There’s a lot of formication going on at my place at the moment. It’s a condition which should not be confused with fornication, which is something quite different (if you don’t appreciate just how different, the right kind of therapy will improve your sex life beyond your wildest dreams).

​Formication, from the Latin for ant, is the feeling that insects are crawling over your skin, a tactile hallucination which can be a symptom of fibromyalgia, Parkinson’s disease, drug withdrawal or severe anxiety.
 
In my case, it isn’t the anxiety that’s causing the formication. It’s the formication that’s causing the anxiety. And it’s no hallucination. Over the last month or so, implacable hordes of Argentinian ants have invaded my home.

It’s bad enough to find them in the dog’s bowl, the microwave, or swarming on the bench. It’s really infuriating to have them crawling and nipping at you in bed, or clambering up your arms and down your neck when you are innocently reading a book or working at the computer. 

In an effort to find a peaceful solution - Donald Trump take note - I’ve circulated the following Open Letter in English and Spanish to all ants:

​It's a Monday at the Classic Comedy Club in mid-town Auckland. It's the night when beginner comedians gather to test their comedic talents in front of a live audience.

Comedy Director, Geoffrey Scott Blanks, who was made an Officer of the NZ Order of Merit for his services to comedy in the last Queen’s Birthday Honours is busy selling tickets to the 2-hour “Raw” show in the club’s bustling foyer.

​At 8pm the doors to the high-ceilinged performance space swing open. A friendly usher directs us to seats clustered around tables, cabaret-style. Candles flicker on each table. The red brick walls are hung with posters advertising comedy shows past and present. There are a few grey heads in the audience, but it’s a youngish crowd and the atmosphere is warm and convivial. 

I'm on my own so I’m pleased to be seated at a table with four other women with whom it’s easy to strike up a conversation.  It turns out they aren’t just here for laughs - they have skin in the game. The young woman on my left, has Nihilist printed on her T-shirt and Hysterical Feminist on her tote bag. She's here to suss out the comedy scene before making a leap from sit-down wannabe, to stand-up comedian. ​

​It only takes a few questions from a child to make you realise the extent of your ignorance about the workings of the universe. Even if you’ve prepared yourself with an answer to that old chestnut “why is the sky blue?” your bluster won’t survive follow-up questions such as “what is light made of?” or "why do you have two eyes if you only see one thing?” 

Many intelligent, searching childhood questions will remain forever unanswerable of course. But so do many adult questions and it so happens that I’m wrestling with a big adult-sized question right now. 

It’s a question which weighs more heavily on my mind in the winter. In the summer, the pot-holed driveway I share with 12 neighbours is reasonably navigable. Driving on it raises a bit of dust, and some slaloming skills are needed to avoid the deepest holes. However, it can be done without water-wings and a four-wheel drive.

​In winter things get a whole lot worse. 

​This week as I turn 65 I take possession of a Super Gold Card. From now on,  and as for as long as the country can afford it, nearly $400 will arrive in my bank account every week. ​I don’t have to do anything to earn it or to deserve it.
​
Superannuation is mine as of right, simply because I am lucky enough to be a New Zealand citizen and I’ve survived to the age of 65. Although I have been marking the months off my calendar for at least six months, this fact still seems so unlikely and preposterous, that I can hardly believe it. What a miracle! What a blessing! 

​In my fifties, when the stresses of a well-paid corporate job literally made me sick, I made the decision to become self-employed. In so doing, I left what economist Guy Standing from the University of London, terms the “salariat”, the class which, for the moment at least, enjoys stable, high-income, full-time employment, to join the class which doesn’t.  This class, is what Standling calls the “precariat”, whose working lives are characterised by unpredictability and insecurity. 

​I had never heard of Standling’s theory back when I walked away from my corporate job, but it didn’t take me long to recognise that I had exchanged one kind of stress for another. I had swapped the life-sapping stress of a secure job - dress codes, senseless policies, endless meetings, unrealistic performance targets, an office bully - for the stresses of financial insecurity. It’s not a choice I regret, although when freelance writing work dried up for a while and I scrambled to find alternative employment, the days of a regular, predictable pay packet, sick leave and paid holidays, shimmered in memory like a long-lost Eldorado.

In early December I came to a stop in a dark pre-Christmas wood. Which fork should I take? The path that leads to Scrooge and The Grinch Who Stole Christmas? Or the path that leads to Harassed Christmas List-making and Gift-shopping! ​I chose The Way of the Grinch Who Stole Christmas, because Christmas is a snow job … and even the snow is fake. 

Census results show that fewer New Zealanders identify as Christian than ever before, and more of us admit to having no religious belief at all. Growing numbers of us are Buddhist, Hindu, Jewish or Muslim. Rugby and the America’s Cup probably inspire more zealotry in New Zealand than any God. Which means that not many of us believe that a supernatural birth occurred in Bethlehem on the 25th of December 2017 years ago. ​ 

​Santa is the real God of modern Christmas. Images of the baby Jesus in a stable are displayed in shop windows almost interchangeably with images of Santa wreathed in holly and unreasonable, unseasonable snow. I imagine that some kids these days are so confused that they think it’s baby Santa they see napping in the hay. They may well think that the baby, grown paunchy and whiskery with age, has simply moved to cooler climes and swapped his swaddling clothes for red, fur-trimmed long-johns. 

It was the curious incident of the dog (almost) exploding in the night time which suggested to me a revolutionary way to improve science teaching in New Zealand. I have high hopes that our new Labour-lead government will be eager to trial the idea I am about to propose.  

First, some background.I did poorly in maths and science at school although my failure can't be attributed entirely to the education system: I spent a lot of class time digging holes into lab benches with the spiked end of a compass, or melting ballpoint pens over a Bunsen burner.

It might even be possible that my brain function was reduced by mercury poisoning. The  dental nurse at my primary school rewarded us for not screaming blue murder during her ministrations by giving us a drop of mercury in a little plastic box. Returning to class with stretched lips and a mouth full of amalgam, you'd would immediately tip out the mercury for the fun of watching it roll about your desktop.

It was by observing the melting, silvery, slither of the mercury that I learned what “mercurial” actually meant.

​I believe that if such connections between real life and taught fact had been forged more frequently in science classes of my youth, ​​I might now be in charge of the Hadron Collider or the recipient of a Nobel Prize for mathematics. 

Which brings me back to the incident of the (almost) exploding dog which occurred last week ...

Mr Trump is very fond of "alternative facts" and we ridicule and castigate him for it.

​But I've been wondering if his self-flattering fibs are so different from the air-brushed versions of our lives which we present on Facebook.

On Facebook we all lead perfect lives. On Facebook everyone’s life is packed with caring friends, doting parents, handsome lovers, adorable children and perfect pets. Everyone is talented and clever, and has a fascinating job. On Facebook everyone recycles, saves whales and rain forests, eats mountains of kale at the coolest restaurants, and goes on cycling tours of Outer Mongolia at the drop of a hat. 

No one on Facebook is lonely, unemployed, in debt, or suffers from acne, low self-esteem or depression. 
Let's start telling the truth on Facebook ... I’ll go first: