JUNE A Journal of my Life with Wilson Vermilingua OBE
Original photographs of Wilson used by kind permission of TamanduaGirl: www.livingwithanteaters.com
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monday After extensive research (consisting mostly of idly clicking through Ant Cookery pages on the internet while listening to Spotify) Wilson has drawn up a family tree for young Johnson. Needless to say, Johnson is very excited!
tuesday Diesel’s Relaxation Tape arrived this morning. Wilson is in his Museum looking for a cassette player - he says he’s ‘pretty sure’ he’s seen one in there somewhere. I suggested that most museums had a catalogue of their exhibits, but he said that too much organisation would deprive visitors of the spirit of serendipitous discovery as they picked their way through his displays. Still, there’s no hurry - Diesel is as relaxed as can be. If he was any more relaxed he’d be floating belly up at the top of his bowl...
wednesday Wilson finally located his Ghetto Blaster and is playing the relaxation tape to Diesel in the kitchen. Before the tape started, Diesel was already completely chilled, but as it progressed Wilson too became more and more unwound and has now fallen fast asleep. Diesel, thinking Wilson had passed out, was somewhat alarmed by this, and despite my reassurance is now quite agitated. While this is the exact opposite of what W had hoped to achieve, I’ve never seen him so relaxed.
thursday After listening to Diesel’s relaxation tape, Wilson became unconscious and had to be carried to bed. This morning he awoke bright, early and full of enthusiasm. He told me he had a dream in which he invented a new sort of clock that didn’t need adjusting when the hour changes to and from Summer Time (Daylight Saving Time) and with help from Tiny Toy and Johnson he is now busy remembering how the clock worked in his dream so he can invent it in real life. He says this could be ‘The greatest thing since ODDSIES!’ If it is to be at all successful, it will need to be quite a lot greater than ODDSIES!
friday Wilson stayed in bed all day today, inventing - he really thinks he’s got his new clock contraption sorted! He took a break from his designing only to ask me to pop out to the Mr Softee van to get him a chocolate icecream. Since today is World Chocolate Ice-Cream Day I indulged him in this... and had one myself. I think it’s important to observe these special celebrations to keep them going. Especially when ice cream is involved!
saturday It takes only a couple of sunny days for Wilson to be well-and-truly bitten by the gardening bug, so today we headed off for a (surprisingly expensive) trip to the local Garden Centre. I’m just really hoping that this isn’t a portent of one of W’s infamous Charity Garden Open Days...
sunday Having paid for the plants, the next problem was fitting them all into the car. Of course even when we get them home, the real trick will be to get Wilson to plant them, rather than sit around drinking Ant Gin-based cocktails in the sun while talking about planting them...
monday Watched by an admiring crowd of spectators, Wilson has planted up all of his garden centre purchases, and I must admit they do look lovely. He has done well! He plans to spend the rest of the day practicing with his yo-yo, today being World Yo-Yo Day. How does he know these things? I think Google has a LOT to answer for!
tuesday Wilson was so impressed by the relaxation tape he bought for Diesel that he has decided to record one himself. He told me that he would sell it on eBay and that it would hypnotise people who bought it, enabling them to achieve a state of deep, deep relaxation. Unfortunately, whenever he starts recording he hypnotises himself into a state of deep, deep relaxation. Well, I suppose that proves it’s effective!
wednesday After accidentally hypnotising himself several times yesterday, once I’d carried him unconscious to his bed Wilson dreamed of another ingenious adaptation for his New Clock invention! He’s sitting in the conservatory making notes before he forgets his dream. His clock contraptions are so top secret, he won’t even tell me or Antony how they work. In other news, he has decided NOT to market his own range of relaxation tapes, lest everyone who buys them starts dreaming about brilliant inventions themselves. He wants to keep all the best inventions for himself, to make him rich and famous! Seems fair enough to me. Also, too few people still have cassette players for his tapes to have been great sellers...
thursday Lyn, one of Wilson’s Facebook friends, suggested that he might like to take part in Friends of the Earth’s Great British Bee Count. Since this would involve a lot of sitting around in the garden he embraced the idea, grabbing his iPad and making himself comfortable in the sunshine. Polly, Billi and Johnson came over to see what he was up to, and W immediately counted them: ‘One, two HairyFooted Garden Bees - check!’ Outrage ensued as Billi said she wanted to be described as ‘Young, pretty with luxuriant fur, fun-loving and GSOH.’ ‘And in a relationship!’ Polly added, pointedly. ‘Also, definitely NOT hairy-footed!’ ‘Oh no,’ Billi agreed, ‘NOT hairy-footed. We both shave our feet weekly and before we go clubbing!’ They both then demanded to know why W hadn’t included Johnson in the count.
friday The bees demanded to know why their child Johnson had been excluded from the Bee survey. ‘Well, that’s because Johnson is a ladybird, not a bee,’ Wilson answered reasonably. Polly and Billi immediately retorted, in unison, ‘Johnson is a bee BY ADOPTION!’ Reluctantly, Wilson amended his entry, muttering that this made a mockery of the scientific method. Just then sTony and sToneye shuffled in and asked whether they could be honorary bees as they’d never been in a survey before... If you would like to take part in the survey, head to http://greatbritishbeecount.co.uk/ but I wouldn’t let the bees see what you put on the questionnaire.
saturday I was awoken this morning by Wilson’s muffled cries of ‘Go away! I’m busy!’ Emerging from my bedroom to see what was going on I was most surprised to see a queue outside the bathroom door. Surprised because Polly and Billi have their own bathroom in the hive and because Wilson is well known for his dislike of water - the only time he ever uses the bathroom is when he pretends to shower to stop me nagging him about washing. Eventually the door opened a crack and W’s head emerged. ‘What is it?’ he demanded tersely, ‘What do you want?’ Polly replied that they needed to speak with him on a matter of some urgency. W replied, ‘Wait for me in the kitchen and I’ll come down when I’m finished!’ before slamming the door. His muffled voice then added, ‘You could make some coffee while you’re waiting, if you like.’
sunday Wilson finally burst into the kitchen brandishing a Polaroid in his paw. ‘Look everyone, I’ve done a Selfie in the bathroom!’ he exclaimed, proudly waving it in the bees’ faces. ‘I’m going to post it on Twitter and be a Twitter Celebrity!’ Once it had been admired to his satisfaction, he asked the bees what they had wanted to see him about, and Polly replied that they needed him to log in to the Bee Survey site again. W sighed and patiently explained that neither Antony, Tiny Toy, Diesel the Goldfish or even he himself could be Honorary Bees. ‘I’d be drummed out of the Science Club if anyone found out!’ he said apologetically. ‘No, no, it’s not that!’ Billi interrupted. ‘We need you to update the survey by adding our new child, Johnson!’
monday ‘But I added Johnson last time!’ Wilson exclaimed. ‘You made him an Honorary Bee, which I didn’t altogether agree with, but I put my reservations aside and counted him in the survey!’ ‘That was our first child,’ Polly beamed, ‘This is our youngest, Johnson Minor. Do try to keep up!’ The bees moved aside, revealing a diminutive blackand-red figure that bore little resemblance to a bee. ‘Why are both your children called Johnson?’ W demanded. ‘All ladybirds are called Johnson,’ Billi explained. ‘Haven’t you ever heard of the famous “Lady Bird Johnson”?’
tuesday Ant Wars II: Wilson examined the diminutive insect closely, watched over protectively by its proud parents. ‘Hello little... er, thing.’ he said by way of introduction, before turning to Billi and asking, ‘Can it do any tricks?’ Billi bristled angrily, but Polly pretended not to notice this social gaffe and asked W whether he would take a group photograph of their whole family that she and Billi could hang in the hive.
wednesday Wilson agreed to take a group photograph of the entire bee family, even though it would mean using up his last sheet of Polaroid film. (He said this quite pointedly to me, so I think that’s my cue to buy him some more.) He had just arranged everyone nicely for the photo when the sTone Brothers sidled up and pointed out that, since they are now honorary bees, they ought to be in the photograph too. Billi groaned and rolled her eyes, but Polly said, ‘Oh, come on then, but keep to the outside. At the back. Further back!’ Wilson has thoughtfully written everyones name on the photo, in case anyone forgets who they are.
thursday Wilson was sitting in the garden watching Tiny Toy play football with the Johnson Brothers when he called me over for what he called a ‘serious talk.’ ‘Well, New Dad,’ he began, ‘the Solstice is passed and the nights are drawing in - what task do you think is worrying people most as winter approaches?’ On such a hot day I was surprised by this question, but I hazarded a guess: ‘Christmas shopping? Shovelling snow?’ ‘Putting the clocks back!’ he said, as though I hadn’t spoken. ‘People are dreading the time and effort of putting their clocks back an hour, or forward an hour in the southern hemisphere, as the case may be, and they will pay almost any sum to get out of doing that chore twice every year!’
friday I thought I knew what was coming next, but I was wrong. W continued. ‘So I want to ask you, New Dad, to ask everyone who reads your AntWars2 blog to tell a friend about it. That way you will double your readership!’ ‘So twice as many people appreciate my writing?’ I asked. ‘So twice as many people will learn about my new Winter And Summer Timekeeping Equipment clock when I reveal it later this week!’ ‘Offside!’ shouted Tiny Toy as he lay on the ground feigning an injury. TT has clearly been watching too much World Cup on tv - I must get Wilson to have a word with Antony about that.
saturday Leaving the youngsters repairing the goalpost and arguing about who would be Costa Rica in the next game, Wilson is rummaging about in his bedroom looking for his new clock invention prototype. While he’s doing that, I would like to make an appeal on his behalf (‘Make it an impassioned appeal, New Dad!’ were his instructions) to everyone reading this to send it to a friend. Surprisingly, this is not to expose more people to my peerless prose but to increase the sales base of his Winter And Summer Timekeeping Equipment clock, which he will unveil publicly tomorrow. I hope that was impassioned enough! Thank you for your kind attention.
sunday This morning Wilson assembled everyone, even Diesel the Goldfish, in the kitchen to unveil his new invention, his Winter And Summer Timekeeping Equipment clock. Everyone gazed admiringly as he explained how it worked. Boiled down from Wilson’s 40 minute presentation: in the winter you tell the time using the grey numbers, while in the summer, during Daylight Saving Time, you use the blue numbers and you never have to put the clock forward or back an hour! That’s it - simple. Everyone nodded and agreed that it was very interesting, but honestly no one in his audience ever bothers with clocks or telling the time. W was a little bit disappointed not to have had a call from Radio Five Live’s Breakfast Show for his hero Nicky Campbell to interview him about his clock. He ruminated for a minute before declaring, ‘Tomorrow. They’ll probably call tomorrow.’
monday Having left the sTone brothers outside yesterday so they didn’t frighten the children, Wilson showed his WASTE clock to them separately this morning. sTony said it looked a bit too complicated for him, he’d stick to measuring the length of his shadow if he ever needed to know the time. Which he never did. So W is now considering a simplified design for his Mk II WASTE Clock. However, he’s read in New Scientist about scientists at Harvard building a Quantum Entanglement Atomic Clock, and he’s a bit worried that they may pinch his best clock-design ideas, ‘Just like Mr Watson and Mr Crick pinched the DNA idea from poor Ms Rosalind Franklin!’ he explained. ‘That was SO unfair!’ There has still been no call from Radio Five...
tuesday Presumably while scouring New Scientist for articles about the proposed Quantum Entanglement Clock, Wilson has come across an article explaining why showering every day is bad for one. I found it magnetted to the fridge door this morning, where I couldn’t miss it. He’s not trying to persuade me to shower less, he’s trying to justify his showering habits. Daily showering is bad for you? I wish he’d have a yearly shower! Now he’s read this, I’ll never persuade him...
wednesday Do other fathers, I wonder, have to hide away science journals as though they were smutty magazines? I like Wilson taking an interest in science and technology, but whenever he gets hold of a New Scientist he finds something in it to worry about. While researching the Quantum Entanglement Clock and the Dangers of Excessive Showering he’s come across an article about feeding the world’s increasing population on insects. ‘One of the scientists said that ants were “by a wide margin the most delicious insect we tasted”! If everyone starts eating ants, there won’t be enough to go around, New Dad - there won’t be enough for ME!’ His quandary is, he doesn’t know whether to stockpile ants for his own consumption, or market them to earlyadopter gourmets as an expensive luxury indulgence...
thursday Sometimes Wilson takes my by surprise with a deceptively simple question which I can’t readily answer. This morning he asked me: ‘New Dad, why do towels get dirty? They’re only used to dry the clean water that’s left on you after you’ve washed or showered, so they should just stay clean.’ He’s right, isn’t he?
friday When I came down to breakfast this morning, Wilson was waiting to tell me that one of his Twitter friends in Australia, Dr Mel (@Dr_Mel_Thompson) is a Medical Researcher and had answered his question about why towels get dirty. Apparently, the dirt on used towels is made of dead skin and microbes! I had no idea! Nor, of course, had W who has vowed to start giving towels a boil wash next laundry day because ‘Microbes are well yucky, and so is dead skin - eeeeeuw!’ His alternative, labour-saving suggestion - that after I wash I just ‘Shake yourself about a bit and drip dry, New Dad’ - I rejected out of hand. Dr Mel is clearly a good influence, though, as W has promised that he will start washing his paws every week and before cooking. I hope he’s not making himself a nuisance with her and stopping her from doing vital research I’ll have a word with him later. In the meantime he’s popped into the village to buy the ingredients for the ‘phenomenally wondrous’ dinner he’s going to cook for my birthday on Friday. I hope not too many ants are involved...