There is mass hysteria over the rise of bedbugs in the capital. The city could already be crawling with them, they say. They’ve hopped over from Paris on the Eurostar, scream the headlines. Sniffer dogs are to be deployed and the message is clear: for the love of good hygiene, don’t you dare sit down on the Tube. Mayor Sadiq Khan has described it as a “real cause for concern”.
While I don’t wish to pile on to the panic, I’ve had bedbugs and it was an experience I keep locked away in the “trauma folder” of my mind. It wasn’t here in London but a few years ago during my travels to south-east Asia. The scene of the assault was a hostel in Laos, and I first became aware of the infestation thanks to an excruciatingly itchy line of juicy red bites snaking down and around my legs and arms. I must have looked a right state because I was stopped more than once by strangers who asked what had happened to me. “What did that to you?” I became a cautionary tale.
I’ve had bedbugs and it was an experience I keep locked away in the “trauma folder” of my mind
But bites fade. It was the psychological toll which lingered. After I had boiled all my clothes and sprayed my rucksack with whatever repellent I could get my hands on, the bedbugs seemed to retreat. Yet each night I spent an obsessive amount of time bedbug hunting with a headtorch. In the morning I would see them splattered in the sheets mixed with my blood, which they’d been feasting on, and something else — which I later learned, to my horror, was bedbug faeces. For weeks, I couldn’t sleep, imagining — or not — that the bed was crawling. I had phantom itching, nightmares and my mood plummeted. I took up as little space in the bed as possible, sleeping in the foetal position, which began to give me back problems.
I was able to flee the infected hostel and leave the bugs behind, so I can’t imagine the stress of discovering them in your own home — crawling out of skirting boards, from behind curtains and into bed frames. Repugnant.
Stay vigilant, London. I’m off to boil everything I own. Again.
