I'd been playing alone without Roland which was different and hard work to get used to. You need discipline and guts and have to stick at it. Sometimes you get really down and lonely, other times it's great.

Anyway, we hit the road in that round orange car, I had my guitar with me and wanted to play in Venice, but found out later they don't like that kind of thing there.

What the hell was I doing? I'd given up everything, left England, was stuck in the middle of Europe with an eighty pound accoustic guitar and a backpack, and heading towards Venice with two mad Austrians in an orange beetle – shit.
That was about it. It worried the hell out of me sometimes, especially when I thought about returning to England - which I wanted to do less and less. But strangely, I was getting home sick, guess it's normal. I missed my family and stuff, felt lost, wandering around like some kind of cowboy. Sometimes I just had the feeling I needed a flat for a while, to call my own, to make a tee, put my feet up and watch TV. It had only been 2 months, but it was all so intensive, it seemed like 2 years. I actually had had the plan to build up something with Roland, rent a flat, buy a studio, work on our own songs and stuff. But Roland didn't want any of that. He wanted girls and a life long supply of fresh underpants and, oh who knows what.

First we drove to Mestra just outside Venice before you drive across the bridge. We parked up, it was evening, we decided to go for a beer and something to eat and head for Venice the next day. We actually found an english/italien pub selling pizza and english beer on draft. Not bad I thought, the eye-taliens ain't that bad after all.
After the pizza and a few beers, we went out to find a place to sleep.

Trouble is, we did something stupid - we slept in an anthill.

We didn't know it was an anthill. There was no sign saying;
"DO NOT SLEEP HERE - ANTHILL!" or
„KEEP OUT - ANT HILL“ or
„ANTS HERE – DO NOT ENTER“ or
„RESERVED FOR ANTS – NO HUMANS!“ or anything of the sort (would have been 3-4 signs in Germany, they would aslo have been each written in 6-7 languages!).
Hannelore could understand a bit of italien, and we looked for the sign for about an hour the next day, there wasn't one - unless it had been stolen in the night which we all decided was very unlikely.

This wasn't a normal anthill either. In fact it wasn't a hill at all, that was the sneaky thing about it.
It was a flat anthill!!! Pretty clever bloody ants.
The italian ants seem to have a higher IQ than English and German ants.
In England, if an ant decides to build an anthill, then he does just that, he builds a hill. In Germany it is very similar, the only difference being he has to apply for a government permit before, and it usually takes about 2 years to go through.

But, the italian ants are different - these ants had obviously been through some kind of military training - they build flat anthills - and it was in one of those that we tried to sleep.

That night, I dreamt about the ants‘ military training facility....

„So, at ease, gentlemen! You have now completed the first 4 weeks of the training program. Most of you have managed quite well – keep your legs still Adam! – but now we begin the next part of of your training – who knows what that is!“
„BUILDING FLAT ANT HILLS TO FOOL ENGLISH STREET MUSICIANS, SIR!“ cried an ant to the far left.
„Exactly! Exactly – we will now show you what it’s all about out there in the urban suburbs of east Italian. You wanna survive then, look up!!! Now, can anyone see an ant hill over there?!“ the seargent asks, pointing with 5 legs to his right.
The ant-cadets strain their eyes to try and spot the ant hill, but none of them can, so they all shake their heads.
„Exactly!“ the seargent shouted....
At this point, a large wooden cut-out of an english street musicain playing guitar was wheeled in by about 6000 ants and laid on the grass about 10 feet from the lined up privates.
Ants started crawling all over the cut-out and pissing on it.
The seargent looked at this cadets.
„Do you see the advantage of building a flat ant hill my uselees little crawlers???!“
„YES SIR!“ they all screamed in unison.

At this moment, I got pissed on by roughly 40-50 real ants and woke up.

We drove across the bridge to Venice, scratching ourselves, and moaning generally about Italy. Were the ants not representatives of it's country? Shouldn't they have welcomed these well-meaning foreigners with open arms. The answer is „YES“ – the ants should have simply put us up, offered us a coffee in the morning, maybe washed Roland’s underpants or something (if he'd been there). But of course, they didn't.

We arrived in Venice and actually found a parking place.
I got out the guitar and we wandered through the streets. They were full of tourists saying things like: "Oh, isn't it lovely" and stuff.
Well, it was ok. You couldn't see much because of the people. We found a little cafe and drank a few coffees and then made our way to the main square.
I set up to play, Hannelore and George went off to look around a bit, we agreed to meet later under the arches at the back of the square.

I started playing, after about 10 minutes this little old grey haired italien guy came up and started shouting at me, „COSTA LA VISTA ALA PIZZA E MAFIOSE BALA SPAGEHHTI DOLCA CASANOVA“ I think he said. I showed him my finger and told him where to go (I wasn’t standing for that!)....5 minutes later a policeman came up and sent me off.
I went to the arches where I should meet the others later and set up again. Another policeman came and arrested me. We went to the police station. As I went in, I saw I was up shit creek - the little old guy I'd told to piss off was the Chief of Police.

They got me to sign something, took all my money without telling me what I was signing (actually lying to me about what I was signing) and sent me off. I nearly broke the glass door with my guitar case on the way out I was so aggresive. I actually got a fine regarding this 3 years later, it had been sent over the embassies finally landing at my parents house in England. I never paid it, they'd stolen my money anyway.

I met up with Hannelore and George they tried to comfort me, we went back to Mestra and Hannelore invited us for a pizza and a few bottles of wine. Things lightened up a bit.

Next day we headed back to Salzburg.

But not before taking revenge of course.
George and I got out of the car, sneak behind a dustbin, and then ran out, and, making full use of the element of surprise, pissed on the anthill!
That got `em – they came running out complaining their little heads off, screaming:
„But we didn’t train for this at the academy.“
Made us quite happy to see them running around like mad men, screaming their little black shiney heads off, as you can probably imagine.