Two flies were buzzing around the kitchen while I was switching everything off for the night, Bluebottles, which I could hear irritatingly rather than see in the twilight. Usually they come in, through the tiniest opening, then spend all their efforts flying from one end of the room to the other in vain efforts to get out. I’ll open the window or door, pull back the curtains usher them onwards, but they will miss the enormous opening and hit the closed window pane instead before finally exiting after a lot of effort.
The first, very fixed childhood memory of flies I have is during a General Election day which had turned out warm. The windows of our London flat were open onto the North End Road and bluebottles began to enter and buzz around the room. By late morning there were thirteen of them – and yes, my brothers and I were keeping as well a count as we could despite the speedily swerving back and forth of the creatures. We swatted at them, told them off and admittedly found it a bit fun as well as infuriating and don’t actually remember how we got them out which was likely down to my mum. And all to a soundtrack of the General Election coverage on the BBC, an election admittedly I had little interest in beyond the fact something ‘important’ was happening and that I have no idea who won.
My second memory of bluebottles is on a summer morning in infant school when we reached school to the sight of a poor dead bird on one side of the playground. We had to compete to look at it with numerous bluebottles buzzing around before the bell went for the start of the school day. Back in that playground a few hours later we were greeted with the horrific sight of the decaying bird covered with slithering maggots. That’s when the association between flies and maggots became fixed in my mind and made me shudder while continuing to watch in gruesome fascination.
Another memory intrudes; sitting in a courtyard of my family’s home while on a visit to Pakistan, chewing on a stick of sugar cane. I did not have to be still for it to be covered in what seemed like hundreds of flies which would buzz away when I shook the stick before descending onto it again once it was still, as if attached by an invisible rubber band. Those pesky flies, spoiling my enjoyment of the newly discovered delights of a sugar cane.
Over the years when flies come in we try to usher them out by opening the door or window wider. My daughter named them Bernard this year, for reasons inexplicable even to herself, but the name stuck and has been joined by Bernie for houseflies. We have no love for them so it’s rather perverse to be calling them by name.
Bluebottles and flies have come and gone, annoying us along the way but are also serving as a window to memories of their ancestors in the past.
quillandinkandparchment 