I've always relied on the kindness of strangers.

The other day I was waiting for the bus up to uni. It was one of those crisp, amazingly sunny September mornings. This man kept looking over at me. I didn't think much of it, but after a while he was just staring... So I looked back at him, you know the way you do when you really just want to say 'what the hell are you staring at?!'

He came over, and said 'I'm sorry - you have a bee on your head'

Eek! Instinct tells me to run squeaking away from bees. Or freeze. I froze.

He said 'Can I.. do you mind if I touch your head?'

I said of course not. He proceeded to waft it from one side of my head, over across the top and near my ear on the other side, and then give it a little slap so it fell to the floor. He then said 'it's there, can you see it? I'm really sorry, I don't like killing living things.' I said that's fine, and we concluded that it was probably too cold for the bee to start flying around any time soon.

It strikes me how you can jump to conclusions about people like that. He was only trying to stop me getting stung by this bee, and I'd already started to conclude he was a weirdo, and wondering why on earth he kept looking at me.

I don't like judging on first glance. But I know I do it. I'm not the worst kind though; I'm open to having my mind changed radically.

I'm actually not sure if it was a bee or a wasp. Either way - I didn't like it sitting on my head. And I would've liked getting stung even less. So thank you, nice man.


I wanted to share this photo I took on campus that same morning. Lovely, I thought.