What’s in your room 101?
In nineteen eighty-four, Winston’s worst thing in the world was rats, which I never understood. Like, really? Rats?
This was before I had seen city rats. Being brought up in the seventeenth century, I had only seen sweet little country mice.
I had occasionally stumbled across well-groomed pet rats on TV.
When I moved to the nineteen-eighties and saw RATS like Winston must have meant, I suddenly understood.
They’re still not the worst thing in the world, though.
The worst thing in the world is this.
My room 101 has moths in it. I can only assume Orwell had forgotten moths when he was writing the book. If your room 101 doesn’t have moths in it, I’d love to hear your case for that bizarre omission. Look at it!
YUK.
The seventeenth century is full of moths. Last summer, I opened my curtain to find a queue of moths waiting to enter my bedroom window. Happily, ‘last summer’ lasted about 5 nights, so it could have been worse.
On Sunday, I was leafing through the weekend papers when to my utter shock, I spotted the 17th century in a headline. The 17th century makes it into real-world headlines perhaps once a year, and it’s usually because religious zealots have made some strange pronouncement. In this occasion, though, it was about the discovery of an insect which had previously been considered extinct in Britain, in a back garden. I began to have suspicions.
The insect was discovered by a man who for some bizarre reason had set up a light trap in his garden to – I kid you not – attract more insects. I googled the insect.
It is a moth. Apparently, it is a ‘caddisfly’ but clearly it is a tiny moth. Revolting.
I am all for species diversity, but why have we been stuck with a moth-thing? India has tigers, China has pandas, Russia has polar bears. The seventeenth century has extra moth-things that everyone else has managed to get rid of.
I guess God is punishing us after all!
The Spinstress 
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