How the world has changed. Once upon a time, rice was my main staple. I used to eat tons of the stuff. Nowadays, I have a more varied staple diet: noodles, pasta, bread, wheat, cous-cous, rice and, of course, the occasional tattie. While I was cooking some rice last night, I noticed to my dismay that it had got some infection — small mites by the look of things which, fortunately float obviously on top of the water.

I’ve had a 10kg bag of rice in my house for most of my adult life, but I fear now that I have seen my last. I shall be buying 2kg bags in future.

The mites were incredible though; it’s wonderful to me that a thing so small, smaller than this comma, can be a complete multi-cellular organism. Wonder what species they were?

Originally published on my old blog site.