I ONCE HAD FLEAS. There. It's out. They weren't even HUMAN fleas which I think makes it worse. Cat fleas apparently. Normally, they don't care to feast on humans, but they made a special exception in my case, held their wee wavy-about flea noses, and sooked.......
 flea-free Gillian |
Not because I look in any way feline, or was dressed as Puss in Boots for a fancy dress party or anything, but because the cats - or 'delicious, living, hairy food' as fleas no doubt think of them - previously in residence had inconsiderately moved out with their owners, forgetting to pack their fleas.
I suppose you can hardly blame the hungry fleas, no doubt baffled by a sudden tall, bald, two-legged, tail-less lunch with nothing else on the menu. Like suddenly finding your lamb roast has turned into chargrilled zebra, no doubt they resisted until starvation loomed.
If you jumped back from your radio at the mere mention of the word fleas - though not as high as fleas jump - honestly, I know it's supposed to be the equivalent of a human jumping over the moon or something but to see the way they describe a giant parabola from your shoulder to land like an animated peppercorn, Pit, on the newspaper in front of you, is a thing to behold in horrified wonder... Anyway, if you instinctively jumped then you exhibit the same behaviour as the customers in the local chemist when I at last went to explain the problem.
I mean, you don't think at first if you've got a wee itchy red spot on your leg, 'Ah, must be fleas'; at least I didn't, never having HAD FLEAS before. Then I got a mark above the ankle, above the knee, and so on up… but it just doesn't CLICK until you actually SEE ONE and shout 'Aaaaargh' very loudly, and run around a lot like a disturbed slater from under a stone, shrieking as you realise that YOU, a modern, hygienic sort of person, doesn't have a wheat allergy or soap powder sensitivity, or even some germ or other, but INSECT LIFE!!!
Forget asking for haemorrhoid ointment; it was like that old advert when the girl SHOUTS through the back for the price of the young lad's contraceptive devices. 'I think I've got fleas', I whispered as gently as kitten's breath stirring pampas grass, bending down in a confiding, even self-effacing, manner. 'FLEAS!!!' the assistant shrieked, leaping back like a giant flea impersonator. The rest of the queue behind me did likewise! Humiliating or what?
And she wasn't any help. She looked at me - from what she clearly judged to be a distance untraversable by a flea - in a way not dissimilar to certain shop assistants in snobby shops when you buy massively discounted sale goods with traces of baby sick down your front - before saying that they 'didn't have anything for things like that'! So, maybe the GP then? Did she suggest that? Dermatologist? NO, she suggested THE COUNCIL! I gulped, as if embarrassment were something you could swallow like a great red burning meteor …and even the customers at the back of the shop, who'd clearly heard by now of my flea-iness, parted like the Red Sea for Moses as I left.
A strange man to whom fleas were obviously just part and parcel of an insect-orientated day answered the council phone; he sounded as if he were living in Gormenghast, but did I care. I had fleas. I needed help. With how many of your friends could you discuss the problem? He made no comment. Just took a note of the address, and hung up. Weird.
Two days later, the buzzer sounds. Open the door and there's a SPACEMAN!! I thought I was going to be abducted for alien experimentation, 'Yibble, yibble, ee-mok', they'd go, then, 'FLEEEEEAS'! Did he remove his space helmet? No. He was carrying some kind of weapon, a ray gun with extra long nozzle. Say anything? No. He just started spraying, right there in the hall. He was...FLEA MAN! I'd worked it out. He came. He sprayed. He conquered. His van markings meant neighbours avoided me in the street forever more. When it comes to insects, people judge.
At least after silent Flea-Man's visit, all the fleas were deceased. But I was uncomfortably reminded of this mass murder yesterday, when nearly eating an Italian earwig, the earwig was LIVING in the centre of my peach stone! AAARGH! A foot-long, horned, reddish thing that ripply-legged it onto my hand just as I was about to munch the last luscious mouthful of sumptuous orange flesh. You see, I think this is just part of some kind of insect conspiracy! Revenge. They know about the murdered fleas who were only - reasonably enough - having an honest meal.
I've already had to skulk surreptitiously around the lower shelves of the hardware store looking for something to exterminate the previous owner of this flat's weird beetly things he left - carpet beetles we think from the pictures on the tin - something of an ironic outbreak as they were only discovered when we had the floors sanded.
And then there's the recent immigrant second-hand shop clothes moths. They have expensive tastes - no nylon or polyester, oh, no, just silk and cashmere. They just won't die. How often can you pretend to guests that moths, like foxes, are totally moving into the city? And they have larvae, you know, squirmy, maggoty things - you just don't know in which unworn-for-a-while garment they'll be waiting… I don't want to sound paranoid - what's that buzzing noise?…- but insect plans to inherit the earth seem to be starting with MY LIFE…
