Eek!

I got home at 10pm or so last night after a looooong day of sitting around and chatting with friends (not that I am implying the day dragged by. It was lovely, but it did involve getting up at the crack of dawn and sitting in trains for 4 hours). About 2 metres before the door to the house I ran into a spider web. This wasn't really very surprising because there are always foolhardy spiders making their webs in that particular spot (and everyone always walks there whenever they come and go from the house, so spider webs are being destroyed pretty constantly), but it was dark and rainy and it felt like quite a lot of spider web had got tangled up in my hair so I had a bit of a panic and then yelled at my sister to come and see if there was a spider on my head. She came outside and we stood under a light and she stared at the top of my head for a while. For quite a long while, really, so that I was starting to think "well there must be nothing there if she hasn't done anything yet, hurray for me, I'm spider free" when she totally took me by surprise and clobbered me across the head with remarkable force.

I started to get cranky ("what the hell did she do that for? There wasn't even a spider there!") until I saw the ABSOLUTELY GIGANTIC spider that she had clouted off my head. Really, it was ridiculously big* and it was terrifying and the worst part was that I didn't see where it went next. What if it was still somehow attached to me by it's nasty spidery web and it has been valiantly watching me for the last 15 hours working out what my habits are and when is the best time to crawl up my leg and take it's terrible mean-spirited spidery revenge? Every time I feel anything strange brush against me I have a small moment of panic and I swipe furiously to get the damn thing off me.

This is one time when a tiny army of tamarins would come in extremely useful. I bet they could save me from my spidery nemesis. Sigh.





* Well, not compared to the actual big spiders you see around (usually on your bedroom wall when it's late at night and you're extremely tired, grr), but it was bigger than any other spider I have seen in the garden for years. It was much bigger than I was mentally prepared for.