A pensioner, 73, is lucky to be alive after she took a swig of red wine only for a wasp to sting her tongue.

Jeni Boothman’s tongue was left swollen and she couldn’t breathe during the incident at a neighbour’s barbecue in the Lake District valley.

After going into anaphylactic shock, she spent two days in hospital but fortunately recovered from her ordeal.

‘I think we didn’t realise how serious it was’, Jeni said. ‘I would have asked to go home with an ice pack on my tongue. The doctors at the hospital said I was very lucky.’

The retired headteacher said it was ‘a beautiful evening’ when she and her architect husband Tony, 82, headed down for the event in their friend’s garden in Cumbria on August 12.

But everything changed when Jeni took a sip of her drink around 9.30pm.

’It was dark and I don’t know if I’d have noticed it anyway because of chatting’, she said.

‘I spat out the wine and felt this searing pain on my tongue, it just swelled up. I had difficulty breathing because it was blocking my airwaves, I was being sick and it was blocking my nose.’

Paramedics were at the property in Bowland Bridge within 25 minutes.

They injected Jeni with three shots of adrenaline, before rushing her to hospital where she was put on a potassium drip.

She was also given steroids – but her tongue remained swollen for four days after the sting.

Jeni said: ‘I am pretty fit for my age but if that happens, it does not matter what age you are.’

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