• I enjoy fresh ricotta and spinach tortelloni with a straightforward tomato-and-herb sauce more than a ten-quid bowlful of fettuccine alle vongole from a fancy restaurant
• taking my kids to the park for a runabout and a splash in the puddles is more fun than schlepping them out to some franchised play area with padded floors
• the humble English cottage pie has become my favourite comfort food
• a good game of Scrabble beats an hour of impressive graphics on the Playstation hands-down
• wearing jeans and a shirt fits my self-image better than office clothing
• Yoda's hermitic exile is somehow more pure and noble than Darth Vader's overt power and luxury
• sorry about that, my colleague and I were just having a discussion about Yoda for no particular reason, and it seemed relevant in a really, really tenuous kind of way
• a plain, hardish mattress is a million times more comfortable to sleep on than one of those heat-activated, body-shape-moulding, high-tech gel mattresses
• scootching up all together on the sofa and reading silly limericks to the kids is just about the best thing ever

The cockroach stops in his tracks, faced suddenly with the crumbling, soggy morsel of biscuit in the trap, the sweet-smelling cage, the beckoning irresistible final womb. He has heard the stories, just like everyone else. The young ones whisper them in the corridors, chittering to the thrillfear fascination of someone else's gruesome death. Too close. He is the someone now, the other they'll talk about tomorrow, sideways-glancing in half-excitement. His legs lurch forward, involuntary, jerking, stick-like, why can't I just stop? The heady hydrocarbon scent drags him forward relentlessly by the scruff of his genes. His mandibles lovingly crack the crumbs, siphoning the death-in-life into him. A slow, smooth blossoming of pain in his abdomen. Numbness. Inevitability. The black insect-mother calling him home. He curls up tightly, finally, almost egg-shaped, as if to say, I am reborn.