text: I was sitting at my desk watching Boris Johnson attempt to educate the general public. He looked like a thoroughly melted candle as he preached the importance of saving a health service which previous conservative governments had disembowelled veraciously for funding. He was 10 minutes into his spiel about how alert we all need to stay in order to take back control from the virus when a fly bolted across my vision. It was windy outside, and I’d made sure that all the windows were closed. But closed doors and windows simply don’t exist for them. They make a mockery of our feeble thresholds, finding an entry point with the prowess of the perfect burglar. No matter how much I tried to forget about it, there was no way that I was focussing on anything until it was out of my room. I paused the video and slowly closed my laptop for dramatic effect. I felt as if I was about to enter the ring with prime Mike Tyson as I mentally geared up to try and stop a fly from putting its arms and legs all covered in shit over me and my stuff. I jolted up from my seat and scanned the room in vain. The monotonous buzz came from every direction simultaneously. I was befuddled and confused from the get-go. A poor start to say the least. It stopped in the vicinity of my record collection. I went over to my bedside table to roll up an old newspaper as a make-shift baton to smash the bejesus out of this fly with. I read online that they can see in slow motion. I’ve never heard of anything more unfair, but evolution has no regard for my petit notions of justice. I slowly approached the fly, but for all the skill I had in baton-engineering, I severely lacked in common sense. All of my windows and doors were still shut! My room was as tightly sealed as an airplane cabin. The fly was certain to outmanoeuvre my baton swat and land somewhere else in my room. I was despaired by my own ineptitude and for the first time empathised with Boris. I walked over to the window and flung it open with attitude, but when I turned around it had moved positions. It landed on my Martin D-18. For those who aren’t aware, that’s a *nice* guitar. There is no conceivable world in which I’d smash my pride-and-joy with anything, so I was left in a bit of a mess. This fly kept running rings around me, and because of the windows being wide open, my room was freezing. My desk is next to my window, so pages of books were fluttering like birds in a panic. But after 20 minutes of trying to kill a fly and failing miserably, my goose was roasted when it just got up and fucked off on its own accord. My dignity had been well and truly ransacked. ‘God must have been so bored when he created the fly’, I thought to myself. After I’d cleaned my desk and shut my windows, I was curious to understand why flies pester us so much. In the depths of COVID boredom I did some research, and in the process, I stumbled upon one of the greatest internet threads of all time. On *Quora*, someone asked: ‘Why are flies so persistently annoying?’ Rishabh Darmsakhtu responded: ‘years of carnage and atrocities by the bourgeois had built up resentment among the lower class. The downtrodden, the poor, the marginalised had retaliated by making genetically engineered flies which only annoys the so called middle and higher class society people. To make your life miserable they will return every second and target you continuously.’ Interesting theory, but I needed something more scientific. With the eloquence of Hemingway, Isaac Guiste answered: ‘on Earth HATE FLIES THEY’RE FUCKING STUPID ANNOYING LITTLE CUNTS... I HATE FLIES HOPE THEY ALL DIE OF FUCKING FLY CANCER OR BURN IN HELL. THEY’RE DIGUSTING, ANNOYING BASTARDS, THEY EAT SHIT, SHIT, SHIT ALL DAY EVERYDAY THEY’RE VIAL AND MAKE ME SICK EVEN SEEING ONE, THE TOUCH MY SKIN I’LL GO AS FAR AS DEODERANT SPRYING’. Poetic, but still not what I was after. I finally came across a report by the Director of the Australian National Insect Collection, Dr David Yeates. He states that there are only two species of flies which are known to be attracted to human beings and their homes. The *Musca vetutissima* \- the Bush Fly - and the *Musca domestica -* the House Fly. There are certain secretions in the skin which nourish flies and help mature their eggs before they’re laid. There's sweat, proteins, carbohydrates, salts, sugars and other chemicals which flies feed on for nourishment. Interestingly, they can’t bite, but instead have a ‘sponge’ mechanism. When they land on a table to eat a grain of sugar, they don't have mouths to chew it up, so they regurgitate or spew on to it, turning it into a liquid which they can suck up. They also feed off dead skin, and all of this makes human beings particularly appealing because we don’t have any fur to cover it with. So having watched ten minutes of the Prime Minister blunder and spent a good portion of my afternoon being subjugated to a fly, what’s the moral of this story? Don't vote for Conservative governments.