Confinement, Halloween and a Hornet.

Robby was feeling confined.

The feeling had been creeping up on him for a week, maybe more, whilst he himself was largely ignorant of the fact. Then, on Thursday evening it hit him and he was both aware and angry. 

The weird thing though was that he also saw it as an opportunity.

Unfortunately, it started badly; he tried to make some rose hip syrup, adding a few late sloe berries for weight, and ended up with stomach cramps that left him incapable of doing anything.

He made a mental not not to trust rose-hips too readily, even if the half pot of fromage blanc that he used as an accompaniment may have had something to do with it.

Or the mushrooms gathered that dawn and cooked at breakfast in an omelette.

The dawn had been beautiful, the first sun turned everything golden, even the greens.

In the far distance the mountains caught the edge of the early morning rays and since the mist was too sleepy to rise he saw for the first time the lakes and seas that once defined the forest.

He had to stop and just watch the morning unfold.

 

The night before he had been stung by a hornet. It wasn’t intended by either party; Robby thought it was a grass-hopper stranded inside the house and carefully picked it up in his hand to take it outside, the hornet thought it was the end of its world, and stung. 

At first Robby thought the grass-hopper had bitten him and a thought that that was an unusual occurrence flashed into his consciousness, until the pain alerted him to the fact that something else was going on.

He rushed to the kitchen, passing someone who asked him to look at a film of a Polar Bear, and doused his hand in vinegar.

It works for wasps he reasoned. 

His son showed unnatural resourcefulness and grabbed the suction device for sucking out snake poison, and claimed triumphantly: “I saw it come out!”

Bruised and battered, Robby went to bed early and slept badly because of the pain.

He was finally woken by the cat who was trying to open the food containers in the kitchen.

The food containers are metal and the floor is concrete.

 

“Are you going to do a pumpkin for Halloween?’ asked his son, over the omelette.

“I wasn’t planning to”, Robby replied.

 

But he did.

Two eyes, a nose, sharp teeth-y mouth.

Classic, simple.

He impaled the dead hornet in the side with the butcher’s knife.