old crap

I was lying in bed in the bedroom I lived in when I was growing up in Newcastle, looking at the ceiling. In the socket where the light bulb would normally be was a blob of brown muck, slowly being pushed through the hole. Brown stuff was seeping through in other cracks in the ceiling too. Soon, wet brown slime began to drip down onto the bed, dirtying the blankets. I went into my parents’ room where my mother was lying on the bed. I blew a raspberry on her tummy and then told her about the mess. Next, we were in my bedroom with a young man who we had contracted to fix the problem. I could see that the ceiling panels had been dislodged by the force of the strange brown sludge. He had finished cleaning and was telling us about what he had discovered. It was cockroach faeces that had collected over the years in the cavity between the ceiling and the roof. Apparently there was even a shoot much like a chimney flue, specifically designed to catch cockroach droppings, but ours had way too much and was overflowing into the whole cavity and would have filled the bedroom had I not noticed it. The man, my mother and I all had brown residue on our faces and bodies, and I could even taste it. I couldn’t wait to wash it off.