While reading of the case of the super-rich couple suing the previous owners of their west London mansion over its moth infestation, one particularly detail prompted warm memories. Iya Patarkatsishvili and Yevhen Hunyak had to tip away glasses of wine after discovering moths floating in them, Hunyak told the court. Ah yes, I thought, I too have found a moth taking a little dip in my tipple, though I’ll admit that I simply fished him out rather than waste a glass. Worse, mine only contained Tesco’s finest wine, as opposed to, you know, the world’s. Moths, it seems, pay no attention to social class. Whether you are a lowly renter in a poky flat, such as I, or the daughter of a Georgian billionaire; if you live in London, they are coming for you. Moths, like mice in the tube, are simply a fact of living in this city, so commonplace as to be almost unremarkable. Even when waging daily battle against them, you sort of forget about them; their soft fluttering wings are a kind of inaudible mood music, until someone who has recently moved here says, “What’s with all the moths?”, and you remember the bastards that truly own this city. “I don’t know,” you say. Someone once told you it was because of all the carpet shopsin the capital, which didn’t sound plausible. In the case of the billionaires’ mansion, apparently wool insulation is to blame. If this is indeed the case, then there may be many thousands of buildings in this city where moths are living and breeding and swarming in horror-movie fashion. What use is a lowly can of Rentokil in such circumstances? Perhaps there is liberation in surrender. For I have battled. Oh, Lord, have I battled. Over the years, there have been great, heartbreaking losses: a hand-beaded cashmere cardigan, a 1960s Balmain dress from my godmother, a childhood Humpty Dumpty hand-knitted by my late grandmother. Some things were just about salvageable: my auntie Kath added new panels to my dad’s 1970s Doctor Who scarves, some of the stains came out of my mother’s wedding dress. At least Patarkatsishvili can afford to pay an invisible mender for her clothes. Invisible mending is an art, laborious and time consuming. We are talking £50 per hole. The Balmain dress alone, a museum piece, would cost £500 to repair. So maybe moths do know social class, after all. The couple are claiming for £50,000 in destroyed clothes. The better you can afford natural fabrics, the more they will come for your wardrobe. These moths care not for Primarni polyester; they want to burrow their way through the good stuff: virgin wool, cashmere, alpaca. Do I think £50,000 is an obscene amount of money to spend on clothes? Yes. Does the thought of all that beautiful couture ruined by these unholy creatures make me want to weep? Also yes. A moth problem means living in a state of paranoia. Even if you’ve largely got on top of it, you must remain vigilant: your knitwear must be regularly “disturbed”. (“Why are you rummaging in the wardrobe like that?” “Just disturbing my knitwear again.”) Some people put their jumpers in the freezer. I need mine for my toddler’s fish fingers. I had limited success, before we got a cat and had a son, fumigating the flat with some toxic-smelling stuff called Zero In that actually did the trick. The dependants mean I don’t feel comfortable doing that any more, and mothballs have been banned. Now it’s all lavender and cedar balls. The cat, who loves hunting them, plays her part. We still find holes in things. If billionaires are struggling to win the battle, with all the money and resources at their disposal, then there’s little hope for the rest of us. Living alongside these creatures can, when it gets out of control, be quite depressing. At one point we had both clothes moths and pantry moths collaborating in an evil pincer attack. I remember reading at the time that pantry moths are an important source of protein in some parts of the world. That may be, but try eating a bowl of muesli that’s swarming with them without dry-heaving. I dare you. (Now we have everything in Tupperware, but they still sneak their way back in to newly bought bags of flour, etc. Again, it feels like a losing battle.) I don’t know if the claimants will win their case, which hinges on whether or not moths can be counted as vermin. Their 100-swatted-moths-a-day problem sounds far worse than ours. I rarely sympathise with the super-rich, but in this case, in a funny way, I do a bit. Our lives could probably not be more different, but despite the supermassive, yawning wealth gap between us, we have this one thing in common. Indeed, I’d hazard that all of London knows the feeling. Rhiannon Lucy Cosslett is a Guardian columnist and author