Rat's not back yet and probably won't be until close to 9. While it may only take two hours to get home from London, it takes a helluva lot longer to get home from Worcester even though it's less than half the distance. Of course, Rat doesn't work for a generous company that will pay extortionate amounts for a taxi, which doesn't help on the getting home at a reasonable hour front.

When I got home from work today, utterly exhausted for reasons I'm not sure of, I started shuffling through the papers that had been pushed through the letterbox. I was greeted by a little black shiny nasty thing - an earwig. I have a bad history of earwigs which I shall explain now (and quickly since I'm not meant to be online for long and was just diverted from this for ages...).

Once upon a time (a good six years ago) I lived in a house in a road called Harriett Street. It was a student house which I shared with my ex-boyfriend Gav and two total strangers whom we'd interviewed after advertising around the University: one was called Darren and was a law student who I frankly wish I'd never met, and the other was called Nick. About all I can remember of Nick was that he knew Penny, the daughter of the rector of my old church back home, through very convoluted means.

The house was very similar in layout to the one I'm living in now. I had the upstairs middle room which is the equivalent of Rat's "office". It was a nice enough house (except for when we had the mouse problem), although my memory is marred by the fact that when I last entered the house it was in the process of being redecorated. It was looking much better then than it had when I lived there.

I had a single bed in my room, but I had also acquired a double mattress from my friends who had lived there before. So between bookcases and cupboards taking up most of the floor was this double mattress - a comfortable place to sit and somewhere to sleep on the many occasions that Rat was visiting. In fact, I often slept on this mattress even when he didn't stay over. The mattress later became our bed when we moved to our next flat.

Anyway, it was one night when Rat wasn't staying over and I'd just waved him goodbye. I was about to get into bed (the double mattress) and I saw this little shiny black thing crawling over the quilt. I absolutely freaked (bare in mind I'd only been living away from home for three years at this point and was still new to the idea of fending for myself) and whipped the quilt away to get rid of the earwig. It scuttled under the other bed never to be seen again. I soon decided to sleep in the single bed! It took a lot of coaxing to get me near the mattress.

For years after Rat would try to catch me out and make me freak by saying there was an earwig in the bed (don't get any ideas...). I've never been happy with the idea of the little creatures since. Fortunately today I didn't go quite as mental - I think I was far too tired to worry about a little creepy crawly. But it wasn't the most pleasant welcoming, particularly when I have several hours to spend alone in the house.