MY V. GOOD FRIEND MOTHER HUBBS has just returned from a trip Down Under a couple of days ago. All went wrong in the last week. Weather was stifling in Melbourne anyhow but she got extremely hot and sweaty. Then terrible bellyache broke in... turned out it was pancreatitis which is really nasty and an inflamed gall bladder. If she'd not got to hospital in a 150-mile ambulance-dash (they were near Melbourne; not in it!) the Aussie doctors say her pancreas would have ruptured and she could have died. MH is not one to make a fuss about health issues (or pain; unless she's in agony). When she did say she was ill in the night her partner just wanted to roll over and leave it till morning. But she insisted and we're all glad she did. Now she's in hospital over here and awaiting an operation. We all hope she will be all right...And what a horrible end to a holiday, but! (As they might say down in Victoria...)
(That is not her in the picture: I'm reliant on stock images...!)
I told her about my moving and my Mum and Ikea and she said I'm glowing... (cool!!)
My only problem in the new place is the continuing invasion of cockroaches. My Mum says they are a metropolis-wide problem in London. Out of town, where she is, infestations are barely heard of. But here, nearly all professional kitchens have chronic low-level infestation. And rented accommodation is rife with it.
Having already used an entire can of Raid Crawling Insect Spray (33% Extra Free: 0.2% pyrethrum; 0.2% permethrin) it sends the poor things into jigs and jitters and unless you get them full-on drowned in spray death takes over an hour to "embrace" them... I used the entire thing in a week. And that was being sparing. So today for a bargainacious £1.29 I got a 400g 0.5% permethrin powder to dust right along all skirting and cupboard tops/etc: already half done with half my place and a new red Raid spray, writing in French and Arabic. I checked the active chemicals and they were different and at far lower concentrations. So I was just about to put it back on the shelf in despair, thinking "this is health and safety gone mad: now the product's even weaker" when I realized it was the West African version where they have mega-bugs. And sure enough I got it home and it knocks 'em dead within 10 seconds. Amazing!
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The late Pandable's looky-likey's Pet of the Day in The London Paper...
Have you got Sky TV? If so watch Ben: Diary of a Heroin Addict tonight at 10pm. It gets a really good write up in the London paper (have a clickonit and read...)
11 comments:
Sorry to hear about MH I will send her positive thoughts and Reiki.
Cockroaches? Ugh!
Sorry to hear about your friend Gleds. It's a long flight home when you're in pain! I find that cockroach 'baits' work well you just slip them under beds and couches and they work for three months without any toxic smells . . I'll send you a skink to clean up the corpses! hehe.
Hope MH is feeling better soon!
Cockroaches are horrid little creatures, the bain of a city dwellers existence! We had an infestation in one of our apartments and ended up spending about $40 for this small tube of whatever exterminators use. The same result 10 secs and they were all DEED.
Gawd and I thought having the badgers in my garden was bad enough!!!
Best wishes to Mother Hubbs...
I lived in a roach infested apartment in college. No way to kill all of them as they lived in the walls and moved freely from apartment to apartment. My roomies and I found that dish detergent and Lysol disinfectant bathroom cleaner killed the bastards pretty quickly. I remember, before moving into the apartment, seeing roaches that were damn near 2 inches long in the basement of the college dorm. They were slow and harmless and never left the basement. I recall hearing somewhere that they lived on electrical insulation covering the wiring. I don't know if that one is true. All I know is they were some damn big roaches. Good luck with the roach war, but keep in mind that the roaches will far outlive humanity.
Poor MH. Do tell her how much your online friends are rooting for her, Gleds. Mind you don't inhale the fumes from those cans now!
I recommend Pic Boric Acid Roach Killer III for roaches.
It has the venerable quality of not being very toxic to humans but highly toxic to roaches.
I thought I would NEVER GET rid of my roaches.
This causes them to die a slow, painful death--and every roach they come in contact with gets it on them.
I bought a shitload if you didn't live in such a pain in the ass place to mail stuff to I would just give you a bottle.
Oh poor MH, sounds like she was very lucky...just as well she insisted on going to hospital. But painful...ow...I know what gallstones are like and hers would have been so much worse involving the pancreas.
As for cockroaches, I think they're the curse of mankind. Those things would survive a nuclear blast...and so would ants apparently. Lovely...
AKELAMALU: reiki by proxy..? you really can do that, can't you?
BAINO: they gave her morphine for the planeride!
EILEEN/REENY: ALL in 10 secs, or just the ones you could see? I'm having some success but it's gonna be a long battle. Even dead cockroaches can breed from fertile eggs hatching in the corpse of mothers-to-be. You gotta kill those babies b4 they breed THEN you definitely got them all
FIREBIRD: badgers in your garden??: have you seen them?? how cute! Pandable had special badger-stripes...
MOLSON: I've seen those slow-moving enormous ones. They're about 2 inches long. The size of a fullygrown Roborovski... don't know what they're called. I've got two types in my kitchen. Smaller brown ones and bigger blacker ones. The bigger blacker ones are harder to kill with permethrin that's for sure. They've a noticable resistance... that West African Raid is fantastic though!!
WELSHCAKES: I once nearly died after letting off 2 cans in a row in one of my old houses...
ZENWIZZ: boric acid? I will try that!
PUSSINBOOTS: that nuclear blst thing is surely true. I know I microwaved one for a few secs on high power and it survived!
cockroach poison might do harm to other small creatures should they venture from their habitrails.
toxic!
I never used bug spray even when living in nyc apts. there are other ways I'm sure there are online recipes.
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