I don’t know at what point it is in the rainy season – and I want to believe it is more the rainy season, though now it is the dry season, I may recant – that ants and mosquitos up the bolefacity ante, no pun intended, to colonise house and home.

There seems to be no logic, either, in where these creatures congregate in their bid to provoke the unsuspecting while they eat, sleep, rest, or frolic. Where I am, ants are most plentiful by my bedside table. I don’t eat in my room. There’s never any food on the bedside table, with the exception of the glass of water I always have. But every morning, faithfully, there’s a long line of ants shimmying up the side of the glass, and a watery grave of at least two dozen dearly departed creatures in my blinkin’ glass of water.

Why? I dat sweet?

And the mosquitos…they seem to like dark airless corners. Corners with curtains. So they can skulk underneath some piece of furniture, or in the crease of the curtain, before launching their attack. And nothing seems to repel them these days. Not the tonne of Citronella – spray, oil, candle, nuttin. Not de Baygon. Or is it Bagon? Not the Det. Kill dem dead my backside. Not de cockset. Not dem fancy lantern. Iz like dey watching me put out all dem ting, an’ dat high pitch buzzin’ you does hear in yuh ears eh buzzin’ at all, but mosquito crackin’-to-cocoa up. Not even de wild flailing arms trying desperately to squash dem wit’ one good clap does make dem take pause.

Too much o’ bitin’ insects, man.

And not de good kind neider.