Last week I went camping in Norfolk with my wonderful lady companion and though it wasn’t a long holiday, we’d set aside a day to basically do whatever we wanted (the day after we arrived, to be precise). So when the morning came, on seeing a bright shining sun, I felt the urge to build something. So I figured, let’s head for a beach. You see, despite being a ‘respectable’ adult, I have not lost the need to construct temples to Ra out of sand. I’m actually volatile in temperatures exceeding 30 degrees, so sunbathing is never something I took a liking to, but I don’t know if you can go to a beach when it’s raining. It might be against the law; I don’t know, I’ll look it up.

Anyway, on arriving at the quaint little village of Winterton-on-Sea, we were parking up behind some dunes when a crazy woman ran past, like an extra from a zombie apocalypse movie, screaming to turn back. “The flies are mental, here!” she yelled. We assumed by ‘flies’ she meant ‘people’, so continued with a shrug. However, as soon as we got out the car, I was assaulted from all angles by tiny, black, indestructible bugs with more tenacity than Japanese Zero pilots. I had unwisely chosen to wear a bright yellow Tshirt (reading ‘Dare Master’, fittingly), which to these things must be like some kind of crack. And thus were they known to us as Yellowbugs.

Asserting that I wasn’t going to be cheated out of this year’s sand building because of some crappy bugs, I assured that all was fine and we should go down to the beach itself. We didn’t even get past the dunes. The numbers of these things; previously in the dozens, suddenly increased tenfold. Then hundreds, then thousands, in the space of a few metres. It was like a horror movie. They hung over paths like a cloud of gnats, but unlike gnats they come after you, from every angle. As you attempt to pass through, they swarm and stick everywhere, on everything. It felt like I couldn’t even breathe without inhaling some. And so, it was back to the car, with the dignified air of a primate flailing its arms. After calming down, shrugging off the looks of staring children, I decided I would yield and we left for more sensible places.

We drove ten miles or so down the road and stopped for a breather, and to remove all the ones that had subsequently invaded the car. But walking around an old roman fort where we’d come to, soon led to them appearing again. Was there no refuge from these things? Was this a zombie invasion, in insect form? It seemed they went further than we’d realised.

In the end we had to travel some 15 miles inland to escape the scourge, in what turned out to be a fantastic day (if somewhat lacking in sand). The moral of the story is debatable, but should you ever find yourself on the Norfolk coast around July, BEWARE.