Swarms have arrived – both bees and tourists

BLIMEY… that was enough for me! What with half-term coinciding with the spring bank holiday and sunshine thrown in for good measure after a long dreary lockdown, the West Country traffic this week was the worst I’ve ever seen.

Goodness knows what it will be like in Cornwall next week with the G7 summit.

This week’s invasion was obviously wonderful for hard-hit tourism providers and associated businesses, but as I sat motionless in traffic jams I did wonder if this wasn’t a case of the golden goose endangering its own golden egg.

Over the coming few days west of the Tamar, for example, I bet there will be loads of businesses which will not be reaping the G7 harvest, but who will be suffering the ramifications. Who’ll want to go to Cornwall after all the media publicity about potential gridlock?

Not me. This week has been bad enough. And I heard more than one tourist croak: “Never again!”

In one honeypot tourist village pub garden I overheard people talking longingly about their normal spring bank holiday haunts in the Med. Then I heard a radio interview with the boss of the South West Ambulance Service saying that last weekend they’d had a callout every 27 seconds.

It might be a bonanza for tourism providers etc, but our peninsula with its thin winding roads is just not geared up for mass invasions on this scale.

Well over two million Brits used to go abroad on holiday during this half-term week. Now, because of Covid restrictions, most are taking staycations and it seems a large percentage of them migrated to the West Country. And if half of them did holiday here, that would – in a rough calculation – have put half a million extra cars onto our normally quiet country roads.

You can have a bit of a rethink when the odds are suddenly stacked against you – as they were me in those traffic jams this week. You can turn anything on its head and strongly-held beliefs or prejudices can disappear in a trice.

You might once have thought: “Oh dear… All that air travel just for one half-term week. How terrible is that for the environment?” But sitting stationery on a choked main road, you begin to wonder if airliners moving 200 to 400 people at a time aren’t perhaps less damaging than half-amillion vehicles all spewing fumes and pollution into our countryside.

Then there’s human happiness – or, conversely, all that stress and misery. I saw some very grumpy people this week. Indeed, I witnessed several incidents of road rage – including one aimed at my own sweet and innocent self.

I was backing out of a tight parking spot when a guy and his wife came around the corner in their car. Instead of simply coming to a halt and allowing me to complete the manoeuvre, he blasted his horn. When I pulled back to let him through, he drew level and hurled a torrent of foul abuse. What a twit!

Part of me wanted to tell him so, but a polite apology seemed the wisest option. At least it prompted his wife to bawl at him, so swearing and shouting, he drove on.

The traffic was so intense it took ten minutes to pull out of a junction onto the main Taunton to Minehead road. When I reached my destination there was nowhere – absolutely nowhere – to park.

That’s when I started to think: I love airliners. Aren’t they wonderful! They are the things which help keep the West Country sane in summer.

You can soon change your opinions when there’s something hitting you big-time. Walking with friends this week on a sultry day, our chat turned to mosquitoes – and someone said how awful it was in foreign places where they fumigate whole areas with noxious smoke in a bid to keep mozzies at bay.

I have witnessed this. It’s a practice that must, indeed, be ruinous for all insects and therefore wildlife. But…

I am allergic to mosquito bites. They swell to the size of cricket balls. Painful, itchy and horrible. So I had to admit that every time I’d seen hotel staff nuking entire areas with poisonous smoke, I’d smiled an evil smile, pirouetted a little victory dance and hissed: “Yesss! That will get the b…..s!”

In fact, when that idiot was shouting at me in the street this week I had visions of local councils hiring hit squads to do much the same to visitors.

But of course, every tourist is welcome (apart from that twerp). The region’s economy needs them. We love our visitors – certainly on an individual level.

But do we love two million of them at the same time?

Let’s be honest. Unless we are directly pocketing their cash, we do not.

It’s like bees. We all love to see individual honeybees buzzing around our gardens – but when you get a swarm of 80,000 of them setting up house and home in one of your shrubs (as they did at my place earlier this week) you think: “Out, you blighters! OUT!”

An apiarist neighbour dealt with our invading bees. There’s no such person to deal with human swarms – unless of course the wicked West Country Weather Gods get involved.

And none of us want a cold wet summer, whatever the price.

We love our visitors . But do we love two million of them at the same time?