At the belay, my less romantically inclined partner pointed out a worse fate. The wind had dropped and as we only had a single pitch left to climb we were dangerously close to the heather-clad upper slopes of the whale shaped mountain whose bedding plane we had invaded. Sure enough, with every lull a fine, dancing miasma of thousands of tiny black specks would appear, hungrily drifting across the upper slabs towards us. 'Oh Shit!' I cried, and led through. The inevitable happened when I was about thirty feet from the belay, traversing a new slab above the overhangs we had just surmounted and making for the point where the crag petered out in a series of vertical steps and grassy ledges. As I was struggling to arrange yet another dodgy nut placement the wind died completely and within seconds a series of intense hot-needle pricks told me that the midges had found their man.

Under the best of circumstances the Highland Midge causes deep suffering and misery.

Only a few millimetres long, the tiny black and grey terrorists have a chemical bite that stings like medieval descriptions of the devil's goad and can raise welts the size of old pennies. Clad only in shorts and EBs I made a fine and irresistible buffet for the miniature insurgents, who were not content merely to sink their fangs into my exposed torso and legs, but who clustered around my eyes and ears as if they knew the places their biting would cause most distress. Naturally I fell. A long, sliding pendulum on my hands and knees accompanied by the sounds of abrading flesh, failing protection, swearing belayer and millions of tiny beating wings as my tormentors did their best to keep up with their rapidly moving meal. When the fall stopped, twin red trails could be seen descending from where I had been standing, looping downwards in a series of circular sections before falling off the edge of the overhangs. At the trigonometric intersection of the taut, vertical rope and the last and longest of the bloody arcs hung a battered teenager with bleeding legs, shaking hands and a deep hatred of all six-legged creatures. The extraction went as extractions do. Slowly and painfully. Somehow I flopped back over the overhang, re-jigged the belay and watched as Bruce sped across the decorated slab, keeping one hand for the rock and one hand for the midges. I swatted as many of the evil creatures as I could, both at the belay and when descending to the car and first aid kit, but nobody was fooled as to which species had the upper hand, least of all the barman of the Clachaig who, never having seen either me or my companions before in his life , glanced briefly at the cotton wool swaddling my limbs and the taut, haggard look on my face, smiled, and in his finest rhetorical manner asked: 'Midges bad at Etive today then?'

In May you are OK. By June they start coming out. By July they can drive a normal person insane. Midges are Scottish mosquitoes, but they aren't mosquitoes really, but more like Pennsylvania no-see-ums with their own blood drills. Suffice it to say they are miserable. I came upon a man in his fifties on the West Highland way beaten by the midges. (Midges are worst around Loch Lomond) The man was sitting along the trail sobbing -- I am not making this up -- actually sobbing -- when I stumbled upon him. Thinking he was injured I stopped and offered help. Turning his face toward mine with tears streaming down his cheeks, he showed me his arms and face swollen and bloodied by midges (and by his scratching) and said, "I'm ruined,... I'm ruined... and I even ran marathons... now I'm ruined...I have to quit." There will be no midges in Heaven, but they certainly will inhabit eternity in the other location I am sure. If so, it is certainly one of the best reasons to go to heaven when one dies!

You think we are kidding?

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