Woman eating wasp

I had a surreal experience this afternoon. Alison and I drove over to Heathfield House in the London Borough of Croydon, near the top of Addington Hills. Alison had read in Inside Croydon that there would be cream teas served on the terrace with a great view of the Biggin Hill Festival of Flight.

Thanks to the excellent weather and the lovely surroundings, we did have a great time - with two exceptions. Firstly, it was really a bit too far from the action (I was able to follow what was going on through binoculars, but Alison can't seem to manage binoculars because of her short-sightedness). The Red Arrows of course were easy to watch, as they trail smoke, and by being a long way off we actually got to see some extended manoeuvres in their entirety. They also came right over the house at low level a couple of times, eliciting screams of excitement from the many kids present.

No, the main drawback was the pesky wasp that kept bothering Alison and taking her eyes off the flying display. I kept telling her not to try to shoo it away - "ignore it and it'll ignore you". This tactic didn't work - it settled on her arm or hand repeatedly and she said it was stinging her. I doubted it, because wasps don't sting unless threatened and they feed on sugary things and dead creatures.

But I offered to swap places with her to see if it would then attack me in her place. To my amazement, this worked for a while - I kept feeling this weight on my left hand while trying to look through the binoculars, and eventually it became too irritating to ignore - it felt as if someone was applying tweezers to my skin. I flapped at it a few times to chase it away and, oh calamity, it went back to Alison.

At this point, there was a lull in the display and so we went inside to get our tea and a slice of cake or scone. When we came back out, the Red Arrows display was just starting. Nobody had seized our places on the stone parapet, so we went back to them - and promptly, so did the wasp. Alison did her best to ignore it but it was persistent, so much so that when she next looked down at her left ring finger there was blood! The wasp had bitten her so hard that she was bleeding. Thankfully, having sucked up some of the blood, the infernal creature seems to have been satisfied and buzzed off. It wasn't the slightest bit interested in the jam or cream on my scones or the icing on Alison's cake.

Is this a new breed of wasp - the vampire wasp?! Such things have been reported previously, but nobody appears to have taken the report seriously.