Evacuees

The man from the pest control came this morning. It was right in the nick of time because last night we came face to face with this fella in the dark. If only my blog had a click counter which would tell me how many times this photo got a hit for "click to enlarge". You're all too scared, too much of a "bloody girl" as the Aussies would say.

Go on, you like reading this blog, but if you really want to know what a year in Australia is like, dim the lights and click it. And welcome to Sydney.

Now apparently this is an Australian cockroach and I shouldn't be worried about him, I should be more worried about his little German cousin, who's significantly smaller and hence much easier to squash with a bit of kitchen towel. The German roach lays egg pouches in warm places like the bottom of dishwashers, which later hatch into about forty offspring, all wearing running shoes and shiny jackets. This big fella is, apparently "harmless".

So last night we're lying in bed around half eleven, and I'm wondering aloud whether I'd make any money if I invented the "gin straw" (a straw which enables the user to sip on their nightcap without having to keep sitting up in bed) and Darren says it has about as much chance of success as any of my previous inventions (like the birth burka). Anyway, gin duly sunk, I go off to the bathroom to clean my teeth and there's this thing on the floor outside the bedroom door.

"Right, you've got to deal with that, there's a HUGE cockroach on the floor" I say as I retreat back into the bedroom.

"What? Where?" says Darren, with the tone of voice which says he thinks I'm over reacting. And then he sees it.

"Bloody Hell".

But they're fast these roaches (and they have wings, as you know) and before he gets chance to whack it (and believe me, he's standing there in his knickers doing the most apprehensive roach approach you've ever seen in your life), it disappears under Ella's bedroom door.

"Oh well, that's that then" he says.

"Oh no. No, no, no. You've got to go in there and get her out, right now. Just get her out and then find it and kill it and if you don't find it, she's sleeping with us"

"But she's asleep"

"I don't care, you'll have to wake her up. There's no way that thing is going near my baby, it'll crawl on her face while she's asleep".

So he goes in and he brings her out and I stand clutching her behind our bedroom door like a scene from "The Towering Inferno" while he looks for it, occasionally shouting that he can't find it and how it must have gone into a crack in the wall or something. For a potential outback rescue doctor he's doing a good impression of someone who's too scared to look. More Action Man Deserter than Action Man himself.

Eventually there's a thud. "I've got it". He comes back into the bedroom, a slight perspiration about his forehead and look of victory written all over his face. It had been a close call, he says. It had hidden from him behind Ella's sit and ride car holding it's breath.

"It didn't reckon on me" he said this morning as he was brushing his teeth. "It met it's match - it hadn't bargained on that".

Darren is now officially the man of the house. I'm finally going to let him be the boss. For a while, anyway.