ROACHES..

 Roaches...aka Cockroaches...I hate them.

As a child in war torn UK  I grew up in a slum..no electricity, no hot water..no bathroom..a toilet, unlit, across a back yard..and it was infested by mice and a creature I came to hate..Roaches.

They were everywhere,  in the furniture, the little larder the beds, in the wardrobes...Everyday before I went to school I had to check all my pockets and make sure ther were none in my shoes.....

And then I went Globetrotting..Lets start with INDIA:  Indian cockies are a tough breed, they will stare  you down, maybe cos they think they own the joint. In Mumbaia, my hotel was air conditioned and I was about ten floors up when I met one in the corridor.It stared at me..I was obviously in its way. I took my shoe off and hit it about a dozen times...it should have been Cocky paste..it wasnt..It was still there, it shook its head, turned around and waddled off down the hallway..A draw.

Still in India:..Cochin..In my hotel room it only had a bathtub, no showere, so every evening I ran a bath and had a soak. I always took a shoe with me.As the warm water heated up the tub the Cockies came out to play. Splat time..my average kill rate per bath was an average of 40...every night...In the bar where we all met up to have  a beer the barman always sserved up a big deep dish of Potato chips/crisps..We never touched them but watched carefully, after a few minutes the chips would start to move and out they came, maybe a dozen or so..and big..we would always throw the bowl onto the lawn outside and the incumbent resident rats finished the Cockies and crisps in seconds..and then there alwas the restaurant..A prize went to the first crew memnber who found a leg or a remnant of a Cockie in his meal.

Still in India: Trivandrum in Kerala..A very nice hotel..good bar.On our first night there the Director, who had just joined the team arrived, said hello..went to check out his room and returned a minute later screaming for the Manager, who arrived very quickly. Apparently when the director opened his room door and put the lights on there was a scuttering as dozens of Cockies ran for safety.The Manager immediately dispatched a house crew with sprays to clean the room.The Director had a few beers and then went his room...Yep..a few minutes later he is back. He had showered and then pulled back the bedclothes..to find the bed was full of Cockies.The Manager apologised once agin and said\ that as they had sprayed the room the Cockies had no where else to go except get into the bed..It seemed to make sense to him.

I could go on about india for a while but lets move on.

USA:  The home of some of the biggest Cockies in the world..It may be all the junk food.

Lets start in Charleston: We were there for a few weeks and had settled in to a motel just outside of town..Nice enough for what we wanted to do there, except on a Sunday the Motel and other restaurants and bars seemed to close down.My room..lotsa beers and crew members were dispatched to buy huge amounts of KFC..Boxes of it..US football on the TV.. Great evening.

Bed time..empty boxes  piled up..empty bottles everywhere and lotsa batter bits from the KFC, they were all over the place, I was stepping on them on the way to the bathroom.Sleep called and sometime  in the dark of the night I woke up to hear a noise..lots of crunching sounds. Being the craven coward that I am in such situations I pulled the covers over and quaked myself back to sleep.

Dawn arrived and I peeked out of my bedclothes..nothing untoward..I went to the bathroom,  no crumbs on the floor, none in the KFC boxes, the chicken bones were bleached desert dry.The room was spotless..Well trained are those Charleston Cockies

New York:Shooting a doco in an apartment block to one side of the GCP.The subject was a meeting of Fat Women Fetishists..I know..It just popped up on the list..

Anyway the place was jam packed with very large ladies and  quite small men, drink flowed, lotsa a chatting and filming..then I needed a drink of water. My golden rule was never to drink booze on location, it was broken occasionally..I made my way to the kitchen, very small, found a glass and filled it from the tap...Then I noticed the wall was moving..all of it. I thought it was my eye sight but it was really the wall which was completely covered in small Cockies..  hundreds of them. We were wrapped and out in three minutes.

Next up  Australia..Next Post maybe.