Unexpected arrivals

This month I really can’t top the fox story I read by Alexandra Shulman, former editor of Vogue magazine, writing in the Daily Mail. She went into her living room to watch TV only to find a fox curled up in her favourite spot on the sofa. It ignored her shrieks but eventually her boyfriend persuaded it to leave, back out through the open French windows. She sat down to catch up with her favourite programme. “The itching began on my bottom all of four minutes later,” she wrote.

It got worse over the coming days, spreading all over her body despite all sorts of antihistamines, steroid tablets and what-have-you prescribed by her GP who had no idea of the real problem. To cut a long story short, some ten days later she learnt it was scabies, picked up from the fox. Getting rid of the infestation was something else again. She had to cancel a planned holiday and everything in the house has been washed, dry