Eva Bradley: The ultimate fly catcher

The humble vacuum cleaner could possibly be the most ridiculous, yet effective, fly solution yet. Photo / File

Christmas time isn't just about overflowing stockings, presents stacked under crooked trees and roasting turkey. There are lots of other things that coincide with the end of the year and as a result get to bathe in the reflected glory of the festive season; the first flush of summer fruit, hot sand underfoot, the musty but fabulous smell of the tent unfolded after a winter in hibernation.

But in life we must all take the bad with the good and if there's one thing I hate about Christmas time it's the flies.

Right about the time organised people come home with the first round of Christmas presents, Mother Nature sends in her own wicked little gift.

A lonely black beastie buzzes about the kitchen heralding the start of summer in the same way the first falling leaf kicks off autumn. Except much uglier and more prone to spreading germs.

But just like that first leaf falls and is soon joined by thousands, so is the solitary fly landing on your mashed potato.

Growing up, I bore witness to all manner of futile methods to eradicate the Christmas season's least popular house guests.

Among these included the timeless fly swat, wielded by the only thing more irritating than flies... my older brother. Whenever he was on patrol, flies seemed to allegedly start landing on my head with suspicious frequency.

By the 21st century, the "final solution" for the fly had - as with most other things in life - been found in recourse to technology and dangerous chemicals.

For the past few summers, my house has been blissfully fly-free thanks to frequent insidious puffs from "natural" pyrethrin-based dispensers. But, while I was prepared to swallow (quite literally) the marketing buzz when it was only me and my partner at home, I felt quite differently about it after the arrival of children.

Now thanks to Google I am irritatingly overly-educated in the harmful effects of additives like piperonyl butoxide to otherwise "natural" fly sprays.

Determined to find a 100 per cent safe alternative, I shelled out $150 for a UV light that promised to lure flies in and trap them on a hidden glue pad.

For two weeks our home from the street looked like it had either been converted to a Chinese takeaway or was hosting a "blue light" disco inside.

When I finally conceded the light was useless and turned it off, all that could be seen on the gluepad was a dusty, decomposing moth who had most likely landed there quite by chance. Meanwhile, flies in mounting numbers had landed on every other surface.

And so it was that I decided to employ a method a friend had shared with me earlier in the week and had seemed quite ridiculous and entirely too manual to be practical; I started sneaking up on flies with the vacuum hose. As I approached my first target with slow stealth, as I had been instructed, I felt sure this was to be the most ridiculous fly solution yet.

Until I caught one.

And then another. And another. And another.

Perhaps I'm not attending enough Christmas parties, but fly-catching has become my summer obsession.

Like hunting without the blood or fishing without the seasickness, fly catching is addictive.

The joy of that last split second when the fly registers that all is not as it should be atop my bacon sandwich and tries to hold on before being sucked backwards into the vacuum hose has to be experienced to be believed.

In 10 minutes I can clear the house of just about every fly. And, unlike other fly-busting methods, this time I won't mind at all when the house fills up again the next day, so I can start my slightly sick, but undeniably satisfying game, all over again.

Eva Bradley is a photographer and writer.