As the Pet Shop Boys (ft. Dusty Springfield) once sang, what have I done to deserve this?

Ignoring trade press, all the magazines printed in the world examine one issue: how to be more attractive. How to look good? How to look better? What suits you best? Why is he attracted to ybeing favoured aperture of the genre being the multiple choice quiz, which, ladies, is not written by skilled psychologists who might cost a bomb, but by the girls from the office armed with a bit of stationery and buckets of cheap Chardonnay, so don't freak out when you're told that you and your witless 'boyf' are incompatible. But I digress...)

Just once it would be nice if Cosmo did a feature on my particular challenge: how to be less attractive. Er, albeit to flying, biting insects.

The local mosquito population had tiny bunting out when they heard I was coming. Their kids were taken out of flying school for the harvest, and Grandpa Bitey Biggles came out of retirement to take to the skies one last time.

Remember that scene in Forest Gump when Bubba listed all the things you can do with Shrimp? Swap the word 'shrimp' with the word 'ankle', and that's what I'm on the sharp end of.

From a military tactics point of view, I am onto a loser. The mosquitoes attack in superior numbers, under cover of darkness, with the element of surprise and unchallenged air superiority.

With what deadly arsenal has science armed me to repel the little b*****s? Deodorant. Or, more accurately, just odorant. I smell like a petrol station, without discernible benefit.

As the saying goes, the fact that you're paranoid doesn't mean they aren't out to get you. So am I an especially delicious evening meal?

A survey of the breakfast room allows me to bring some statistical accuracy to this: I wear 50% of the big nasty bites in the breakfast room, even though I am 0.3% of the bare flesh. The other 50% is enjoyed by a ginger lad with a Very Scary Wife, so he has bigger problems.

In the specific case of Aussies, as the dominant group of tourists here, this makes evolutionary sense: if you're biteable, you got bitten at home already, you died. But it doesn't actually explain why I am yummy.

Fortunately, I have a theory. Even when a whole leg is bare, it's either the ankle or the top of the leg that gets bitten, where the fabric meets the skin. Why? Static air: they need a windbreak to land. So, I need to wear a boiler suit, or go naked, or go for a jog; two of which don't work in the tropics, and the third would land me in jail.

Or, I can sit next to the ginger lad and see if he lures them away... Sounds like a more credible option.