Switching on the kitchen light so early in the morning caused something to dart out from under the microwave and across the worktop. I must admit that my initial reaction was to shriek thinking it was a mouse, then think "Oh it's ok, it's only a German cockroach". It took a few seconds for my sleepy brain to realise that this was also a bad thing. I spent the next ten minutes chasing it up walls, behind the fridge and, generally, being outwitted by something with a brain the size of a pinhead, before dispatching him with extreme prejudice. I then had to give the worktops a quick clean on the offchance that Jeff would wake up and start licking them or something (admittedly unlikely, but better safe than sorry). This made me later than I would have been if I'd got up at the normal time when the cockroach would presumably have been hidden, allowing me to leave the house quickly in a state of blissful ignorance. I didn't have time to walk to the station and had to catch the bus - that roach owes me two quid.
So in all probability we have a cockroach infestation, which probably isn't something to confess to a few weeks before I'm considering having a birthday party. I will be monitoring the situation over the coming weeks (read getting up horrifically early and hitting my own fingers with frying pans).
Your pub quiz fact of the day is that cockroaches belong to the order Blattodea, so called because of the noise they make when you step on them. German cockroaches look like this:
