GUEST BLOGGER NICK WADHAM: Ants on the table and confused red admirals.

Thirty three years ago a little three year old toddler was instantly captivated by the chaotic myriad scurrying to and fro of countless little black specks in the back garden - black ants. With deft nimble fingers this little boy decided to catch as many of these little creatures as he could, but then the question arose in his mind of what to do with them next.

‘I know’ he thought to himself, ‘I’ll take them inside to show Mummy.’

So he did just that, but Mummy was nowhere to be found. The boy decided to safely store them on the kitchen table and get some more, just to be sure. After easily an hour of catching as many as his soft little hands could hold and running them to their new kitchen pent house, his typically gentle pink appendages, had become the throbbing crimson of the flesh of a blood orange.

As he contemplated his stinging skin, the boy surveyed the teeming tabletop, thousands of tiny ants, trammelling to and fro to get nowhere in particular, thoughtlessly trampling over one another in constant Brownian motion.

‘Yes, Mummy will be pleased!’ He thought to himself with satisfaction.
A bright shrill scream pierced the little boy’s reverie, swift and sudden like the crack of a ringmaster’s whip.

‘Nicholas Wadham!’

Mummy was most definitely “not amused!”

And now?

Just five days to go until the same boy heaves to with his wonderful wife and equally wonderful children to bring you Bugfest SW’s Carnival of Monsters. Recently turned thirty six (27th January), I am writing my first ever blog at the bequest of our friend, Jon Downes.

Sometimes people really beggar belief, just last week I put up lots of roadside promotional material to reinforce our Bugfest presence and to draw the attention of potential new visitors, all the more important as we are giving a lot of money to charity out of the takings, from the rest of which we will at least hopefully cover our costs. The next day however we were told by the local authority that we had to take them down, then, on the next breath we were told okay, keep them up, then, ten minutes later, we were told to take them down again. I have since found that if we have the permission of private land owners that we can display our posters. Confused yet?

We were. So today, I went out and found the landowners and actually got their permission to fix our posters to their boundary fences. Can you believe it? The difference in the original position of some of the posters was no more than two feet to the left, I am beginning to wonder if Orwell was in some way psychic, as opposed to a highly intellectual observer of society and the governing bodies who tell people what to do; there is definitely some form of inner party mentality inherent in South Somerset District Council. Now I am the proud owner of the title of anarchist, just awarded to me today by Jon in recognition of my efforts to topple the pillars of tyranny that seek to make our difficult lives all the more difficult, so that they can justify being paid to do absolutely sod all with their time and the money we pay in council tax for them to do it.

No doubt you have guessed who I am. I’m Nick, the other half of the partnership that drives Bugfest. I am responsible for the design and production of all of the marketing materials and keep an eye out for invertebrates that shouldn’t be on sale at the show such as CITES protected and DWA, not an easy task when you are also in charge of making sure that your five year old son doesn’t get lost or bored. But thanks to the fact that we have traders with solid reputations this has never been an issue.

Bugfest is a dream-come-true! For years I have been taking my daughters to the AES, but Henry is too young to endure the three hour drive to London and the subsequent long day at the races too. Kara recognised this and decided that if Henry couldn’t go to the mountain, then the mountain must come to Henry. We talked about the idea, Kara not having the first microgram of a clue about bugs, then, decided to go for it. I just gave her a few names and email addresses of the people that I knew personally, and from that, as a result of my wife being the wonderful people magnet that she is, and the support of everyone involved from its conception it snowballed into the first event at Holy Trinity Church.

Because she is so good at getting things done, Kara stunned the traders last February by creating a turnout of just under one thousand visitors; everyone thought we’d be lucky to get three hundred, however my inner intuition was quietly confident, I just knew that the day was going to be great, but even my empathic nature was somewhat taken by surprise. The challenge now is to keep things fresh and different. We don’t want to be like the other shows, we want to open our little niche market up to the world, and how better to do that then through aiming at the general public as opposed to just the hardcore enthusiast.

Whilst visiting the Dalek Day at Fleet Air Arm Museum last summer, we hit on the idea, okay, pinched it, to combine bugs with Daleks. Why not?

Both are just as interesting, and great crowd pullers, one looks like it has come from the world of the BBC’s Doctor Who franchise, whilst the other actually has, and to date we have now got at least five Daleks in attendance, a Tom Baker era Cyberman, a Cybershade from the recent Christmas special, a clockwork robot from the Tennant era, a Roboform (psychotic santa robot), a scare crow from the Family of Blood episodes, hopefully a K9, a full size TARDIS, a number of fans dressed up in tribute to their favourite Doctor, and a Captain Jack Sparrow, we wanted Harkness, but a friend of mine of many years does a fantastic impression of the Pirates character, and being a kind charitable chap offered to dress up and get into role for the day to help raise money for the South West Children’s Hospice. So, at the end of the day, Captain Jack is Captain Jack, we are certainly pleased to have him on board. Pun fully intended! If that isn’t enough we have all the usual great traders without whom Bugfest would certainly struggle to exist.

Even now Kara is not altogether keen on bugs, but she knows a heck of a lot more about them. It is most amusing when people say to her how they didn’t know she was into bugs, to which she patiently explains that she isn’t, and that this is all for the benefit of me and the children. So, as you can see, I consider myself one lucky man to have a Kara by my side, but irrespective, Kara’s hard work and commitment has now earned her the cool nickname “Bug Girl”; I can see this one sticking for some time.

Being the organisers of Bugfest, people would assume we have a house full of invertebrates, when actually the reverse is true. We have a Giant African Land Snail, Millipede, two Hissing Cockroaches, seven species of tarantula and six species of stick insect, most of which reside at school during term time where the children in my bug club help to look after them.

Outside of the Bugfest world my time is taken up with being a full time Dad, as Kara is the main bread winner as a secondary school teacher (and a damn good one too), and I am a PGCE student mentor and FE teacher trainer. When I am not busy extolling the virtues of inclusive teaching practice and making learning fun and engaging, I run creative writing classes, and I am currently writing a story about fairies with my eldest daughter, but more on that one later as that is probably worthy of a blog of its own.

For me this Bugfest time of the year is so frantic and full of surprises, but nothing prepared me for the surprise that today held for me. My youngest daughter, Harriet, ran in from the garden in a flurry of excitement, yelling that she had found a frog, not impossible as the day was very warm, but I found it hard to believe the rest of her message as she was maintaining that she had also see three butterflies. Then, on reflection I thought that actually this too wasn’t impossible, as it really was a very warm day, so I dutifully went out to investigate with her, (expecting to see some drowsy small tortoise shells enjoying a quick bask in the sun), only to be stunned to find three red admirals slurping greedily from my early flowering japonica, which is always covered at this time of year in numerous racemes of fragrant sulphur-coloured drooping bells the size of a small finger nail.

As I understand it this is mainly considered a migratory species, but they are also known to sometimes hibernate in the south of England, which these ones seem to have done, so it is clear to see, we were not the only ones confused of late, our red admirals were definitely confused by today’s most clement climate.

Let’s just hope that this serves a strong positive omen of more pleasant surprises for this forthcoming Saturday’s Bugfest, Carnival of Monsters.