It’s a physical thing…
I ate a pizza last night and it had olives on it. I don’t particularly like olives. These were de-stoned, and I squashed one, only to feel a wave of revulsion when, as it split in two, I had a particularly nasty flashback. The squashed black olive, with the light catching it perfectly, looked like a tiny cockroach. If it had started scuttling round the plate, I would not have been surprised, and I would have been found running, screaming like a child, to the farthest place possible just so I wouldn’t have to look at it. My fear of cockroaches is not just psychological - I feel a physical revulsion which may seem childish, but let me explain its roots and see if you can forgive me.
I don’t think I ever saw a cockroach as a child. That was until I left home to go to the paragon of cleanliness that is Manchester where I lived in a student hall of residence. I had the corner room; the room which had the hot water pipes passing through it on their way round the building. This had the unfortunate consequence of being a particularly comfortable breeding ground for cockroaches. In the evening I would return, with a student-ess if lucky. Any amorous possibilities would soon be ruined, when, after turning the light on, a hundred cockroaches would scatter in every direction, ultimately making their way back to the water pipe, where they would, like firemen called on an emergency, slide down out of sight.
It was a revolting sight, and God knows what they got up to in the evening as I slept. Of course, I didn’t like to make a fuss and merely signalled the fact that the university, might, if they had the time, want to get rid of them. What I should have done is screamed, parked myself outside the headmaster’s (or whatever they call them) office, refused to move, demanded another room and refused to pay. Of course, I didn’t do any of that and spent a full academic year with the constant thought of what was happening under my bed, or, worse still, on it; reluctant to turn on the light and generally spending as much time as possible elsewhere (luckily, it being university, this was possible). A shameful existence, and something I find hard to believe I tolerated for such a long time. So now maybe you understand where the fear comes from, and I hope you can forgive me.
The winter after leaving university, I was invited to a friend’s house for the weekend. Irish, and with a fairly bohemian family (read, not particularly attentive to hygiene details), it was a great weekend - his extended family was over from Ireland and there was whiskey galore. All was going well and, for some reason, I was seated in the comfy chair. The lights were down and I think some kind of card-game was underway when, slowly, very very slowly, a cockroach crawled up the side of the arm, and onto my leg. This is not a particularly comfortable position to be in. What do you do? Scream and run away, putting a slur on the cleanliness of your host’s house? Or say nothing, sweat, grip the sides of the chair and hope it’s all over soon? Guess which option I went for? Remember that it’s a physical thing - I wanted to be sick. I couldn’t swat it off and risk it landing on the floor in the middle of the card game so I let it crawl right over my lap, down the other side and disappear into the depths of the chair. I quickly made my excuses, went to the bathroom and had a sit down for quite a long time. When I came back down, I sat down cross-legged on the floor where I sipped my Bushmills slightly too quickly with obvious consequences.
Need I say more? Yes? Well, how about the time I stayed in a dodgy hotel in Toulouse, only to find the biggest cockroach in the world slowly making its way across the bathroom floor in the morning. The only option was a smart smack with a shoe - a lovely crunching sound and a large stain on the floor are memories I still hold dear. I was booked into that hotel for 2 nights, but made my excuses and left. I decided to book into the Ibis: soul-less but clean. The fact that on arrival I had to report to the reception that they might want to move the guy from in front of their garage door because he was injecting something into his lower arm with a syringe (can’t think what) and might be blocking cars is neither here nor there.
But that’s a whole other story and here I rest my case (after checking inside for the presence of small black objects that resemble cockroaches).
