No! No! This was too much! This was way too much now!

‘Enough, Orla!’ I yelled. ‘You’re scaring me! Enough now! Enough!’

I leaned forward (resting my palms on my knees) and breathed deeply, slightly dizzy, my neck burning and throbbing remorselessly. And as I breathed I waited – resignedly – for that all too familiar aroma …

But … No. Nothing. I sniffed again, actively, glancing up, scowling. And as I glanced I could’ve sworn I saw something: three … no … four digits, scratched into the trunk …

‘Jesus wept! Carla?! Is that you, child?’

I inhaled, sharply. It was Mrs Barrow, presumably alerted from next door by my histrionics as she hung out her washing (Mrs Barrow can invariably be found – rain, sleet or shine – in the act of hanging out her washing).

She was leaning over the fence.

‘Good gracious me! What have you been an’ done to yourself, you foolish creature?’ she exclaimed. ‘Your face is all up in hives!’

I explained about the nettles. And the hornet. I moved closer to the fence and Mrs Barrow carefully appraised the back of my neck like one primate fastidiously inspecting another’s shaggy pelt for edible parasites.

‘Oh it’s got you good an’ proper!’ she muttered. ‘You must of upset its nest mucking about with that old mulberry stump. Up like a quail’s egg it is! Red as a beet! No sting more painful than a hornet’s in all the English countryside,’ (she helpfully added, with a smidgeon of patriotic pride) ‘not even your poison adder.’

I explained (still wincing at the discomfort, sniffing, eyes watering, moving gently from foot to foot) that I had come around to deliver an envelope to Mr Huff.

‘First things first …’ Mrs Barrow brandished a yellow, plastic peg-bag at me, opened it and withdrew a blue, plastic peg. ‘We needs to extract us that there sting.’

‘With a peg?’ I wasn’t entirely convinced.

‘Knock at it with a flat edge, that’s the secret. Never tweeze a sting, Carla. If you tweezes a sting you runs the risk of pushing yet more venom into the flesh. Mr Barrow was once bit twelve times by the same creature. Insides of his thigh. Come an’ stand by the fence a’gin and lean yourself slightly a-forward.’

Mrs Barrow then proceeded to remove the sting with the flat edge of the peg.

Ow.

I thanked her gratefully, in spite of the discomfort.

‘Now the next thing as we’ll be needing us is …’

I thought she might say ‘ice’.

‘WD-40.’

‘Sorry?’ I performed a little double-take.

‘Works a treat on bites, it does. Mr Barrow swears by it. I’ll go and fetch it from the shed, shall I? Won’t be more’n a minute.’

She promptly headed off towards the house.

‘You happen to notice that there shrine of yourn?’ she yelled over her shoulder, as an afterthought, as she rapidly retreated.

‘Sorry?’

‘I thought as you might’ve seen it.’ Mrs Barrow’s voice faded. ‘Quite marvellous, it is.’