Got ants in me pants and i need to dance!

Just a wee tale about our train journey from Rome to Genoa.

So we lug our packs down to the storage area of our hostel, and head out to see the last item on our Rome 'greatest hits' package - the Spanish Steps.

We get back from our mission via the Metro, running extremely late and proceed to run back to get our packs from the storage area. We run in completely the wrong direction, turn around, run back the right way, grab bags, lurch to train station to arrive in the nick of time - 2mins before the train leaves. But its 30 mins late. So we stand around, Adri checking out the train departures board, Andrew flapping his hands at his sweaty arm pits.

Eventually the train arrives and it looks like the oldest one in the italian fleet. Its got scrapes down one side and tags from the 80s down the other. We jump onto the wrong end of the 9th carriage, and squeeze our packs into and past Italians in their best train riding clothes (shiny vinyl-look puffer jackets and Ugg boots) to get to the other end. We're in seat numbers 93 and 94 - closest to the door, facing each other. There's an older couple sharing our six seater booth in the window seats. They have put newspaper under their bums as they deem the seats too dirty to sit on directly. Seats look fine to us.

We stow our packs on the racks overhead and relax.

Three stops down the line and we're joined by an Italian couple. They're both about mid 30's, the man reminds me of an Italian version of David Brent from the office. They stow their stuff and we're on our way.

Every ten minutes David leans over and pats his lady on the knee. He says something to her italian, which i imagine is the Italian version of: "eh, alrigh' Luv?" then they snog vigourisly and sloppily. Adri is visibly cringing at the drain-cleaning noises they're making.

Half an hour he stands up and tucks his shirt in. He keeps scratching himself. He says something to the older italian couple and they point to their newspaper and natter in reply.

Five minutes later he scratches his head, stands up and looks around, looks at the floor, brushes himself off. Sits down.

This alternates between pashes.

After half an hour David's really scratching. He keeps picking at his clothing. He makes moany complainy noises to the older italian couple and they nod in approval. He brushes off himself and spies something on the ground. An Ant! All the Italians are horrified. Weird. The cogs in my head are slowly engaging as we cut to a flashback of my packing earlier that day, where i spied a similar brown ant. Then i remember all the sweet things i had in my pack and can feel my face slowly turning red. My pack sits directly above him and the ants are falling down onto his seat, his head, down his shirt. Luckily no-one realises this, they think its due to having such a dirty carriage. I keep my composure, soon a guard is contacted and he finds a replacement compartment for us to go to.


He explains to us:
"If youa lika, we mova you to numba three! Thisa ona ees Dirty."

(all italians leave promptly)

Adri and Andy: "uh .. oh thanks, um actually we are used to living in filth"


The guard thinks this is hilarious.

Once everyone has gone, Adri and i unpack my bag. I pull my spare shoes out and they're sticky and have ants ALL over them. We find the motherlode in the form of an opened pack of Marzipan carrots. We shook my pack out, adri doing a tap dance/ haka on the ants as they hit the floor. Soon there's a fleet of black smudges in our carriage, we're both doing our best to look like we're promoting circulation to our legs, with our stompy, stretchy movements.