Wasps may have stung me in the testicles –but I love them anyway | Jules Howard

You might expect me to hate wasps after this experience in the woods but, against all the odds, I find that I am becoming their staunchest defender

Wasps. Yellow jackets. Jaspers. Picnic-marauders. Meat-bees. Whatever you want to call them - September is the month where their world collapses and they intrude upon ours. This is when they fling themselves into our wine glasses and eagerly zigzag at picnics toward the ice-cream glazed lips of our offspring; when they dart into our hair and armpits or delight themselves in our breakfast condiments and newly opened soda cans. Despite all this, I urge you to be their friends.

This endorsement does not come easy to me. Eight years ago I found myself screaming, alone and naked, in a woodland. I had inadvertently, accidentally, naively urinated on a wasps' nest and the wasps were giving me a damn good telling off about it. I had torn my clothes off. I had to. So intense was their rage, they were stinging and biting the fabric. I had to shake them off every single item of clothing I had. There were thousands of them. Passing hikers came gingerly over, attracted by my screams and eager to help me. I had to shout back "I'm OK!" to encourage them to back away from seeing my nakedness. I wasn't ok though. I really wasn't. For starters, there were wasp stings all over my genitals. Honestly, all over them. Though my testicles looked satisfyingly large I was in a great deal of pain. I was for days.