Lumps and bumps

Before I catch up with everything we've been up to - which is extensive by the way* - I have a small rant I wish to slot in.

I didn't think I'd ever find any living creature I hated as much as mosquitoes. Sadly, I was mistaken. In fact I have even begun to think of mosquitoes fondly. What could possibly have prompted this startling turn around? Sandflies.

They are small - small enough to be difficult to spot and easy to overlook. They bite you by burying their whole head into your skin and you don't even really feel the bite happening at the time, giving you little opportunity to swat them away, and what's more, the bite itself is impossible to spot initially. Only after a good few hours can you see a small pink spot where they got you, but it does not itch at this stage, nor is there any discernible bump. Oh no, it lulls you into a false sense of security; you think you've got away with it and relax, but you would be foolish to do so.

Around 12-24 hours after the bite, the itching begins. It is virtually impossible to ignore and once you start scratching you can find it drives you insane; it's easy to scratch until you bleed...and then keep on going, agony & ecstasy going hand in hand. Scratching of course causes the hive to swell and in some cases, the whole of the bite area too. My friend Simon scratched the ones on his ankles and ended up with ankles the size of elephants. The hive - and the concomitant itch - lasts for ages. And I mean ages. I find with mozzie bites that if I am able to ignore them for a day or two, they will disappear. I have had one or two mozzie bites recently that lay testament to this. However, I still have sandfly bites that are on-going which I got FOUR SODDING WEEKS AGO. Not so itchy, it's true, but still very much visible and irritating. My friend Debbie has scars from sandfly bites received several years ago.

I have now begun to wage a serious war on the little buggers. I had bought some 'natural' insect repellent, which worked okay I suppose, but was a pain to put on. It was an oily spray and, what with the slathering of suntan lotion I need to put on every day to combat the vicious UV rays, I tended to feel like a basted turkey. So now I have bought a special suntan lotion with insect repellent built in for days in the sun, plus a 'tropical strength' spray for evenings or rainy days (when they are out in force).

There are only a couple of good things that could be said about sandflies. They are immensely stupid. They don't seem to target human beings in the way that mozzies do, they seem to just fly around bumping into things and occasionally get lucky by finding something that they can bury their head into. This does make them fairly easy to kill, because they wander about slowly while they work out whether they've struck it lucky, giving you plenty of time to squish them if you happen to spot them. They are attracted by light, so in the evening if you put a lamp on pointing at a wall, you'll find them gathering in the glow and you can kill them in bulk. And they are generally only around during the day, so night time is fairly safe. Still, they're horrible horrible things and I hate them. HATE THEM.

*and therefore the reason I've got so behind in blogging, in addition to the issue of erratic internet access, is that once you've got behind you feel like you can't do anything until you've caught up, but the idea is so overwhelming you don't get round to it. That and the fact that when I DO sit down to blog, Isaac starts jumping around and desperately vying for attention like a small puppy, and I get nothing done. He erroneously claims this is untrue. I think it's sweet.