Life has taught me very little, but one thing I have learned is that the only employee of local councils with a genuine vocation is the rat-catcher. He always loves his rats, eliminating them with the deepest respect, and is extremely knowledgeable and interesting about their habits — which are, indeed, very interesting.
The last time I had to call a rat-catcher out, I smelt a rat under my dining room floorboards where it had died. The rat-catcher confirmed my diagnosis and told me that I had two choices: I could lift up the floorboards and remove the rat, or I could wait six weeks, after which the smell would go. Because I knew that rat-catchers are always competent, I trusted him and decided to wait; and lo, the smell disappeared after exactly six weeks.
I have always found it worthwhile to talk to people whose work many intellectuals would dismiss as uninteresting. For example, I have found that insurance loss adjusters have the deepest insight into human nature this side of Shakespeare. One of my favourite books, incidentally, is by John B Lewis, MD, and Charles C Bombaugh, MD (2nd ed., Baltimore, 1896). The title of the last chapter more or less sums up British social policy of the last 20 years: Self-Mutilation in Accident Insurance: 16 Illustrative Cases of this Criminal Folly. How else is one to explain the fact that our welfare state has produced more invalids than the first world war?
On returning to France, where they order these things very much the same, I called our bee and wasp man, who is an infallible guide on everything to do with bees, wasps, hornets, ants and termites — in short, the order Hymenoptera.
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