Madam, – Frank McNally's description of his aerial combat with the dreaded bluebottle each summer struck a chord with me (Irishman's Diary, June 24th). There was a time when any bluebottle in my vicinity would be gleefully obliterated – often with a cricket-bat-shaped Irish Times.
Indeed, if the vile creatures roused me to particular malevolence I would feed them to the cat – who found their buzzing texture to be a curiously tactile hors d’oeuvre.
However, now I am plagued by the fiends; on solo runs or in squadrons they spread their chemical weapons ordnance around the house with impunity. You see, however fast I can scramble my wheelchair to intercept the enemy, my disadvantage in height and speed has rendered my defences as useless as a barrage balloon against a V-2 rocket! Once or twice I have “locked on” to a low altitude drone only for my wheeling metal to alert them into evasive action. The bluebottle has achieved air supremacy against the man in the wheelchair.
Does Frank McNally have a solution to this? The newspaper is obsolete in this war. Perhaps I need to approach the men in the pentagon, a bluebottle shield would serve humanity far better than their missile shields – surely? Or, barring that, sit tight until the chill of October brings the battle to an end for another year. – Yours, etc,