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| The Ants are My Friends | |
| By Snodlander | ||||||||||||||
| 17 November 2006 | ||||||||||||||
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I used to be convinced that I was the only one that heard these songs. Imagine my delight when no lesser man than Samual L Jackson sung the same words I had always heard in The Long Kiss Goodbye. Music was both trivial and intrinsic to his life. He liked music, in that casual way that you might like, say, peanuts. You nibble away at them, not noticing that that is what you are doing, but you wouldn’t go out of the way to buy a pack. You wouldn’t savour a peanut and compare it to another plantation’s. And so it was that he had music playing in the background of his life. In the house, in the car, in the shopping centre. It was second nature to reach out and flick the button. He liked all sorts of styles of music. That is to say, he didn’t really much care for any one style. He just liked the sound of it in the background. Radio Two for preference, Golden Oldies. It was aural wallpaper to his world. He wouldn’t notice it until his wife would switch it off with a complaint of “How can you listen to the radio and read that book at the same time?” How could he not? The silence would break his concentration until, without realising it, he would reach out switch it back on again. When there was no radio in the vicinity, he would sing quietly to himself. Especially if he was involved in some minor task of DIY or gardening. It was the equivalent of the small child sticking his tongue out as he concentrated on his crayon drawing of stick people. His wife had long since given up asking him to stop. Instead, she had asked him to at least learn the words. But how could he? He never really listened to the words. All he could remember, normally, was the chorus. So he would leap from chorus to unrelated chorus, not realising he was doing so, as he was screwing a loose hinge back, or pruning the roses. Today was washing day, and he carried the ironing basket out to the clothes line in the back garden. How many tum tee tum flowers grow In an English country garden? Gosh! When had he last heard that? Back when he was a kid, must have been. When summers were long and warm, when there was only one TV in the whole street, when you really did sit down and listen with Mother. But there were a host of flowers this year in his garden. From the large paper tissue bush that had to be pruned each year for fear of it taking over the path (he really must get round to finding out what that was called, the shrub with the purple flowers that lasted just one day, but looked like the paper tissue flowers you’d make at Sunday School for Mothering Sunday), to the tiny forget-me-nots. He started on the sheets and duvet covers first, folding them awkwardly, trying to avoid draping them on the grass. I'm not talking 'bout the linen And I don't want to change your life But there's a warm wind blowing the stars about And I really love to see you tonight He vaguely wondered whether Barry Manilow did his own laundry. Probably not. No man could wear that much white and not leave the odd red sock in the machine. That would be why he didn’t talk about it then. Next the underwear and socks, balling each matching pair before dropping them into the basket. Where is my John Wayne Where is my furry sock Where is my happy ending Where have all the cowboys gone Why was the divorce rate amongst socks so high? Why did they split up, leaving odd socks to console each other in the bottom of the basket in the vain hope that one day their partner will suddenly appear, and they could continue their life together as if nothing had happened? Out of the corner of his eye he saw something move, down amongst the bark at the foot of the roses. He turned, expecting to see one of the frequent birds that sung their own choruses in the garden. He couldn’t see anything. Could it be a wren, standing stock still against the brown debris, invisible to his eyes screwed up against the sun? It moved again, and now he saw it. A slow worm. He left the washing and slowly walked over to it, quiet now so as not to disturb it. It was a juvenile, maybe three or four inches long, perfectly camouflaged, looking like a twig or length of bark until it twisted and slithered under the weed-suppressing matting. He was oddly proud that these endangered lizards had chosen his garden as their home. His wife was less happy at first. They looked too much like snakes for her liking. But they were one of the gardener’s friends. They loved to chow down on the garden marauders, slugs and snails. He had forbidden his wife to use slug pellets when he had first discovered the slow worms. When she had ignored that he had begged and pleaded. A compromise had been reached. She would only pellet vulnerable plants at the top of the garden, well away from their composting home. He hoped that Eric ‘Slow Worm’ Clapton would approve. He walked over to the pair of green plastic compost bins. He lifted the lid of the first. There were two slow worms, basking on the grass mulch, absorbing the heat from the sun as it baked the compost bin. As he replaced the lid, he felt them thwack the side of the bin as they scurried down into the moist rotting vegetation. He felt a pang of guilt at disturbing their siesta. He lifted the lid of the other bin to check on the nursery. The ants had made this bin their high-rise home. Right at the peak they had decided to make their nursery, the black soil dotted with their white eggs. At the sudden loss of their roof, ants started to scurry around, picking up eggs and moving them inside. He replaced the lid. Ants were a friend and a foe. On the plus side they helped aerate the soil. In the compost bin they helped mix the strata of compost. On the minus side they had a sweet tooth. This brought them into conflict with his wife on two fronts. Every now and then they would make a foray into the kitchen. They would probe the defences until they found a weakness, then launch a column at the sugar bag in the pantry. He had been forced to lay down a little trap by the door. The ants would trail through it, coating themselves with poison, then bring it back to the nest, unwitting fifth columners. He had felt guilty about this. Poison was no way for a soldier ant to die. He should die locked mandible to mandible in an epic struggle with an earwig. The second front was with her beloved roses. He regretted telling her now about the farmer ant. She had not believed him, and he had brought home a book from the library to prove it. Ants farmed greenfly. They would round up a herd of aphids and corral them on a rose or other plant. The ants would protect them from predators like ladybirds, and in return the aphids would produce a sugary secretion when stroked by the ant. Again, a compromise was reached. He would take badly infested buds and compost them, and wash the others in washing-up liquid solution. He hated to use chemicals, and he felt sorry for the poor ants. They were only doing what was natural, and on balance he felt that the good they did to the soil outweighed the damage they might encourage on the roses. They would be mating soon, exchanging their life on the ground for a day on the wing. As he picked the washing back up he sung softly to himself about the gardener’s friend. The ants are my friends, they’re blowin' in the wind, The ants, they’re a-blowin' in the wind
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. It's illegal to trade in them as well, them being protected and all. 
)
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