Living in Pakistan causes one to encounter creatures which, in most Western countries, would normally kept in glass boxes and poked at by people with notepads and white coats.  During our first few months in Pakistan we came distressingly close to a number of creepy-crawlies which we had no desire to meet on a personal basis: gigantic furry spiders, rats, bats, and a wide range of bugs of varying colours and sizes.  But none of these, not even the bat flying around our bedroom at five in the morning, came close to the trauma of the epic tale of the Scorpion In The Sink.

As previously noted, I come from the UK, a country not noted for the savagery of its wildlife.  Unless you happen to be bitten by one of the few remaining adders (our only poisonous snake) or attacked by an overly territorial seagull there are really very few risks from wildlife.

Although I can think of a few evil-minded cats that I would gladly drop-kick over a hedge.

 In Pakistan things are different.  Snakes, scorpions, bats, flying squirrels and cockroaches are just the beginning.  Bears, wolves and snow leopards roam the northern mountains, elusive and rare but perfectly capable of tearing into a soft, puny Westerner like a teenager ripping into a hamburger.

 So when I went to brush my teeth in the evening and encountered a scorpion perched in the middle of the sink I was, let’s say, alarmed.  In fact no, let’s tell it like it is: I yelped like a girl and ran.  How did it get there?  It was too big to have climbed up the drainpipe so it must have dropped down from the ceiling.  But then it could have dropped anywhere – onto our bed, onto a plate of food, onto our faces while we were sleeping…

No, best not to think about it.  I administered a few whacks with a slipper and disposed of it.  Hope there aren’t any others around…

The first time I came to Pakistan I found myself idly gazing out of the windows of taxis and buses as we whizzed around this new and bewildering country.  The sheer variety of Pakistani traffic dazzled me – horses, donkeys, goats, even camels, were sharing road space with Land Cruisers and shiny new Corollas.  And the buses!  Multicoloured, moving works of art, glinting in the sun and rolling up the Karakoram Highway bearing loads of gorgeous Pakistani fruit.  Never has staring out of a car window been so relentlessly entertaining.

And yet one thing perplexed me.  When driving around Islamabad I could see one particular plant almost everywhere I went.  Lush, green, with spiky leaves – it brought back memories of posters on the walls of some of the guys I knew at college.  The kind of guys who went on weekend breaks to Amsterdam, listened to Bob Marley, and seemed relaxed most of the time.  Very relaxed.

Yes, it was weed.

This stuff grows everywhere in the city in which we live.  Everywhere.  Entire rows of the stuff, eight feet high.  Whole blocks of the city are hedged in with marijuana.  If those relaxed and strangely fragrant guys from university came out to Pakistan I think they would have a very chilled-out trip.

I found this very odd at the time, and I still do – that this stuff grows wild with such exuberant profusion, and spreads itself around the place so successfully, in an Islamic country which obviously frowns on drug usage.  But then it makes me think that perhaps it might be a good business opportunity – it’s essentially free, and people in Amsterdam pay all kinds of money for it, and long-haired people relaxed people in California are very enthusiastic about its “medicinal” properties, right?  Now, if I could just find a way to get it past the sniffer dogs at Heathrow…