itchy.

To all my friends overseas who are whinging about the cold and pining for the Australian heat:

You have forgotten about the mosquitos.

You have forgotten what it is like to climb dead tired into bed and be so sticky and radiating heat that you cannot bear even a sheet on top of you. And just as you are dropping off, to hear the thin whine of a mosquito near your ear, knowing that your entire body is exposed and primed for the kill, and that the nasty vampire has locked on to your pulsating heartbeat and is coming ever closer to your feet or wrists or any of the other most unbearable places to get a mosquito bite. So you turn the light on, only to find there is no mosquito in sight, but within seconds of the light going out the familiar buzz begins again. You get up, and for the next ten minutes stalk the little rotter, until you finally have the satisfaction of squishing the parasite under your flat palm. And the relief is immeasurable because now you can go to sleep. Until it all starts again minutes later, and then you repeat this process again and again, until an hour has passed and you finally realise that it is not a just a few unconnected blood-suckers that you have in your room, but a whole swarm. Then, you may choose to continue this process indefinitely until you fall asleep from exhaustion and wake up with swolen punctures all over your soft skin, or you crawl under the covers and drowsily slip in and out of half-sleep in a bundle of sweaty cotton.

Do you really miss this?

Have I mentioned that I firmly believe that moquitos are getting smarter and faster? This is 21st century evolution - we're killing off all of the slow stupid ones, and are now left with the droning undead. Urgh.

You may have guessed by now that this is not just to make my travelling friends feel better - it is the story of my weekend. Along with the Yarn Barn exaggerating on their website about their opening hours, and Jamie Oliver exaggerating about how good his carrot cake was, and the cauliflower curry exaggerating about how far it was from burning on my stove. As you can see (apart from a very nice dinner and breakfast with the lovely Molly & co) my weekend was a bit of a flop.