I was going to give it my best shot. The Narcissus Shot! I was going to give it the Narcissus Shot. My best shot ever. The perfection of the moment, the knowledge that you couldn’t have gotten more right if you had tried. And you did try. There’s lots of anger as well of course. Always lots of anger. Perfection and anger always go together (as if you didn’t know). Perfection and anger. The anger that comes when someone stops you from giving it your best shot. The sheer insane rage. The murderous rage. Perfection is so close and then someone came along to spoil. It isn’t that always the way? Another perfect day has dawned – now watch some bastard come along and spoil it! Isn’t that what they say? Just you wait. Here he comes now. Bang on time. Always bang on time. You could set your watch by him – if you had a watch. Here he comes right now, dead on cue – the obligatory bastard! It’s part of the cosmic equation – perfection and the bastard who comes along to spoil it. The two go together like jelly and ice cream, like roast lamb and mint sauce, like custard and apple crumble. It’s one of those magic combinations – a marriage made in heaven, as people sometimes say. So you can’t pretend that you don’t know about this particular type of anger – this very savage type of anger that comes along when someone casually walks up and spoils the perfect situation that you worked so hard to bring about. If only they knew the blood, sweat and tears that went into it. In that case they would be in an even greater hurry to come over and ruin it! You can bet your bottom dollar they would be. That’s just the way things are. The Narcissus Shot! Give it your best, give it your best. A perfect situation, just for you. I was eating apple crumble, grumbling about the inexactitudes of human life. Not that I knew any other sort. Why does everything always have to screw up? Toxicity has always been a big problem of mine, needless to say. You think you’re having fun and then someone comes along and says the wrong thing. You think that life is wonderful but then the next thing is that someone comes along and looks at you the wrong way and then of course you’re plunged into rage and frustration. That’s how fragile you are. You’re so fragile it’s frightening! So, to get back to my story – I’d given it my best shot but I hadn’t got anywhere. The whole world was laughing at me – or so it seemed – and I had egg on my face. An awful lot of egg. I had given it my very best shot but I might as well not have bothered and so now I was hurt and upset. I was offended by the way things have gone. It was as if I had been standing there with my pants down and my naked defenseless arse momentarily exposed to the elements and an extraordinarily large Asian hornet had flown down from the sky as quick as a flash and stung me with full force on the tender pink skin of my exposed buttocks. Seizing its chance, as it were. There is of course no comparison between the Asian hornet and our local variety – it’s like the difference between a small yapping dog and a ravening Siberian Wolf, or the difference between an amiable drunk trying to talk to you in the park and a deadly assassin who has been paid big money to do away with you. You can’t compare the one with the other. When one of these things stings you it’s like nothing else you’ve ever experienced – you don’t know the meaning of being stung by a venomous insect until you’ve been stung by an Asian hornet. You’re going to let out a roar like nothing you’ve ever heard and fall thrashing about madly on the floor. You’re going to bellow louder than you’ve ever bellowed before. And that’s just for starters. It gets way worse when the poison settles into you and starts to attack your system. That’s how hurt I was. That’s how deeply stung I was. The pink tender slightly over-stretched parchment-like skin of my exposed ego attacked by a hornet that was at least two inches from one end to the other. A hornet from hell. A hornet the like of which you have never seen…