And they're off

Our pet wasps are all grown up and have, quite literally, flown the nest. Either that or something ate them all. Looking forward to a nice bit of waspard in my sangwiches tomorrow.

Mrs Mungo Protector of Wasps

We had to remove a wasps nest from the top of our rabbit hutch a few days back. It was a magnificently girlie affair, with both of us scampering backwards and forwards trying to get the nest out without being stung. We did manage it, you'll be pleased to know, and ended up with the nest on a plastic tray on the the patio table.

It was a fairly small affair, probably around 10 grown wasps including the queen and a bunch of eggs which they were still faithfully tending to despite what must have been a fairly traumatic experience of having your house ripped from it's nice warm, dark cave and dumped in a bright cold tray. We didn't really know what to do with them but decided not to do anything obviously nasty like chuck them in the bin. The next day, the wasps were still there, tending their eggs much to Mrs Mungo's surprise. She felt so sorry for the predicament she'd left them in, and so impressed with their maternal instinct, that she moved them to the greenhouse to give them a bit of shelter. Later on she went out to check they were OK before putting the bunnies to bed.

So it seems Mrs Mungo now has some pet wasps! Bless her.

It's also a little known fact that while bees make honey, wasps make mustard. I'm looking to some of that in my ham sandwiches.

What I did on my holiday by U. Mungo aged 40 3/4

Yes, it's true I've been more than a little slack about updating the blog. I can only blame complete and utter laziness.

However, I got up to something pretty spectacular last Friday thanks to a groovy birthday present from my lovely wife. I got to drive round Thruxton Race Track in:

A Porsche Cayman
A Ferrari 430 Scuderia

And a Formula Renault Single Seater


Needless to say it was excellent fun, great instructors, great cars and superb weather.

While the Ferrari has excellent pose value and the Porsche very easy to drive, the car I enjoyed the most was the single seater. Despite being rev limited to 4,500 RPM it was still good for around 115 down the back straight and presumably the wings gave it some measure of downforce for the corners. It felt absolutely astonishing and cornered like it was on rails. It's also the first time I've ever felt the wind on my face like that, presumably nothing new to motorcyclists but a novel experience for me. It'll go round corners a lot faster than I will, that's for sure! A quick back of an envelope calculation based on the photograph creation times (yes I bought the CD of photos) puts me doing lap times of just over 2 minutes, which is pretty weak but I wasn't actually trying to go fast, just to drive the lap properly like the instructors had showed me. That said over 2.4 miles that works out at about 70 miles an hour so I was hardly hanging around. The lap record though is under a minute, so I've got a little way to go yet!