How not to get eaten alive

I've never been much bothered by midges and other biting, flying things before. I think I've usually managed to hang around people who are tastier than me, so get off lightly. Here, though, we have Welsh monster midges, and I tend to be out in the garden in the evenings, so my arms have ended up covered in itchy spots. Time for action!

We have a huge wormwood bush in the garden, which, apart from providing absinthe with its mystique*, is reputed to repell insects. It was the latter property that I intended to use.

I cut a bundle of branches of wormwood and stripped the leaves off into a basin (pudding basin, not the kind you wash your hands in). This was very tedious. I then added enough olive oil to coat all the leaves, mashed it about a bit, and left it to infuse, poking it from time to time. The next day, I separated the oil from the leaves with the help of a bit of old net curtain, i.e. I bundled the mixture into the net and squeezed all the oil out. The last bits were very dark brown, but I reckoned they'd probably have most of the scent in. I also added a couple of drops of lavender essence, as I happened to have a bottle.

I could have left it at that, and just applied the oil to my skin, but I fancied something a bit nicer, so I made it into moisturiser. This required first heating the oil. I had some chicken stock on the go, so rather than heat another pan, I stuck the basin in the top of the stock. A bit sticky, but effective!

Scented oil and beeswax stealing heat from chicken stock

The reason for heating the oil is that beeswax must be melted into it, so I added a bit. Once that was melted, I took it off the heat and whisked while it cooled down. Here I discovered the difference doing this in summer rather than winter. In cold weather, it very quickly reached the creamy stage and I had to act quickly before the whole lot went solid. That didn't happen this time. In fact, it didn't reach the creamy stage at all. I was aiming for body butter but got cold gravy.

More beeswax needed, then. I repeated the process, adding a bit more wax then whisking as it cooled. I also added a bit of water when it started to thicken, which it did this time. I'm not particularly fussed about the moisturising properties of this - the water was mainly to help reduce the resemblance to gravy. In this it was successful, and once it was in a nice glass pot, the finished cream didn't look too bad at all.

Insect repellant cream

The important question, though, is does it work? I tested it this evening, applying it to face, neck and arms, and going out to brave the midges. I did a bit of weeding round the onions and carrots, from where I've been driven indoors on other occasions, and... I didn't get bitten! It's possible that with today being a bit cooler and windier than other days there weren't so many of them around, so it's not a definitive test, but so far so good! I'll keep using it and let you know whether it's any good.

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*Wormwood is used to flavour absinthe. It contains a chemical called thujone which is hallucinogenic, which did much to bolster absinthe's reputation as a dangerous drink. In fact, if you drank enough absinthe to get hallucinations, you'd be dead from the alcohol.