Mosquitos

 We have two biting mosquitos in the Bordeaux area now. There's the usual small kind that hangs around under trees and bushes at night and will come into your home. Then there's the tiger mosquito, the new kid in town, bigger, more aggressive and more dangerous - in some parts of the world the tiger mosquito carries illnesses like dengue fever and chikungunya. Here in Bordeaux they don't transmit anything but they will bite you in the daytime.

We've had mosquitos in the house around Christmas in the past. It's pretty miserable when they come for you at night when you're in bed - you hear the buzzing, like a tiny moped zipping past your ear. You smack your ear, your cheek, your forehead, everywhere, then in the morning you find the bites.

American friends wonder why we don't have screen doors, fly screens on our windows, air-conditioning so we don't have to open our windows. I don't know. I don't know.

French friends relativise it all. It's only the female who bites and she only does it so she can let her eggs. 

This is no help to me, because when I get bitten at the very least I get large hard bumps that ooze. At the worst, so far, I get huge inflamed areas that make me go to the pharmacy for creams and gels to try and take the inflammation down, and I spend a week putting hot and cold compresses on. At present my left arm is inflamed below the elbow, my left knee, just on the knee and my right ankle. People tell me I'm allergic.