Friday 21 August 2009

'Tis the Season... to be scaredy!

My heart was in my mouth yesterday - makes a pleasant change from having my foot jammed in there - because there was a tractor at the bottom of our garden ploughing the fields "out back".
Gulp.
And Zoikes.
And eleven kinds of sh*t.
Then it rained - so treble those emotions.

Because we all know from bitter experience what these ominous signs mean, don't we? Spider family loses nice comfy home in the relative safety of the eaves of corn or whatever is growing in there this year and so has to (eight) leg it to the bright, welcoming sanctuary that is every home on this side of the street. And if it's raining they get even crosser. And bigger. And faster.

(Note to prospective house purchasers: along with asking the newly introduced "So what are the neighbours REALLY like?" - which is now LAW - remember to ask a)so do you have a problem with spiders and b)precisely how large would you say they are?)
God, how I wish I'd listened when the previous owner said breezily "yeah we do get a few when the fields are harvested" and she said it in such a laissez-faire manner and she was a single parent too and I thought, "Pah, so how big could they be?". In hindsight, I wish I'd actually VOICED this question and not brushed it away dismissively. NOW I'd demand exact dimensions, a scale drawing please and a visitation frequency graph.

Two months after we'd moved in I was holed up on a hypnotherapist's comfy chair trying to convince my brain that I was, actually a gazillion times larger than these little creatures and what the heck problem could they be?

Three hundred pounds lighter and ten weeks later I was still no nearer being hypnotised 'away' from my fear and even leapt onto the sofa at every twitch of a curtain - such was my conviction that they were Out There Waiting for me. Only me, you see. No, not paranoid or mad - just Me.

We misssed a lot of telly programmes that first year. We did save on our heating bill though because we didn't need the radiators turned on in the main room - we were hardly in there. Hungry? Kitchen - cook food - back upstairs with it. Nicer. Safer.

Because, you see spiders can't climb stairs. That's right. They're a bit like Daleks in that respect - only far, far scarier of course.

But they're back.

Only now I have a husband who has particularly large slippers and he's not afraid to use them

Although he does have a penchant for picking scaredy visitors up and running after me with them in a tissue - which I'm still trying to find out is a divorceable offence or not. Watch this space.

2 comments:

The Pineapple Tart said...

I'm just the same with field mice.

Debs Riccio said...

Ah, we have Ant and Dec (twin cats) to sort them out - we only ever see them shut-eyed and rigid!
And on the kitchen floor mostly!