Day 27 - May Doodlebug

While we are spared the antics of another May Bug prancing very assuredly in another country, we are always very pleased to see our local version of this pest.

For years now we seem to have one and always in the same area next to the house or on the terrace fly screen. Unlike Victorian children, we don't use it as a source of "fun" by putting a pin in a wing and let it buzz around in circles. The Serbian-American Nikola Tesla (1856-1943), who was to become the name giver to the modern Tesla electric car, reportedly harnessed four cockchafers to make his first "engine".

Around the time of the 1st World War, the Brits built a series of "Insect Class" gunboats, originally designed to be used on the Danube to keep the local revolting continental Europeans under control. The last of this class to survive was HMS Cockchafer which actually was then first used to defend the UK's south east coast from the Hun's Zeppelins and then did service intervening in the Russian Revolution on the Dvina River, then off to China a nd a bit of Gunboat Diplomacy on the Yangtze River, protecting English nationals and "interests". Then a spell in WWII in the Anglo-Iraqi War, reclaiming it's rightful ownership of Iraq (Mesopotania), followed by a justified spell of action in the Anglo-Soviet invasion of Iran to secure it's rightful ownership of that countries crude oil reserves.

Perhaps my father saw HMS Cockchafer during his WWII time in the Indian Army and although the gunboat did indeed transport Indian army troops to Basra in the Iraq conflict, I don't recall him ever mentioning an episode outside India and Burma. He was though after the war to "profit" from the Anglo Iranian Petroleum Company who were to become British Petroleum in my birth year and who were to take over the small Trinidadian oil company he was working for.

Those were the days when the UK was "strong and stable".