A Cocktail - but without the umbrella

First, a big thank you to all of you who have been following Chick Flick's blips and left such lovely messages for me about the kerfufle that was my short but very eventful holiday to Barbados.

The highly trained SAS bomber command squadrons of mozzies took a real shine to me on the first night we arrived. It had been raining, and they were on the prowl for nice, white English flesh. I was lunch and dinner for them, boy did they feast.

By Sunday morning, I was covered in bites, had an allergic reaction and not to put too finer point on it, they became infected. I visited the Doc, who perscibed antibiotics and told me no alcohol, no sun, but go in the sea, but watch out for the big black Sea Urchins. Oh I wanted to blip those urchins, but that's another story.

By day 3 I was in so much pain, the swelling was so bad that I could hardly walk and I knew I couldn't take another 10 days and desperately wanted to come home.

Eventually, I secured the last seat on a flight home for Thursday night and though it cost me a fortune, I grabbed it. I will admit that I had a little cry in the loo on the flight because needless to say, the swelling got worse as it would under normal circumstances and I was in a lot of pain. But I had to walk around the plane all night on the advice of the stewards who kept an eye on me.

When the plane landed at Gatwick at 6.30 yesterday morning, the relief was indescribable. If I could have got down on the ground and kissed my beloved English soil I would have but by this time I could hardly walk. I got to see a doctor who perscribed this lot of pills, potions and lotions and I finally felt well enough to drive home this morning.

The band UB40 were staying in the same hotel as us, and they had been bitten as well, but they did say I absolutely won the competition for the best mozzie bites and we all decided that we should join the dots and see what picture comes out. I took a couple of blips of them, one of which will be backloaded over the next couple of days.

I will also be backloading the blips I took of the bites, so if you are the least bit squeamish, I wouldn't look if I were you!

And so home. Oh, how wonderful it is! I still have a week off work, so I can relax, recover, go out and about with Flick blipping. I can slap on the fake tan before going back to work, they'll never know...