Throughout the summer, I have to do all my poos in the dark.
I appreciate when you clicked the link those weren't the words you were expecting and, if I'm being brutally honest, I'm only slightly ashamed that it's the opening gambit I went for, but it's genuinely the truth. While the temperature in the UK is such that we all bemoan our office's lack of air conditioning and sleep with three fans blowing air in all directions through the room, I must make a difficult choice when it comes to having a dump.
Either do it with the light off and the window open, thus ensuring a cooler room for me to take care of business. Or do it with the light on and the window closed, ensuring an ability to see but keeping the hoards of tiny little flying devil monsters from coming into the house.
I'm talking about moths. Moths are evil. Moths look horrible. Moths have faces that could only have been designed by a movie supervillain. Moths dive-bomb unsuspecting humans and tickle them in places that should never be tickled. Moths were sent to earth in order to flap in the face of mankind and head-butt lightbulbs across the world. Moths are wankers.
What even is the point of moths anyway? They've just been invented by some half-blind doom-monger whose lack of design skills didn't stop them from creating a flappy, furry little shit. Why not create something butterfly-esque instead of that brown-grey thing?
You've probably worked out by this point that I've got a bit of a phobia. I'm scared of moths and I don't know why. That, I guess, is part of the point of it being a phobia; it's an irrational fear. The moth isn't going to hurt me or cause me any harm, but it doesn't stop me from screaming, running out of the room, slamming the door shut and holding it there to make sure the flappy bastard isn't going to twist the handle and get out.
It's also driven me to pooing in the dark.
Whenever I've subsequently asked a non-moth hating member of my family to remove the offending sod from whatever room I've locked it in, I've been met with the same response. It usually goes along the lines of a deep sigh, followed by the phrase "give over, it's not going to do anything to you."
Again, though, that's something that doesn't matter. It's the irrationality of the fear that makes it a phobia and by its very definition the lack of any potential physical harm being caused is key to mottephobia. If the moth was going to fly through the window, bite me on the arm and inject me with a poison that killed me within a minute, then I'd rightly have something to be scared of and the fear would be completely rational - but it's not.
It's a fear that's just been hard-wired into my brain. I can't help getting palpitations when one of the dozy gits mindlessly stumbles through the window and starts banging its face every two seconds on the lightbulb. That also creates something that horror movie directors have been doing for years; it means the swinging lamp and the quick movement of the lolloping beast causes vast shadows to be projected across the room in all directions.
Hitchcock eat your heart out.
Worse, is the moth that can't be seen. Picture the situation: it's dived in through the window, but then flapped its way into another room in the house and landed, before anybody can see where. How on earth is anyone expected to sleep in the same building where they might then be unexpectedly dive-bombed by a dead-behind-the-eyes, soulless little creature?
It's about time someone did something about the growing moth problem. David Cameron could earn a lot of favour if he decided to get tough on moths. Introduce an anti-moth policy. That referendum would get a decent turn out.
No, YOUR reaction is silly and disproportionate.