It’s a bugs life!

Do you know what bugs me about the summer. Not counting the incessant heat, everyone else going on holiday and everyone walking around in clothes that might fit Brad Pitt or Pamela Anderson but not so much for the sumo wrestlers amongst us… bugs!

I don’t know what it is. I’m always so nice to them. I shoo flies and wasps and moths out of the house. I catch spiders in my hand and take them to the far end of the garden. If I see a bee in distress in spring then I go out with a teaspoon of sugary water. The garden is full of planting to encourage wildlife and what thanks do I get? To be bitten to death every summer.

It’s not like I encourage them. Even in the 40 degree weather I wear jeans (or indeed suits). I never wear shorts, don’t sit in the garden, don’t have the windows open until nightfall and even then have the lights off so not to encourage everyone to fly and crawl in.

Other people go on TV shows in rooms full of thousands of insects and come out entirely unscathed. People live in jungles where countless things are waiting to take a bite of you or indeed in the moors and mountains of northern Britain where sometimes the sky turns black with midges and other things.

Me, I just sit on my own in the dark but I’m obviously not alone. At this very moment I can see 19 bites on me and I’m aware of others that I can’t see. They get everywhere, my hands, my knees, my feet, my legs. Everywhere. I get bitten walking the streets, on tube rides, anywhere.

I’m not sure why they pick on me. I know some people have a particular type of blood type are viewed as desirable by insects. Maybe I am just like Homer Simpson who loves doughnuts and himself so much that when he turns his head into a giant doughnut, he just can’t resist eating himself as he is so sweet and delicious.

I know some bugs hunt and orientate themselves using CO2 and I have tried holding my breath when I hear buzzing a few metres away but it does not good. Overweight people are said to be juicier targets than others but in the last year I have gone from a clothing size XL to small and the bites are just as bad. In fact as I’m so much smaller it could be reasons it is even worse as I have so few acres of flesh compared to before. I wish they would buzz off.

Some people just have a rather wild immune system and whilst others don’t have a reaction, others end up having a bite swelling as big as Mount Everest, okay that is an exaggeration but every year or so I get a gold ball sized lump on my arm or leg. My mother used to get plenty too though I don’t remember they were quite as numerous or annoying as mine and she was neither a man or blood type ‘O’ which mosquitos particularly enjoy.

Perhaps I should eat less bland food. I don’t like onions or garlic or anything like that. Perhaps just as I try and avoid the particular sweaty smell of such people on public transport whilst others seem not to notice it at all, insects too may like their blood and sweat less pongy.

I just don’t know, Do they think I’m a cow? Cows are often bothered by insect bites but I’m a gluten and dairy free person, I don’t have any milk in me and following that logic the bites should all concentrate on the huge majority in this country who are able to enjoy those foods.

I wouldn’t mind but they itch and sometimes hurt quite badly. Many bites anummerd lumps can take 3-4 weeks to get better and more often than not before that happens one will get a second or third bite on the same spot and then things get worse.

At the moment I have a big bite on my ankle, out of all me to bite why go there. You have to get through jeans, socks and shoes and there can’t be much blood there in comparison to wrists or necks.

Some people sweat a lot more than others and that is said to attract insects but without sounding like Prince Andrew, I very rarely sweat, perhaps that is why I often feel so hot in the summer and feeling hot is something insects are attracted to.

Hopefully it will all die down again in a few weeks at least for a few months but for now I will keep troweling on layers of white creams onto the worst of the bites and hope the insects bug off!