Save Me…… from the armour-plated warriors that love the sun and a good fight

It seems finally that the cold, winter weather is behind us as the temperatures begin to creep up each day. Thank God we no longer need the three blankets and 200 tog duvet on the bed any more.

But just as the door of wintery chills and chattering teeth closes, another door to a more deadly, scary, fear-filled world opens wide.

It is a world where the hours of darkness bring with them a tense nervousness, an anxiety that tightens across the chest, a fear that grips the very core of my being.

For I know that an army will soon be descending upon our tiny flat. They will have the ability to plague, torture and terrify us.  They love the hot weather (and we don’t have spring here, we just go straight from winter to summer) and they particularly love visiting in the dead of night. Just when your defences are at their lowest.

They will strike without warning . Every night you go the bed and close your eyes, you know that they may be close by, waiting to pounce. Once they’re in, they are virtually indestructible.

Ok, maybe I’m over-egging the pudding a bit.

But I’ll be honest with you. They scare the shit out of me. I’m talking, of course, of the six-legged freak that is the cockroach. The little fella that looks like a brown beetle and which can run faster than Usain Bolt with his trousers on fire.

They are not that common in the UK, especially in houses and flats. But here in Spain, when the summer comes, they invade faster than Nazi storm troopers blitzkreiging the Eastern Front. It’s something that as a Brit that I’ve just had to get used to since moving here.

They hide in the plumbing and come up the pipes at night. It’s quite common, particularly in older flats and houses, to find them having a party in your bath tub when you get up in the morning.

They are bomb-proof. They have body armour which can withstand a nuclear explosion. After the blast wave has disintegrated everything in its path, you can imagine them picking themselves up, dusting themselves down and saying “Well, that was a bit of a loud bang wasn’t it chaps? Gave me a bit of a fright, don’t you know!” (I also imagine them saying it in an upper-class English accent. I don’t know why, it just sounds like the type of accent they’d use. I’m strange like that).

Now, you think I’m blowing this out of all proportion don’t you? Well, let me recount a true story that happened to me and then you’ll understand. It was a titanic battle I had with one of them. And no matter what I threw at it, it kept coming back for more.

 Picture the scene. It was about two-and-a-half years ago. I was living in another flat at the time. It was dark outside, it was late evening, it was warm. The curtain was gently fluttering in the faint breeze of the open terrace window. The passing sound of a police siren came and went, a dove appeared momentarily on the wall and then was gone. A tramp huddled in a dark corner, swigging from a brown paper bag as a flash of lightning arched across the desolate, star-filled sky and a distant boom of thunder could be heard.

Hang on a minute. Where was I? Oh yes.  I was sitting watching TV. I forget the programme. As I sipped nonchalantly on a cold beer, I glanced down to see a cockroach scuttle across the floor about four feet in front of me. For a second, I could have sworn he flipped me the finger.

But instantaneously, like a coiled spring or a startled cat or a bloke who hates cockroaches because they give him the willies, I sprang into action, poised with the beer in one hand and a chocolate biscuit in the other, ready to strike.

The cockroach ignored me and kept going. It was only when I chucked a book at him that he started to notice. Then I grabbed my broom – which was handily in reaching distance - and whacked it down on him. I must have got him with the brushes only and not the wooden bit, because he scuttled in a different direction, but with more haste this time. I hit him again, twice. But he still kept going. By this time I’d got him cornered and was convinced I must have at least given him a headache. But he shot under the fridge so I jammed the end of the broom handle underneath it, thrusting it back and forwards trying to flush him out. As I did, I grabbed a glass bowl from the sink. Sure enough, he came scuttling out again and rushed back across the floor. But I was ready for him and slammed the bowl down over him, trapping him.

For a minute or two, we both sat there glaring at each other breathing heavily, wondering what to do. He was under the bowl so he wasn’t going anywhere. But then, what was I going to do next? Leave him there to starve to death?

Then I had a shot of inspiration and ran to the bathroom, returning fully armed with my spray-on underarm deodorant. That would do for him, surely. I’d accidentally blasted myself in the face with it the day before when I didn’t realise the nozzle was pointing the wrong way, and I got a mouthful that nearly made me vomit. If it could do that to a fully grown man, just think what it would do to a little cockroach.

So, as quick as a flash, I lifted the bowl and blasted him full force with the spray. Lynx Dark Temptation death! The burst knocked him backwards to the other side of the upturned bowl. But rather than flip over on his back and wave his legs in the air, he just appeared to get annoyed. So I slammed the bowl down again.

 Now I had an angry cockroach who smelled nice as well. I lifted the bowl and blasted him again, but he was too quick for me and he escaped back under the fridge.

For the next 40 minutes I was chasing him round the living room, into dark corners, under the sofa, back under the fridge, jamming that broom handle in and out trying to catch him. But eventually there was no sign of him and it only made me more edgy. Where was the little bastard? After that, I didn’t see or hear anything more of him that night, and eventually, exhausted from the battle, I reluctantly went to bed, but was careful to shut my bedroom door.

After a restless night of tossing and turning, I awoke the next morning. To my horror, just inside the bedroom door was the cockroach. But this time, he was on his back, lifeless, legs in the air. It seemed that the combined and sustained force of a book, a broom and half a canister of Lynx Dark Temptation body spray had finally done him in. But despite my elation, I admit I had a sneaking admiration for the little bugger who had clearly been determined to crawl all the way from the fridge in the kitchen to my room in a bid for a final showdown. I acknowledged a worthy adversary as I flushed him down the toilet.

So there you have it. They don’t go down without a real fight. And I hate them for it.

There is one defence you can employ to stop them getting in, in the first place. It can be quite simple. Just keep the bath plug in all the time. That, or let my wife deal with it. She has no fear of them whatsoever and has smashed many a cockroach into pieces by battering them with the underside of her slipper. She’s so effective that I wouldn’t be surprised if the cockroaches have a picture of her up in their HQ warning others not to mess with her.

But then, she’s Spanish. She’s used to them. I’m not.