Anybody else melting?

Not too bad over here. I think the wind is helping a lot. But it’s meant to be 29 tomorrow  :*(   I hope I’ll be done at  work by midday so I can head straight for the beach and have a nice soak in the sea.

I have friends holidaying in the south of France – 42 yesterday. Scorchio.

Like Richard I find the temperatures just pleasantly toasty BUT the humidity has just sky-rocketed in the last hour and gives it a sub-tropical feel.

Les. wrote:

A horsefly bit her, about 6 bites in all, including one on her cheek (not the one next to her nose) and they left massive marks which are still itching badly.

Horseflies are nasty little b’s. However, if you can whack them hard when you get the first sharp pain they don’t have time to spit in all their nastiness. If they do manage to drop their full pay-load into me, such bites swell like balloons and itch for days!

Six bites are not at all funny, tell Tamara she has my sympathy and to wear vertically striped clothing (zebra like) in future, as research has shown that you accumulate far fewer bites.

Returning to the subject of the temperature, here it is already showing signs of an undesirable uplift. It is already hotter at 10:00 than on any other day this year, so outside work will probably have to be shelved for the moment. It is not yet like it was in the Middle East when 45 degrees C and upwards were often the case but at least here the humidity is a little better at 46% vice the 99% we used to ‘enjoy’. My office had air conditioning out there and the condensation on the outside of the window attracted the rats from the Ministry of Health compound to come across for a rehydration break lapping it off.

I agree that the flying rats are no benefit to anyone, neither is the 34 degree heat today so the thought of being up a ladder dealing with pigeon ‘fall out’ has absolutely zero appeal. The ‘great out doors’ is not so great today, so my limit was reached when I took my wife’s car out for its weekly run and found the air conditioning was essential from the off. I will need to do a bit of watering later, hopefully I shall not encounter any flying piranhas the way others have recently suffered their predation.

My wife is similarly blessed by being more or less immune to Northern Hemisphere insects, however when we went to New Zealand the Black Flies/Sand Flies ate her alive and left me alone. I could track her progress along the lake shores by the huge plume of flies above her!

I have not had anything as dramatic as that Les, but I did have a leg swell up and go a funny colour, it swelled up so that the foot would no longer articulate. Now I wear oedema stockings to control the size of my foot. The other foot is much slimmer since a spinal issue caused the leg to start withering. That has now been corrected by an operation back in about 2012 but I now use a pair of the socks to maintain sartorial balance. My wife is the one with a serious reaction to bites and other things, so she carries two Epipens with her at all times.

The heat arrived this morning, but it is just a nice 25ºC atm. Looks like it will get hotter tomorrow.

The worst insect infection I ever had was from a huge long centipede during jungle training in Malaysia. I completely forgot the instruction to “Brush it off backwards, opposite to the way it is heading, with a machete handle or anything other than your hand.” The ‘legs’ are hooked and point back for traction: I knocked it forwards and they dug into my arm, leaving deep scratches. They do have a venomous bite apparently, but I didn’t get that. I received several hooked ‘feet’ which carry all kinds of carp from the jungle floor. Almost a week in Sick Bay, whole arm swelled up, treated with some awful stuff but recovered well. Stamped to death every centipede I saw after that. Next came a Boiga, a venomous snake: I woke up and heard my mate whisper “Don’t move or you’re dead!” There was one of these things on my chest, asleep. I was about to have a bowel movement when a local little brown lad who had been asked in, hooked it with a stick and dropped it to the floor. My mate stamped on its head with his boots. If he had missed its head, he would probably have been bitten. I had thought for years it was a Krait, but after recent contact with my mate, he says it was a Boiga. Same result if bitten by either: no more Bob!

Horse flies: in BAOR on our Spring exercises with the Bundeswehr Alpine troops on a mountain overlooking the beautiful Weissensee, we were relaxing on camp beds one Saturday. I told one of the lads, a very blonde pale-skinned lad from Hull, to grease up with sun cream because of his skin and the altitude-increased UV, and don’t fall asleep because the horse flies will get you. Then we left for the local town, Füssen. On our return, we learned that he had been taken to hospital, having dozed off lying on his front, the HF’s had snacked on the soft flesh at the back of his knees. Both legs swelled up so much he could not walk and after 3 days in a German convent hospital, he was driven up to BMH Rinteln, the British Military Hospital. His legs and whole body were badly infected and he was eventually sent back to the UK. Never saw him again, but heard he was medically discharged.

And he forgot the sun cream, so he was also badly sunburnt. Some people never listen.

It’s bloody ants that we get here, I have never succeeded in wiping out the little barstewards. Next month, if/when it’s hot, they will grow wings and come out again.