Years ago, I lived in a block of flats in South London. Well heated, they were, with loads of rubbish left all over the place.

The cockroaches simply adored it and once word got round, they arrived in swarms.  I swear the Cockroach Kingdom had their own Ideal Home Exhibition with a special display stand for those flats:
Strut your funky stuff at the South London Party Palace. A Disco every Night.

So they did.

It became second nature to tip shoes upside down before putting them on, inspect anything before picking it up and to kick the little critters off work surfaces, chairs and dinner plates. Once, in mid conversation, I absentmindedly stood up, brushed one off my friend’s shoulder and then sat down again and carried on chatting as if nothing had happened.

We had an agreement with the cockroaches, unspoken of course. The agreement was that they could all get together in the kitchen at night and hold their cockroach parties – have races along the walls, nick all the toast crumbs, have sex in the bread bin – whatever.

But they had to get out of the way when we humans gave the signal.

This was to bang around on the stairs a lot then open and shut all doors very loudly on the way to the kitchen. It made your flatmates hate you but the cockroaches knew they had to bugger off out of it until we’d done whatever we’d come to do in the kitchen. Nothing as racy as the cockroaches got up to, you understand.  Usually just a cup of tea and a biscuit or perhaps a hot water bottle if we were feeling really wild.

Then when you left the kitchen and put out the light, they’d regroup and carry on the party. Simple.

You weren’t supposed to splat them dead with a newspaper. Apparently, they carry their eggs on their backs and if you hit them with anything the eggs all fly off to safety and hatch out when they’re ready. I have no idea whether this is true.

When you mention cockroaches, the first thing most people say (apart from ‘yuk’) is, ‘They’re the only thing that would survive a nuclear holocaust you know’ then, ‘You can even microwave them and they don’t die.’ The microwave theory is easily tested but I don’t feel like setting off a nuclear bomb and I ain’t sticking around in the fallout to do a head count. My Dad, a retired Seaman, was forthright on the subject: ‘Only way to get cockroaches off a ship is to blow the blooming thing up.’

So back to South London.  I found a new flat. Couldn’t wait to leave my little dancing buddies behind. Got to the new place, jumped out of the black cab, unloaded all the boxes, bags and bin liners, sank into a chair and gazed out of the window. A garden at last. Grand.

That was when IT appeared.

Trot, trot, trottedy trot. Out of the bin liner where it had stowed away, onto the carpet and up the skirting board.  I swear it was whistling to itself as it scaled the wall. Tumty, tumty tum. That did it. Caring not for the life of this creature or its children’s inheritance, I swatted it really hard, scraped it into the bin and sat down again to look at the garden.

Well it did break the agreement. Rules is rules.