MANY things drive me to distraction, but the buzzing fly has a unique power - in inverse proportion to its size - to provoke me almost beyond reason.

However, the next time I take up a rolled newspaper to do battle with my tiny foe, it will be with a new found, if grudging, respect for its combat ability.

Research newly published in the journal Science suggests that the humble fly possesses high tech, fighter plane-like capabilities to bank and roll away from danger.

Its miniscule brain is seemingly able to process complex information relating to the detection of threats, the best course of evasive action, and the execution of that action, in the splittest of split seconds.

This research is based on the use of high speed video cameras that captured the manoeuvres of a type of fruit fly, but it is reasonable to assume that other flies possess similar capabilities.

That is the conclusion I have reached after reading about this phenomenon, based on a series of frustrating encounters over many years.

The scenario will be familiar to many people. The lights are out, you're dropping off to sleep, and suddenly all you can hear is the buzzing of a fly in the dark. You are convinced that it wasn't there when the lights were on, that the little devil has been waiting for you to flick the switch and settle on the pillow before beginning to torment you.

I cannot stand it, and cannot ignore it. over the years, my other half has been privy to several episodes of varying hilarity as I leap out of bed, turn the light back on, and arm myself with a copy of whatever newspaper or magazine is nearest to hand, oftentimes the South Wales Argus.

By this stage, it is personal. What sounds in the dark like a sizeable creature has deliberately shrunk to make it more difficult to detect, its buzzing has become more fitful, its trajectory random.

Leaping around in one's underwear late at night, waving a rolled out newspaper and uttering curses at the insect world is a recipe for, if not disaster, then small scale, anger-enahncing destruction.

Paper lampshades have been trashed, ornaments swept from bedside tables, glasses of water spilled and toes stubbed, all to a soundtrack of swearing (me) and laughter (Lady Weekender) as pursuit of my winged tormentor becomes ever more desperate.

More often than not, I succeed in squashing them eventually, by that stage not caring if I leave bloody smears down wallpaper or paint.

The silence that follows the smack of paper on fly, the tumble of the lifeless body to the floor - if it is not stuck fast to the surface it was crushed against - is incredible satisfying.

Twenty or more years ago, we spent a weekend in the family bolthole of friends, halfway up a hillside in rural mid-Wales. Assigned a roof in the rafters, we had barely settled down to sleep when the buzzing began.

Dozens of flies, roused from seasonal slumber by the switching on of the heating were cavorting around the room.

Thankfully, most were slowed by having been cold and motionless, but so many of them were there that towards the end the last few had warmed up and sped up.

It was an exhausting slaughter, but I emerged victorious, unfilled-in squares of the giant crossword on the outside page of my weapon of choice wet with the remains of my enemies.

It was my greatest triumph, made all the greater I now realise, having read about this research, because these flies possessed sophisticated methods of evasion that at the time I was ignorant of.

This new-found knowledge is unlikely to make any easier the task of dispatching them in the future. But at least I have a greater appreciation of, and respect for, what I am up against when battle commences and lampshades are destroyed again.

Yes, it is going ahead

South Wales Argus:

THE scrape of spade on soil at a groundbreaking ceremony is by and large a meaningless bit of PR fluff for whatever project happens to be involved.

But the ceremony this week to mark the start of work on the Friars Walk development in Newport was a more necessary one than most.

Even with the demolition in January of the old multi storey car park, and the subsequent clearance work, there have been mutterings - and I have heard some of them - about whether this project would ever be delivered.

But last Wednesday civic dignitaries posed and smiled before the heavy machinery went back to work.

On the same day Wildings, a city centre mainstay for more than 140 years, opened a huge sale, prior to a major refurbishment - a vote of confidence in retail in Newport.

Perhaps after all, things are looking up.