Thumbs up Thursday...to the bloody midge

Now maybe this should really be called Thumbs down Thursday, because believe me there is nothing remotely good about the bloody midge! It's a blight on your life if you live anywhere within its radius. It sneaks in, bites you and buggers off. You don't even know it's there until you (well I) come up in a big, red, itchy, blotchy, stingy, lump.

Argh.

Then you (well I) spend the next few days smelling of tiger balm. Which when I think of it is most of the alleged Scottish summer.

But I'm doing a thumbs up, because there's actually a positive in this negative. Usually our Scottish summer is two days in May, and the midges haven't sussed that out yet. They don't appear en masse until well into June. So okay sunset is early, but you can have an hour or so in the garden without fishing the blighters out of your wine.

Yeah, not only do they bite, they drink your wine. The horror! I mean the wine! They're not half as keen to dive bomb into a glass of water, or a cup of coffee. Actually, that's just as well,  coffee is sacrosanct.

But May, yes it's not too bad. By July, not a chance of sitting out after seven pm, even even if it isn't raining—which lets face it isn't that often. (yeah, looking out of the window at...rain...) Now I reckon I should have shares in every midge repellent in the world I go through so much. One of them is used by tourists, locals and forestry workers alike, even though it's a skin lotion. So we all smell so nice, and for some reason, (well no, because of deet lol) the midge doesn't like it. Well not on some people. On others it's a marriage made in Scotland.

Then we get to September, and the midge is thinking well, its all stuffed full of human blood and skin and stuff (I'm somewhat hazy on the mechanics, and really don't want to know—yuk), and decides it's time to go wherever it goes to. So, outside we go, patio heater on, fleece and woolly socks, long trousers, and yeah for me, often gloves. BUT we can sit out with our wine, and dream. That one day w'll get to do it in June, July and August without the layers of insulation.

until then... well a woman can hope can't she?