Captured

We may be having our indian summer – and it has been gloriously hot, yes, hot, today – but it is still September. And that meant we woke this morning to the thickest fog I’ve seen, thick enough that the other side of the yard was hazy and the other side of the road was non-existent.

Fortunately it soon burned off, leaving just this remnant behind, trapped in a spider’s web.

I’ve read that spiders eat their webs each morning to get the water from the dew, then spin them anew. I hope this one was feeling thirsty…

Limits

So I discovered this morning that – while I’m happy to share a shower with a single spider, as long as it’s not too scuttly – I draw the line at two. Especially when the second is about twice the size of the first (which has been there since yesterday morning and seemed relatively content to stay at the far end of the bath) and has a distinctly restless look to it.

I can do the whole glass-and-a-piece-of-paper thing if I have to but it tends to end in tears. Or girlish screams as the spider makes a run for it right towards me, if I’m absolutely honest. Fortunately the other half is made of sterner stuff, and the bath is now spider free.

And how was your morning?

Eeek!

It’s funny how – even after you have competently (and without screaming) gone all by yourself and got a glass and a piece of paper and calmly (still without screaming) trapped the spider under the glass and carefully (without screaming) slid the paper under it and removed glass and paper together with the spider, now glaring at you with its however-many-eyes-it’s-got, out of the bath and opened the bathroom window as the spider scuttled menacingly towards the momentary gap between paper and glass rim (possibly a small scream, hastily stifled) and evicted the spider completely and totally and utterly out of the bathroom and got into the shower and turned on the water – even after all that, and knowing that there is no spider in the bath, not even a little tiny one…

… you can still feel a spider on your foot every time you close your eyes.

Autumn is icumen in…

Never mind what the calendar says, it seems like the summer’s over, if it was ever here at all. The geese are flying south already, bailing out on us before we’ve so much as got warm. It’s cold, and it’s getting dark, although that part is relative – we could just about read a newspaper outdoors at 11 o’clock at night in June here, so we’re a bit spoiled. And the clincher? The spiders are here.

OK, spider. But where there’s one, there will be many more. And besides, this one was sitting on top of the loo roll and I only noticed it as I reached out to get the necessary. A girlish scream may have escaped my lips but in fairness to me a) it was huge and b) I was not dressed for spider combat as I was about to get into the shower. I’m not, technically, frightened of spiders but I wasnt up for tackling this one naked. Cunningly I rotated the loo roll round (and this, gentle readers, is why the paper should always come out from underneath and not over the top) until the spider fell off and scuttled behind the loo. I was then able to shower as planned with only a few startled shrieks every time my foot touched the plug unexpectedly. It’s funny how a smooth round metal object can feel exactly like a scuttly hairy spider when you’ve got your eyes closed.

I sense this will be the first of many as the autumnal spider migration begins. They were bad enough in London – I dread to think what it’s going to be like here. I’m going to have to take to going into the bathroom armed. Hmmm. Perhaps this is why blokes feel they have to take a newspaper in with them? It’s not just to do the sudoku in peace after all…