Swarm

 I’ve neglected my blog. I crashed into the school summer holidays doing the usual things: reading books, cleaning cupboards, walking, eating, watching the Limpics (why, oh why do they have to shout, though?) and taking photos of bees. 

I had no desire to comment on the complicated issue of who is allowed to compete in which sport or Joe Biden’s resignation, or Trump’s never ending self delusion. Although tragic, I had no opinion on the mass murder incident in Southport where children at a Taylor Swift dance party were stabbed to death (except to say how lucky it was that guns are hard to get in this country).

However, the recent spate of riots do interest me.

Not with the hand-wringing despair you hear from people my age. You’ll hear no, “What has happened to our country?” remarks from me. No. I’m only interested in the behaviour.

“These riots are crazy,” said the Long Suffering Husband, while we were on our evening fart walk. He had stopped as he is unable to multi-task and had got out his phone. “What do you think has caused it?”

“It’s the temperature,” I told him. 

“Not Farrage, or poverty, or immigration.?”

“Nope. It always happens. It’s young men with all that Testosterone swimming around in their ball-sacks and …”

“You can’t say it’s men,” he warned.

“Have you seen the pictures? Anyway,” I said, refusing to be diverted, “When their ball-sacks get up to a certain temperature…”

“Will you stop saying ball-sacks?”

“No. You asked my theory. Now listen! So, as I was saying, it always happens after a couple of days of sweaty ball-sack weather they get into groups, swarm and fight each other.”

“You said it again.”

“I did. Ball-sack! See, I said it another time!”

This is where our conversation ended, except that every now and again, I’ll grin and say, “ball-sack”. Don’t tell me you can’t have fun in a long marriage. 

However, I am serious about my theory. Before we get all hand-wringy about the state of the nation we should acknowledge that young men swarming to fight each other is a biological phenomenon when the temperature is between 27 and 32 degrees Celsius. 

Honey bees swarm as a natural part of their reproductive cycle to create new colonies. Are humans much different?

Carlsmith and Anderson (1979) were the first to notice that violence was curvilinear and Lance Workman worked out the specifics of the temperature needed to cause a riot and stated that when it gets to 32• ‘it’s as though people can’t be bothered.’

Summer bank holidays at Southend Seafront in my childhood were often spent watching gangs of young men swarm at each other and I can confirm that never happened on rainy days.

There was an incident like this at the end of July https://www.essexlive.news/news/essex-news/southend-machete-fight-update-eight-9448596.amp that wasn’t linked to Southport. 

Now that the weather has stayed warm but not too hot, it’s the summer holidays and there are people on social media prepared to give these sweaty ball-sacks a side to pick the fights will continue.

I’m convince that instead of kettling, riot shields and violent water cannon, a light spray down of the pant area would have hundreds of young men standing there wondering what they were doing. Or we could pray for a heatwave. 

In other news the LSH has just walked past and I told him, “I’m just writing about ball-sacks” and he has gone out to cut the grass.