Creepy crawlies...

It’s that terrible time of the year again. The cottage was full of screams at the weekend as the latest intruding spiders and daddy longlegs were discovered by the women of the house.

First there was the longlegs in Holly’s bedroom. Apparently it was flying around her head in order to fly into her mouth the moment she opened it. I carefully caught it in a glass and let it out of the window, freeing it into the beauty of the sunset. It flew towards the lavender sky and then turned swiftly around and settled, clinging to the glass in that way that they do, legs outstretched and bent, wings all-a-glimmer, on the outside of the window. Perhaps it really did want to fly into Holly’s mouth and die, though goodness knows why.

Then later, as Holly went up to bed I knew that there was something more than a Daddy Longlegs in her bedroom when she rushed down the stairs at breakneck speed screaming ‘Spiiiiiiiider’ at the top of her voice. I trudged up the stairs and despite it being ‘massive’ it easily fitted into the palm of my hand.

When I catch a spider in my hand I have to keep shaking it around so that I can’t feel it walking on my palm. I’m not scared of spiders, but I can’t stand the feeling of them walking on my skin. For the very big ones – like the one Gaynor ‘Andrewww Spiiiiderrr!!’ found in the fireplace on Saturday evening, I use tissue, bundling the creature up in a temporary shroud before flapping it out of the back door and into the night.

And then there are the clean spiders, the ones who live to be found in the bath. Every Friday at this time of year we each make a guess on how many spiders we are going to find in the bath when we arrive at our cottage in Wales. Our record is nine, although the average is probably three.

Maybe we’ll beat our own record this year. It looks like being a good year for spiders.

I’ll keep you posted.