I’m slightly out of sorts today and have been since yesterday morning. There I was, quite happily wandering the kitchen while Neil was making a cup of tea, when out of the corner of my eye, I noticed this in the sink:
(Apologies for the state of the washing up, we were trying to soak the last of the welded-on cheesecake base from the tin.)
Unfunnily enough, only the day before we had been watching The Amazing Race (Australia), a reality game show where the contestants travel around facing challenges and being eliminated one by one, not fatally, only in terms of the game. While the teams were in Malaysia, the classic TAR challenge popped up, and they had to eat fried bugs and tarantulas. I looked away whenever the dead spiders came into view, and Neil looked away every time one of the contestants threw up. I can’t tell you how much we enjoy the show!
We’ve had a spider invasion before, and I knew we were due for one, I felt it in my water, as they say. I’d noticed a standard-sized house spider in the courtyard the other day, and another in the house, but they no longer bother me. It’s the ones that tap-dance their way towards you when you’re watching TV in the dark that get me. Actually, we’ve had only three or four visits in the last nine years, so that’s not too bad. The first time we were watching TV at night with the uplighter on, and I noticed a movement high up on the wall. It was one like we met yesterday, only lit from beneath, so its shadow stretched across the wall like something from a 1950s horror movie poster. Needless to say, I was more than a little:
Another time, one scampered under my feet (again in semi-darkness), and Neil leapt into action to take it outside. A few minutes later, convinced they hunt in pairs, I heard the cat coming down the passage and thought he needed to file his claws. Then I realised he’d died a couple of years before, and hunted around, and sure enough, there was another you-know-what right by where I’d been sitting. Don’t worry, all you vegan spider-rights activist, Neil takes them by the hands and leads them to a better place, usually the dustbins up the road. If I am alone? Well, then it’s a case of DDT or a large dictionary, I’m afraid. Sadly, even on seeing one my blood pressure rises to dizzying heights, quite literally, and I cannot settle nor sleep properly for several days.
So, as much as we love The Amazing Race, there is no way I am ever going on it. I don’t need to when we have such challenges at home every spring and autumn.
