words and read a few chapters during the weekend. It’s not much but every little helps. Right, quoting Tesco ads is a sign that I need to end this post pronto so I’ll be off, happy in the knowledge that this Monday is soon drawing to an end.