Ants and the Upside Down Pizza

Saturday 18 June 2011 - When you live in rural Italy you must expect to share your space with the critters that live there too. I do my best to co-exist, and when they enter my living space; whether they’re grasshoppers, scorpions or spiders, I’ll always remove them and pop them back outside. However today I have no option but to exterminate. I spot a couple of ants wandering across the floor, now these are not the tiny little ones found in the UK, but big fat buggers around 0.5 cm long. There’s even more walking down the walls, so I look up and there’s literally hundreds walking along a beam in the roof. They all seem to be concentrated on one section of the beam, so out comes the ant powder. A quick squirt and they leave pronto. those trapped get crushed under foot: they’re so big it’s like squashing blackberries.

I pop down to Euronics to get a micro sim for my iPhone, as the man behind the counter said on Wednesday, they’ll have new stock in today. Today it’s a different man and he says they wont have any for two weeks, so I guess it’ll be trip into Casoli next week to get one. On the way back I’m spotted by Baleno, and she runs up to see me. Baleno, meaning lightning is a little cat, that’s obviously pregnant, but so thin it’s a wonder she’s alive. She’s very vocal and I give her something to eat and contented she has a snooze under a patio chair. (She has a ginger flash on her head hence the name).

I don’t know where the days go to just lately, one minute I’m looking at the clock and it says 12.00, the next time I look it’s 18.30. So it’s time to consider dinner. The Humans play, This Belongs To You, the 1,415th song to shuffle since I moved here. I decide on pizza, and set about chopping ingredients for the topping. It’s only when I’ve assembled it that I realise I forgot the cheese, so the cheese gets added onto the top. Okay it’s upside down but hopefully it’ll taste good.

Before:

After:  

And yes it tasted fabulous.