It’s true to say that I’m absolutely petrified of cockroaches, beyond, in all honesty what is reasonable. It doesn’t matter how much I tell myself I’m not scared – I scream like a true wimp. All I can see in my head in the mock up of a kitchen in London Zoo overrun with cockroaches.
9am in the morning. I am frantically preparing my class, when a man dressed in a white suit and mask knocks on my door. We are being fumigated for mosquitoes again and must vacate the house. We spend 20 minutes camped out on the pavement out front whilst the insecticide lessens its noxious presence in our rooms.
As a last nod to fumigating, the man leaves the property spraying his insecticide wand down a crack in the manhole cover on the pavement in front of the house. After he walks away, I see a cockroach or seven scurrying from the manhole. Then I see more. Then proceeds an exodus of biblical proportions. All headed towards the house. And so we suffer several hours of cockroaches raining from the ceilings in our rooms. But should I be grateful there was only one episode of a cockroach running up my trousers?!
Standing in the doorway to my room I suddenly have a light tickling sensation shooting up my leg. With razor sharp reflexes (they call me razor hands Niki!) I manage to catch the cockroach round about the front of my thigh and trap it in a fold of material. But then what to do?
I am paralysed with fear and can’t bring myself to let it up or down. A small crowd gathers round me but there isn’t consensus. Some shout for me to let go of my trousers and jump. The other camp shout for me to take off my trousers! I can’t quite bring myself to take my trousers off in front of everyone so I hyperventilate a little more and then I take an especially deep breathe and dive off the 50ft diving board and let go of my trousers and jump. Luckily the cockroach falls to the floor and scuttles away rather than scuttling to my nether regions.
Suffice to say we were not fans of the fumigation man!
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