Many look forward to the end of winter with high hopes and expectations. For them summer is somewhat like Italy, or Rome; a place of fantasy where all is one big joyous, romantic and blissful existence. It is a time to laugh in the rain, a time to receive perky little kisses by 'neath the shade of the giant oak, a time of much laughter, mirth and poolside parties. For a poor student bearing down the road in the sweltering and punishing heat of October however, the beckoning of summer is not without serious misgivings, groaning and misery.

It heralds the onset of those highly confusing nights when one is torn between suffering a near heat-stroke whilst in the safety of the blankets, or whether to forgo the blanket and go face-to-face with the vermin of the nighttime. It brings with it the forbidding heat which demands that one walk around the house semi-naked, and that every jog terminate in a cold shower. But worst of all, it brings with it the worst thing in the world, flies!

Musca domestica! It's hard to understand anyone who doesn't hate these creatures. With their silly little bulbous heads, big ugly eyes, their silly little habit of rubbing their feet together, their silly little tendencies of buzzing around your head in the most annoying manner imaginable when all you're trying to do is walk in peace; their aggravating propensity to land on the very food that you're preparing eschewing all other manner of victuals that they may have as options; their habit of buzzing around your head as you are deep in thought trying to master the vagaries of advanced calculus. These creatures bring out the worst in the civilized of us!

In my younger years many an hour was spent in earnest and prolonged pursuit of this such vermin, and many great successes were recorded in their expurgation. I made myself makeshift swatters from rolled up newspaper, shirts, PJs, racquets, books and just about anything which wouldn't shatter on sharp impact. I would awaken from the deepest slumber at the slightest hint of a buzz from a fly, and I'd swat and sweat till I got the bastard! I killed just about every single fly that wandered into my room. There were days when I'd shut down every single window in the house, and proceed to engage with those creatures in a full-scale war, and these wars often ended when there was not a single fly left with breath inside it. To spice it up, sometimes I'd engage my crueler side and burn them to death, the most agonizing death I could conjure up. This however I didn't enjoy, for the smell of burning fly nauseates me. With the passing of years this relentless zeal for the extermination of flies has diminished a little, but the hate is just as fervent as ever. Blessed shall be the man who rids the world of flies!

Summer then is a period I very much want to go through quickly. I cannot stand the torment for long!