Monday 5 November 2012

My date with a nest of fire ants


Foofy and I began our relationship in March, but because he flew to Austria for a bit afterwards, I didn’t get to see him for about 10 days! This was pretty horrid, and, weirdly, that 10 day separation was far more traumatic than our three month separation at the moment due to a stupid ocean and a theatre company that insisted on hiring me.  (How BLOODY selfish!!!!) We are currently only 17 days, 18 hours, 3 minutes and 37 seconds away from seeing each other again, but anyway, I digress.

Foofy and I went on our first date on the day he came back from Vienna.  We went to my house and sorted out all of his things, after which we went for a little walk in the park.  We then made the mistake of trying to be romantic and sit in the shade of a tree.  For a couple of minutes we happily exchanged thoughts and shnoogles, until I was interrupted by an uncomfortable sensation in my right buttock.  Apologising to Foofy, I gave myself a scratch and sat back down, and we continued talking.  Then it happened again.  Because I’m a little bit slow and absent-minded sometimes, it probably happened about 8 more times before I decided to stand up.  On rising from my position on the ground, I looked down at where I had been sat to be met with THIS:



I don’t know if it was because I was suddenly able to put my discomfort into some kind of context, but that’s when it started to hurt VERY badly.  I was desperate to rip off my clothes and have a look at what had happened to me but modesty prevented me.  This was, looking back on it, one of the worst things to happen on a first date.  Although I am a woman with IBS and periods so can quite happily deal with extraordinary amounts of pain, this was no ordinary pain- it was like someone was holding up a red hot poker to my buttocks (something that Edward II is unfortunately familiar with, but that’s another story,) but for some reason it also made me laugh, as it was very tickly, and I found that the pain was slightly reduced by walking in a very awkward, wiggly way and by making a lot of noise.  Here I was, trying to impress my man on our first proper date together, and through no fault of my own, I was forced to behave like this:



So the rest of mine and Foofy’s date involved going to Boots and buying antihistamine tablets and various un-pronounceable creams with pictures of bees on them, and me applying the creams in a John Lewis toilet cubicle while he waited outside in what OF COURSE had to be the knickers section. The lady in Boots was actually very helpful, telling us that fire ants like to run around on someone’s skin, biting in a circular pattern.  I don’t know why they do this but in my head it has something to do with OCD.



She asked if she could see the injury, but I told her it was in an ‘inconvenient’ place, and she seemed to understand.  As we were walking home, I noticed a sudden, sharp pain in my arm, and I ripped off my jumper only to find that there were MORE FIRE ANTS IN MY JUMPER and I had to hold it at arms’ length for the 20 minute walk home.  I’m not sure what we did for the rest of the day, but I would have hoped that we bought some wine and watched the Apprentice (it being a Wednesday night) and forgotten about the incident.  Whatever happened that day, I must have been pretty good company, as Foofy is still sticking around. 

Weirdo.

Anyway, though this date was pretty disastrous in light of the ants, it certainly made for a very ‘ant’-ertaining blog post!

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