Christ, nicely timed.
After months of organisation and various call offs, on Saturday my pals and I set off to a lovely Loch side spot for some camping, fire building and raving. We packed my friends van full of audio equipment and set off for a night of indulgence. On arriving we drove the van down a semi hidden lane and into the spot itself. It is perfect, lots of wood, plenty of space for cavorting and shamanic shuffling, if required. I set about setting all the audio gear up and the rest fucked off for wood.

There were midgies about, as you would expect, but they were tolerable and in my experience they tend to fuck off at a certain time of night anyway. The rave generator now complete i stuck on some Boards of Canada and it sounded brilliiant. The sub woofer gently pulsing from inside the van made it sound like a mini festival, particularly when you walked away from it. We then began to set the tent up.

It was about then that I decided that the midgies were getting worse, in fact they were practically sending us insane, a mild panic swept through camp as we decided if we should in fact PACK EVERYTHING BACK UP AND GO HOME. What a monumental waste of time it would all be. Even standing OVER the fire failed to discourage them, they still attacked, in their millions it seemed. Seconds later an executive decision was reached to do exactly that. I popped my headlamp on as it was now dusky, perfect time for a midge invasion of biblical proportions. It was only when my friends could see the clouds of midgies in the the light of the headlamp that they really began to freak out. I myself couldn't see as I was too busy disconnecting things and panicking.

Minutes later we were good to go and everyone who looked at me couldn't help but say "Fucking hell man, look at your face". It was bitten red raw, as were my hands, and legs, i counted over 100 angry bites. We got back to my place at midnight, we all just sat down in near silence, completely broken and shell-shocked. I tried to rally things and inhect a bit of, 'we may as well get totally wankered then', but the energy had gone, replaced by misery and scratching. We agreed on one thing though, that if we had stayed, we would have went out of our mind.

In summary, midgies CAN be tolerated, in small numbers, but do a yourself a favour and get a fucking midgie head net, do not get a mosquito net as the holes are too big.
(Cancer Joy was short lived, Wed 16 Jun 2010, 13:37, Reply)