A trip to the cottage - spiders...

I suppose I should start with the Spider, well it does seem a very good place to start.

We arrived at the cottage on Thursday evening just as night was falling and three full days ahead of us to do whatever we chose. At this time of year, mellow fruitfulness and all that, my first duty on arrival is to perform the bath check. This consists of turning on the light and checking the off-white bath for spiders; a task I am not at all bothered by, although I did once have to catch and set fourteen of the little lovelies free outside.

On this occasion there were only five and four of them were deceased, dead, and no longer with us. The remaining spider seemed in fine fettle and very much alive, rearing up on his back legs as if to say ‘come on then if you think you’re hard enough!’ Obviously I was. No spider, not even this gladiator with four kills to his name (I assumed), was ever going to get the better of me.

Now usually I pick them up in my cupped hands and transport to the back door and freedom. There have been times I’ve taken two or three at a time, jiggling my hands up and down in an attempt to stop them tickling me. Not this time though. This time I got a beer glass and a piece of paper – this was one huge spider.

It didn’t take long before he was safely inside my pint pot. I have to say that he didn’t seem pleased, so I quickly and carefully slipped a pound inside the glass for scale and took a couple of pictures. Then, after nervously retrieving my pound, I set him free by dropping him into the dark over the stable door knowing that (like Arnie) he’ll be back. Well, they don't call them house spiders for nothing.

Later that same evening we found another spider almost as big in the living room and again I had to fetch my beer glass. I must be losing my touch. Not Luna though who seemed to enjoy playing with her through the glass of my Old Speckled Hen pint pot.

Evidence of autumn...

Well it seems to have arrived right on cue. There was a real chill in the air this morning and that, along with crisp emptiness that makes the birds sound like a tinny recording of themselves when they sing, seemed to say ‘autumn is here’. I wouldn’t call it mellow fruitfulness though. It didn’t quite feel mellow and if there was fruit to be had I couldn’t see it. Maybe autumn wasn’t here after all, as they say ‘one swallow doesn’t make a summer’.

Evidence is what I needed, evidence of autumn.

Creeping out of the yard gate and into the deserted entry I wondered what I might find. Would autumn be everywhere as if someone had flipped the autumn switch overnight and plunged us into a world of mists and bonfire smoke? Of course I was hoping to find spiders. You know, the big hairy ones that are everywhere this time of year apparently, real monsters big enough to eat a chicken whole. But the only spider I saw was a tiny pinprick of a creature sitting in the middle of his dew free web. I couldn’t even find one of those orange autumnally bloated slugs that seem to appear just after the summer has left as if they had sucked up the last of the sun and were storing it in their gooey bodies to get them through the winter.

Yes, perhaps the report of summer’s death and the arrival of autumn had been grossly exaggerated.

It was then that I spotted what I was looking for. A little further along the alley tucked up against a neighbour's back wall was a neatly swept pile of leaves. Now these weren’t ordinary leaves, and they weren’t M and S leaves either, these were definitely autumnal leaves. It was their colour that gave them away.

Mind you nature can be tricky, and she makes some leaves red and brown all year around without the need for autumn. So to be sure I picked up a handful to check for the rustle factor. The leaves felt dry and crisp in my hand and when I scrunched them they made a very satisfying dry rustle. These were indeed the first leaves of autumn. I bent to scoop up another handful and as I did a huge brown arachnid, one of those fabled spiders I’d read about in the papers, leaped towards me and clung to my hand.

That was evidence enough for me. So gently flinging the huge thing off my hand (I am not afraid of spiders you understand) I beat a hasty retreat to my back gate and safety once more. I had found autumn. That pile of swept up leaves was just the harbinger of things to come. Watch now how quickly the leaves will turn.