I’m not sure that we hit 27 degrees yesterday but we were certainly in the warm 20s with bright blue skies in the morning that became progressively overcast as the day went on. One of the interesting side effects of this sudden, and as it turns out brief flourish of summer weather was its effect on the insect population.

I don’t, but no doubt some enthusiastic and dedicated entomologist does know where flies go at the end of the summer. It can’t be very far away for more than a dozen of them, fooled by this temporary summer, buzzed back to invade my kitchen yesterday. Most I am pleased to report were found dead on arrival. That’s my arrival back from the golf course.

A few were sluggishly hanging on to curtains and lightshades and a couple attempted brief flights. I killed them. Others hid overnight but by lunchtime today I had exterminated the living and disposed of all the bodies except for one that I have left struggling in a spider’s web as a warning to those who may still be skulking about.

In the evening several examples of another species, this time a beetle like creature whose method of locomotion is a cross between a scuttle and a hop decided to play about on the kitchen floor. They are usually about an inch long and not very pretty. They scurry across a foot or so of floor and then remain stationary for ages. Can they be imbibing some sort of nourishment from the tiles, or are they, on the contrary, laying down some microscopic excrement? Maybe they are just thinking about the glory days to come when the insects take over the earth.

Whatever they were doing it was a bit of a distraction to someone who was watching a DVD of a film that he had missed in the cinemas last winter. They were not welcome unlike the film which was in fact Welcome. Whether I had sated my bloodlust with the flies or hated the thought of scraping squashed beetles from the floor or was being softened by the moving movie I don’t know, but I carefully captured them one at a time and returned them to the wild, including several recidivists who squeezed back in under the door.

While I love warm weather there’s a bit of me that’s now thinking that it wouldn’t be too bad if it was just a bit cold and slightly miserable for my last week.