I have seven little bites, Mr ShoeThatAlwaysFits has twenty-one rather angry ones and this has turned him into Mr Itchy McScratchy.  I know he has twenty-one because I counted them after a mammoth scratching session. Most of them are clustered on his upper body, although he does have a particularly fruity one on his rump (and no, I don’t have any pictures of that one)!

You’d think that two Scots would know better, that an idyllic lake-side view with an open bedroom window is just asking for trouble.  But, as we weren’t on holiday on the west coast of Scotland, midge control was far from our minds as we went down to a wine induced sleep blissfully unaware of what we were doing to ourselves.

I was rudely awakened at 4am by Mr ShoeThatAlwaysFits apologising as he switched on lights and morphed into The Naked Mosquito Hunter.  It was quite the sight I can tell you.  The walls were soon smeared in our own blood as mosquito after mosquito fell to his dextrous hands.  We thought we had got them all and tried to settle down to sleep once again, but I was buzzed once more and leapt shrieking from the bed.  And there we were, Mosquito Massacre part deux.

In the morning, we were comparing bites to blood-smeared walls and believed we must have got them all.  Alas, this was not the case.  Some sneakily smart blighters went commando on us and waited until we were asleep the next night too as we awoke to more bites than we’d gone to bed with.

Luckily, I had packed enough anti-histamines for both of us which managed to reduce the itching if not the bites themselves.

The very last hotel we stayed at had fly screens on the windows so you could sleep with the windows open without being feasted upon – talk about too little too late.

Note to self for next trip, pack some insect repellant.