Awash in clouds of various aerosols, I officially give up attempting to record a proper song tonight.

The aerosols being Mortein, Sheltox, Lysol and hairspray, all directed at the biggest bleeping, eye-popping cockroach skittling about my room. I’ve often said I’m not squeamish about cockroaches, but this one was so big that I eat my words. And I hate eating my words.

Of course, it’s completely inconvenient, because I finally overcame all odds against recording some music tonight. By which I mean the fact that I insist on recording exactly like a 15 year-old, bringing a hulking load of equipment—multitrack recorder, microphone, headphones, electric and acoustic guitars, various cables, and the multitrack recorder’s manual—into bed.

Yes, I have a separate table where my keyboard is, and I should record there. Or I should make use of my study which I recently cleared to make way for…a home recording studio.

But no, I sit in bed trying to play a flat electric guitar while one of my legs cramp from avoiding all the other equipment lying nearby.

Anyway, I was midway through a song, mentally berating myself for picking one of the cheesier ones, when something scuttled by, large enough that the corner of my eye picked it up.

Cue: Flying Limbs, Double Aerosol Action. Oddly, neither Mortein nor Sheltox did the trick, and I found myself checking the artwork on the can for a cockroach illustration, thinking about how cockroaches would be the only survivors in a nuclear holocaust. Yes, the cans had cockroaches on them, but that made no difference.

It took Lysol to send it into a frenzy—all in good time, because half of my room was already covered in oil from the earlier aerosols.

While it lay there, writhing and jerking about, the final aerosol did the trick, hairspraying it down into a gluey film of Gatsby goodness.

My mother, who is deathly afraid of dirt, germs and other microorganisms would probably pop a vein if she knew I had a cockroach in my room. But she’ll just have to deal with it when she takes over the unenviable task of clearing its carcass tomorrow, now stiffly preserved in a pool of citrus-scented antibacterial oil.