Gaaarrrggghh. Once I see a roach, regardless of size or relative threat, I start seeing them everywhere. Start feeling them in my hair and up my pants leg just above the sock. This particular little bastard was about the size of an uppermost thumb joint but I still had no scruples over reacting as if it where a foe of Godzilla's come to stomp my kitchen furniture into oblivion.

It was skulking under the dish scourer, biding it's time. Plotting. Sending signals back to the mother ship.

'It's too cold for you and your kind', I attempted to mentally project into it's hideous insect brain. It gazed back in disdain. How stupid I am. Friend Katy (who's a scientist and knows of these things) once told me that cockroaches are, amongst all living things, infinitely more likely to survive nuclear winter than any other strain of sentience - humans included. And here's me attempting to banish it with effette, limp wristed swats. Eventually friend Erin stepped in, scoffing my disturbed shrieking. She is Australian and presumably used to abominations such as these. I am English and as such the most malevolent insect I am accustomed to is a particularly sociopathic cadfly. She scooped it up and actually spoke to it. She said 'Come on mate'. Then she hurled it off the balcony. I'm 4 floors up. The roach hit the pavement and scampered off. 4 floors in roach ratio is like Everest. And yet it scampers still. Mocking. Diabolical mocking. It will, no doubt, bring others. Why wasn't it killed? 'Why wasn't it killed Erin?'

'It's just a cockroach'

Fuck that. I have laid six (6) traps tonight and will lay more yet. I have heard the sickening sound of cockroach legs across tatami matting - me esconced on futon - once before and have no desire to hark to it again. I bow to your hardened carapaces. I mean you no harm (save for the traps). Please do not lay eggs in my sleeping ears. Please leave my apartment be.