Enter the dragon

THE older we get, the more vivid past events become. A stand-out memory of mine from childhood is of wandering into the playground one sunny lunchtime to find an animated cluster of mates by the brick wall that separated the boys’ schoolyard from the gardens of the houses beyond. A dragonfly was trapped in the tight wire mesh topping the wall. The wounded creature, possibly in its final moments, was twitching faintly, but, to young eyes, its long, fat body presented an intimidating spectacle. ‘There’s nothing we can do. It could bite you if you tried to free it,’ was the general sentiment. The school bell rang and we departed to our classroom, leaving the poor creature to perish alone.

‘Perhaps we could have saved our winged school-yard visitor after all’

Dragonflies are generally harmless. They don’t sting, despite the reference in Samuel Johnson’s to them as ‘a stinging