Glamourpuss

The cockroach firm turned up at half past eight, though I'd been expecting them earlier. Judging by the smell of the bloke they sent, he'd smoked a whole packet of Lambert and Butler in the half hour I'd been waiting for him, which, combined with an unwashed polo shirt, added up to the appearance of a photofit for BBC's Crimewatch and the impression I'd seen him somewhere before.

"What seems to be the problem?" he said, wafting in through the front door.

"Well there seems to be a problem with cockroaches" I replied. "And they seem to be the size of a West Highland Terrier, though my husband says I exaggerate"

"How big are they?"

"Bigger than my thumb, copper-coloured, shiny and waving tentacles an inch in front of their faces"

"Well they're not a problem. It's the German ones that are a problem. They came on German ships at the beginning of the nineteenth century. Typical isn't it? Wherever there's Germans there's trouble"

"They're a problem to me" I replied

"But not one your landlord has to pay for, they're a Strata problem. The big ones come up though light fittings and small cracks in kitchen units, they're harder to get rid of"

Strata is the name for the company that manage blocks of flats in Sydney. I don't know whether they're one company or whether Strata is a generic term for building management companies but everyone complains about them and they never get round to fixing problems like blown light bulbs and exposed wires so there's no way on this earth they're going to stop cockroaches entering our flat.

"Well we have the German ones too" I lied. I mean, it's not strictly a lie because we have had the German ones, but I haven't seen them for ages, not since Gareth came from Buzz-Off and sent them packing.

"Okay. So you have both types"

"Yes, and the dishwasher won't work and I think it's related because we used to find them in there"

He opened the dishwasher, which consists of two drawers rather than the type we have at home in the UK. It hasn't been opened for weeks because I never know what's going to crawl out, so I stood back a bit while he did his stuff.

"Well you're right about that" he said. And then he lay on the floor and pulled the top drawer right out and went fishing about for his screwdriver and suddenly I had a vivid image of him removing the bottom of the drawer and a pile of roaches dropping onto his face like some sort of I'm a Celebrity-type trial.

"The dishwasher housing is covered in cockroach poop" he concluded. "Right here you've got yourself a cockroach toilet - though I don't know where they've gone now. I think they pooped and ran"

"Is it bad?" I asked

"No. If you had a real infestation they'd be crawling around the inside of the LCD display here on the front panel. In bad cases they get into anything warm; even cookers, and they crawl about inside the workings and bugger up the electrics. Sydney is crawling with cockroaches but its not so bad in winter. The summer brings out the worst of the problem. Your dishwasher needs professional help, the roaches have probably short-circuited it"

And then he puffed some magic talc behind the appliances and put gel on the cupboard door hinges and apologised that we hadn't been told it "usually takes more than one treatment to clear the buggers out".

Afterwards I met up with Kate and Bradley for a walk and morning tea at Rushcutters Bay, where there's a little kiosk doing coffee and little boats bobbing on the harbour. We've had another glorious day and the temperature is back up in the twenties again, perfect for a mooch about the parks. I told her about the cockroach problem.

"I've had a few cockroach encounters myself" she said. "We get a lot of them in the garden. You can be sitting out on a summer evening and they'll be ten or eleven of them crawling the wall on the patio. One of the big ones fell on my head from the top of the bookcase last summer. I felt something land but didn't know what it was then Paula said stay still, it's a...and I knew it was a cockroach"

"What did you do?" I asked. Kate pulled out a tub of fizzy snakes from her handbag. Ella dropped her apple on the grass and came running over, having immediately spotted the tub of e-numbers and decided it would be much more fun than a Braeburn.

"Well I shook my head but I couldn't find it. Paula said I should take off my top in case it had gone down there but we couldn't see it. Anyway I went shopping at Bondi Junction, I was gone five hours and when I got home and took off my bra it fell onto the bed. It had been in my bra. In my bra. For five hours. I got in the shower and scrubbed my chest until it bled. I love Sydney you know but I've got to admit the cockroaches are a bit of a problem"

I was still reeling from this story when my phone rang. It was Darren, they wanted him to go out on a job, a change to his schedule. Did I mind if he went?

"Who was that?" asked Kate when I came off the phone

"It was Darren, they want him to go out on a different job"

"Oh they're always doing that to my husband; always changing the route of his bus. Where do they want him to go?"

"Noumea" I replied. "It's in French Caledonia, some islands in the South Pacific, near Fiji".

"Oh" she said, "not quite the same thing as changing drivers with the number 37 then"

"No, I suppose not. He's living life in the fast lane now. He's an international glamourpuss. They'll be no talking to him when he gets back".