I, Ant!

One of the nicest things about being a journalist is the freebies. As you may or may not know tickets for Paul Simon’s latest extravaganza sold out months ago, so you can imagine my surprise when two free tickets to I Ant! turned up on Windypops’ doormat last week! For some reason no-one else in the office wanted to go, so Mel and I packed a hamper and toddled down to Woodbury Common to see the show.

Because it was bank holiday weekend the roads were chockablock with holidaymakers heading down to the West Country, but we didn’t mind, the four hour jam on the M5 gave us ample time to chill out and Mel did some Sudoku whilst I read the promotional bumph sent with the tickets. It seems the reason Paul Simon has been out of the public eye for a while is that he has spent the last two years living amongst the leafcutter ants of Borneo and studying their ways.
Well, it certainly sounded promising…he was right on the nail about civilisation.

The I, Ant! experience started some miles from the actual stage. We were instructed to park our 4x4 and proceed on foot in single file with the other concert goers. Apparently we were following a scent trail that had been laid down that morning. I couldn’t smell anything myself as my hay fever was playing me up again, but Mel said she could distinctly smell burnt onions - although that might just have been the hotdog stand.

When we finally reached the entrance to the arena, a gaping hole in the earth leading to dank, inky blackness beyond the ticket barrier, several of the audience began to mutter uneasily. What did they expect though? Leafcutter ants, as every schoolchild knows, are burrowing insects and their nests are a maze of underground passages and chambers.

Mel and I handed in our tickets and were presented with ant masks and badges saying “WORKER”. About half an hour later we had found our way through the pitch dark earthen tunnels and emerged, slightly grubby, into the concert chamber.

There were no seats, but luckily, anticipating this, I’d brought the tartan blanket from the Landrover, so we found an out of the way spot and spread it on the crumbly soil floor. Then, there being half an hour to go before the performance, I went in search of refreshments. The queue was immense, and when I got to the front I realised why; the bright spark in charge of catering had decided to rename all the snacks and beverages in line with the ant theme. Unfortunately, leafcutter ants subsist entirely on fungus which they “farm” in their underground burrows, so a sample conversation with a customer might go something like this:
By now some of the customers were getting a bit irate over order mix ups and several burly security guards wearing “SOLDIER” badges had turned up, so I decided to return empty handed.

Just as I got back the lights dimmed and Paul Simon came onstage. His costume quite took my breath away. Through a judicious use of prosthetics and animatronics he had managed to turn himself into a reasonable facsimile of a 20 metre long queen ant! The reason for this soon became apparent; the audience was invited to approach the front of the stage, where he handed out large hollow plastic eggs to all comers. Mel and I opened ours straight away, and were pleased to find they contained limited edition Paul Simon dolls, each one wearing a T-Shirt with a different message (I had ”Ants have feelings as well as feelers” and Mel had “It’s our ecology too”).

At last the actual concert began. Simon had ditched the traditional crowd pleasers like “Boy in the Bubble” and “Diamonds on the Soles of Her Shoes” in favour of an all new ant-inspired set. I rather liked it, although Mel called it “a dreary load of patronizing, half-baked, scientifically inaccurate, tuneless drivel“, which I thought was a little bit harsh.

One of the songs “Wars“ had a very inspiring refrain, which had me on my feet, waving my lighter in the air.
Another standout track was the affecting ballad “Pesticide Suicide” and things were rounded off nicely by the soaring jungle rhythms of “Don’t Stamp on My Mound”.

It was when he came back on for the encore that the trouble started. The chamber had just begun to resonate with the opening chords of “Bridge Over Troubled Water”, when a commotion sprang up at the back. Somehow (and I believe security are still looking into how it happened) a platoon of bikers dressed as Bala ants - the natural enemy of leafcutter ants - had managed to invade the burrow. Worse still, as their leader (wearing an animatronic ant suit similar to Paul Simon’s only slightly bigger ) emerged into the light his facial features became apparent. It was none other than Art Garfunkel!

Immediately the Leafcutter soldiers jumped to their feet and set about the invading Bala ants with any weapon that came to hand. The Balas countered by drawing flick knives and things started to get very nasty indeed. It was at this point that I remarked to Mel that we couldn‘t keep the babysitter waiting all night, and we decided it was time to leave.

As we crawled away down a side tunnel I looked back at the auditorium chamber for the last time. It was absolute carnage. People were being punched, glassed and otherwise mangled in very distressing ways. Onstage Paul Simon and Art Garfunkel seemed to be locked in some sort of insectile duel, swinging mandibles and feelers ineffectually at each other, cursing loudly.