Balancing act

As you wait gripped by anticipation over how the pate turned out, I think it is a good time to shatter your vision of the rural idyll you imagine us living.

In the midst of all the gloriousness of the weather, the scenery, the sheer nature, the garden produce, the companionship and blind love from the kids and the goats, the tranquility and solitude, the time (aah the time!), in the midst of all this there rages a darker side, a constant grim battle. A blight.

This battle can be summarised in one foul word. It is a word so redolent of misery and suffering that it is enough to send all but the most dedicated ruralist reaching for the solace of the nearest bottle of chemicals. Invertebrae!

Yeah it is they! From the midge to the tick, from slug to horsefly and even millipede, we live our lives in fear.

Midges are havng a bad year. The hot and dry seems to be keeping their numbers low, though when conditions are right they seem to emerge with a voraciousness that frays every nerve-ending forcing you indoors sobbing for mercy.

Ticks are abundant however. Even established crofters have remarked so, though their explanation verges on the supernatural: "Aye! We saw a deer in the spring and have been cursed by the tick since. So it is." Even modern man flays flails and fails to find pattern and explanation of the perverse humour of mother nature. Mother you say? Surely more a twisted bitter old spinster.

Ticks require constant vigilence. Every itch and tickle, every speck, demands examination - whatever contortions it takes, in whatever bizarre location you feel the need to drop your trousers and bend and twist and wobble your way to that little sensation on the back of your thigh. But as time passes I'm beginning to regard the tick with strange affection. They are harmless enough if you catch them early - and easy to deal with. And, truely, there is little in life so rewarding as the imagined screams of a tick being split in half by your thumb nail.

It is not the thought of the midge or the tick that brings up the bile to burn your throat. No, that honour is bestowed upon the crack commando in the Old Girls amoury - The Cleg.

Horseflies are agile and persistent. They fight to the death. Their bite is often painfully delivered and often draws blood. In the days following the bite itches and swells to an extent surely more befitting some venomous cobra. And this hot dry summer seems to be to their liking.

It is the horsefly that engenders a constant paranoia. A neurosis directed at any and every winged innocent (and not so innocent). A frantic disquiet. Though you may labour in the searing heat of the day you dare not offer weary flesh to the cooling breeze for fear of the painful retribution of the cleg.

But at least, I say with fingers crossed prostrating myself afore the beauty, benevolence and munificence of the Great Mother, we don't have this .

Lunchtime approaches. Pate beckons.