Now it's the caterpillars

What is it with the bloody insects around here? Not content with spiders the size of small plates in my bathroom, or enormous crickets that look as if they've been armour-plated in the guest room, I am now afflicted with poisonous caterpillars falling onto me from trees. It isn't funny and it isn't clever.

There I was, wandering around the garden, suitably attired - so I thought - in socks, proper shoes, long trousers and elbow-length leather gauntlets (I'm not kidding), when I felt something land on my neck and brushed it off. Tum te tum, I gather some beautiful azaleas to put in a vase and return to the house. A short while later I feel something on my neck again and flick it off. It lands on the workbench and I notice a small hairy caterpillar. 'Oh!', I thought. 'Hairy caterpillars are often an irritant to the birds that try and eat them.' So I gingerly scooped it onto a bit of card and chucked it out of the door.

An hour or so later my neck began to be a bit itchy and I thought I must have been bitten by a mosquito, but no! I have a caterpillar-trail of hives all around my neck, with new lumps appearing by the minute. My neck is, in fact, red, swollen and almost unbearably itchy and I am feeling a bit pissed off. I can't cover it up because it's so itchy, so I'm attracting a lot of unwelcome 'looks' as well as unwelcome pests. WHAT IS IT ABOUT THE BLOODY INSECTS IN THIS PLACE?