GAHHHHHHHHHHHHAHAHA...oh....

I just spent an entire night too scared to go to the loo because I thought there was a slug in the bathroom. Considering my bladder is currently the size of a sultana - judging by the amount of time I spend scampering to and from the bathroom - this required some willpower to say the least.

My slug fears are not as weird as you might like to think. The Hubbo and I used to live in an enormous basement flat in Hammersmith, which was charming in every way apart from the builders' neglect to actually build a bathroom in it. Therefore the ablutions area was very much a damp afterthought, a below-freezing wet room stuck on the side of the house that the W6 slug population fell in love with. The amount of times I ran screaming from the bathroom because an orange invertebrate had wrapped it round my toothbrush is more than I care to think about. It was particularly humiliating the time when the Hubbo (whose marriage vows included a promise to always be on hand to dispose of house-based wildlife) was in Canada snowboarding and I had to summon the upstairs neighbour to rid the bath of a particularly vivd green specimen.

So, when I got up at 3am to visit the facilities I was somewhat alarmed to see what looked like a big black slug on the floor, especially as my Hackney bathroom is pleasingly free of damp and therefore not the most sensible habitat for gastropods. Unable to face waking the Hubbo, who was flat on his back snoring like only those who know that in five months their sleeping habits are to be disrupted for the next five years, and those who have been drinking in the West End for nine hours following a "quick trip to PC World" can, I instead flapped for ten minutes, contemplated shutting my eyes and getting on with it, disregarded this idea because then I would inevitably tread on the slug, cursed the fact that I am such a girl, and decided to wait it out until the Hubbo woke up and could do his duty of slinging the slimy bastard out of the window. Few experiences have been less entertaining.

Of course, I saw the funny side when the slug turned out to be a memory stick that had fallen out of the Hubbo's PC World bag when he staggered in at half past midnight needing a piss so desperately he hadn't even time to drop his bags outside the bathroom door. Hilarious.