Ants

I know I’ve myself this question before but until now I never had an answer. However I now know why I am sitting here writing this, this blog which started a while ago after coming across other life-style diaries. The only reason I am continuing is because now I have a follower, yes a follower, just one but I’m sure she’s lovely. I know she is interesting because of her personal blog of which she is prolific and I also now have someone who actually reads my nonsense and follows my inanities. And this is, as I understand, the be all and end all of blogging. Not having a following is akin to spending your entire life talking to yourself. There is a downside of course and that is I now have to continue and even worse, should my follower un-follow me the rejection could be quite painful. So dear follower, I beg you, when you stop reading my drivel, don’t tell me.

I have to write this down, for if I don’t I may forget how I spent a totally bizarre two hour chunk of my life. It was one afternoon last week and had you walked into my kitchen at that time you would have found a somewhat bemused man standing next to a carefully placed blob of marmalade on his white floor tiles while his eyes swept  the room’s perimeter as if they were surveillance cameras in south London. Why, I hear you ask, why would reasonably sane man place marmalade on the floor?  A fair question and the answer is that I was trying to trace where the ants were coming from. Ants black, floor white, they should stick out like the proverbial thumb even if they are minute. You know the ones; they are approximately 2 millimetres long and meander across surfaces in a conga-like fashion. Actually, if you think about it they don’t meander, they are pretty quick on those tiny legs, in fact, size for size I reckon they are all little Usain Bolts’ and Mo Farahs’.

After approximately ten minutes of standing over my marmalade blob without Usain or Mo appearing the mind starts to wander. Should I have used fine cut rather than coarse cut, after all you can’t expect a 2mm ant to carry off a heavy piece of peel. At this stage I realised that I was verging on the ridiculous or probably already passed into it. I binned the blob thinking perhaps they prefer Marmite or peanut butter I could set out a row of delicacies for them to choose – oh hell, madness is setting in I should be looking out for men in white coats not ants.

As I raised my binoculars (ok, it’s a big kitchen) and surveyed the granite worktop the blinding flash of realisation hit me like a thunderbolt. Slapping the side of my head and shouting Eureka (as one does) I looked at the worktop. The granite is of mixed colours, grey, beige and black, yes black. Do you remember as a child playing musical chairs? When the music stopped you had to find a chair to sit on, well that’s the answer – when someone walks into the room the ants rush to the nearest black bit and play statues – they hide on the black bits.