Let’s hear it for the midges

IT was bad enough when Boris Johnson refused us our referendum and then Liz Truss described our esteemed leader as an attention-seeker, but the latest diatribe of abuse directed by one of our own against our creature cousins, culicoides impunctatus or midges, goes too far (“Vicious little beasties that bite you in the Cairngorms”, Rab McNeil, August 14). However, I have room here to report only a few of the many good things about midges.

1. Impunctatus, like the miner’s canary, are true friends to humanity by virtue of defining areas of safe air quality. One whiff of man’s pollution and these wee chaps are offski. There are none of them to be found under the Hielanman’s Umbrella in Glasgow. Their presence is a welcome confirmation of environmental purity.

Impunctatus should not only be permitted, they should be compulsory.

2. It is nowadays quite simply wrong, reprehensible and unacceptable at every level to define “keeping the English south of the Border” as a positive societal objective, but it was okay in 1314 and that was a great year for our nation. Let us just say that impunctatus tends to ensure that those who choose to make a second or subsequent visit to Scotland are of suitable character.

3. Impunctatus has the potential to save us from ourselves. During their seasons, the only outdoor relief from their affectionate attention is achieved by maintaining a land speed of 4/5 mph, sufficient to ward off the modern plague of obesity.

4). Impunctatus may be crucial to the defence of the realm. Nobody who has navigated the Lairig Ghru on a balmy summer evening can doubt the true fate of the Ninth Legion in that Ghru and the part played by impunctatus. It is difficult to translate that defence strategy into the context of 21st-century warfare but, perhaps, not beyond the ingenuity of a small nation which overcame a European superpower by the simple process of standing around in circles and poking the enemy with pointy sticks (schiltrons, 1314). The Swiss, who have never suffered military defeat, may have their Swiss Army knives but even these are worse than useless against impunctatus.

5. Those who have had to share a continental bedroom, caravan or tent with even only one horrific continental mosquito must have longed for the relatively soothing balm of 1,000 midge bites. If you have impunctatus for company then you do not have the company of mosquitoes or the various agonising, life-changing and sometimes terminal conditions which these monsters bring.

The list of good things about midges goes on and on but, I suspect, more so than the Editor’s word limit shall permit.

Michael Sheridan, Glasgow.

LIKE Rab McNeil, I don’t like midges, but I love swallows. They are beautiful, and their spirit and energy touch my soul. They seem to enjoy human company and nest in close proximity, often discharging their poo in annoying locations, which tends not to endear them to the tidy-minded. My farming neighbour’s machinery shed is a favourite roost and the expensive

contents thereof are frequent recipients of their outgoings, about which he was complaining bitterly recently.

I sympathised, but then I remarked that at this time of the year in Argyll, swallow poo consists mostly of puréed midge. The statistics are very impressive indeed. At this, he put his head on one side, smiled slowly and replied: “Oh aye – aye, there is that.” Furthermore, some people think that it is good luck to be pooed on by swallows, and that it improves one’s financial prospects. At least knowing this might make cleaning up after them a more cheerful experience.

John Gosling, Barcaldine.