We watched in wonder. Three other lads were pulling in fish about as fast as they could cast out and pull in their lines. Fish after fish they pulled in-and they did not even have proper fishing tackle, Just bent pins tied roughly onto the ends of their lines and crudely baited; it seemed that almost anything would work as bait.
The water was a large shallow pool out in the countryside not far from my home. It was surrounded by trees and bushes which gave good shade against the sun for the large numbers of golden carp browsing in the depths, and no doubt easy to catch because their sheer huge numbers must have been difficult to support in the limited volume of water. So they must have been very hungry, and would go for the simplest bait. The water was spoiled by one thing: in its depths were masses of dumped domestic goods, washing machines, bicycles,televisions,-all sorts of stuff. We wondered how folks managed to drag all these things to the pool, as the nearest houses were not very close at all. We determined to return with our own fishing tackle in the not too distant future.
Some days later I returned to this spot with my own crude rod and line; my friends could not make it at the time, so I was alone. I settled down, fixed my bait and cast it in. There seemed to be a great number of large flies around, but I tried to ignore them as I wished to concentrate on the expected fish bonanza. However the flies became a thick and persistent cloud and I could no longer ignore them -then to my horror I realized that they were not flies - I had a huge swarm of WASPS BUZZING AROUND MY HEAD! Next to me was a hole in the bank and wasps were marching out of this hole six abreast, taking off to join the swarm around me. Hundreds of them had already settled in my hair and on my clothes.
I leaped up and ran as fast as I could-but soon realised that this was not good enough. I could not outrun the wasps; they were in a big cloud just behind my head and the distance was not increasing no matter how I tried to put on speed - on the contrary more wasps were catching up and landing on me. There was no-one in sight to help in any way, and I was desperately trying to think of ways to get rid of the wasps.
I had heard that people in similar circumstances had escaped the attentions of swarms of bees, wasps or hornets by diving into water. But the nearby pool was so full of junk that it could be very dangerous to dive in there. So there had to be another way.
Suddenly I had a brainwave - I ran towards the edge of the field, where a line of bushes formed a hedge at its border. I found a place where the branches were thin but closely spaced, and dived straight through the bushes. The springy branches sprung straight back and swiped away most of the following cloud of wasps. When I looked back, there were only a small fraction of that huge cloud left, most of them had not found their way through the bushes and many must have been swiped away. Now I dived through another bush to clear most of the remainder of the following cloud, then headed for home.
On the way home I discovered that there were still hundreds of wasps all over me - but miraculously I had only been stung once, on the right arm. However if I had not got rid of most of them, they could all have stung at once, I had heard that this could happen, and the victim of so many stings could be in serious trouble, even be killed. When I reached home, the house was empty; all the family were out. I rushed to my bedroom and began to peel off my clothes with the loads of wasps which were still crawling all over every item. There were wasps up my shirt sleeves, in my vest, shirt and jumper. Each item had to be peeled off very carefully to avoid squeezing any of the many wasps in it!
There were wasps in my pants and even plenty of them in my underpants. I took off my shoes and there were dozens of wasps inside each sock. They had crawled as far as they could go without being trodden on, and it was quite a job to remove each sock without risk of being stung.
At last it was done and I rushed to the shower to remove all traces of the hundreds of insects, and put on a change of new clothing. My bedroom was still buzzing with them. I opened the door a fraction and directed a good squirt of insecticide within, then closed the door and left that room - I slept elsewhere that night ! !
Next day I cleaned out the room. I did not count the wasps, there were too many of them to bother counting, I just swept them up and binned them. Changed the bedclothes and gave that room a thorough clean. Now thanks to my own efforts, quick thinkinng and meticulous care I had escaped what was a potentially very unpleasant, possibly dangerous situation. If anyone else finds themselves surrounded by wasps etc., I hope that this story might help them escape!

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