So tonight Caro was on the phone to someone when a PAIR OF SPIDER LEGS suddenly emerged from a hole in the wall. Followed by a fat spider the size of a prune with legs. Caro was very brave and did not scream at the person on the other end of the phone. But she did inform me about it.
Because I am very practical, I decided the best approach would be to SECURE THE BEAST. Caro cut lengths of sticky-tape for me and watched breathless as I placed the tape over the hole. It was a dangerous mission, but I'm a man who laughs in the face of peril. And as spiders have not yet acquired sticky-tape technology, I think we are safe.
I do not care for spiders, but they do not freak me out quite as much as Caro. Or Hilary. Hilary told me a story about a spider "the size of a kitten" that crawled out of a blouse she was ironing. She screamed, vaulted the couch, ran down the hallway and was outside her flat with herself locked out before she knew what had happened. “Meanwhile, that FECKING spider was warm inside my flat, watching the telly,” she snarled.
Finally, her boyfriend came home and let her back in. She pointed at the blouse, still on the ironing board. “Yeah, yeah,” said Bill, “shaking the blouse out of the window, “it’s gone now, I saw it fall.”
“Did you really? Are you sure?” she insisted, cowering by the doorway.
“Of course, of course,” said Bill. But men lie. All the time.
The next day, Hilary was WEARING the blouse on the bus while reading her book when the spider CAME OUT OF HER SLEEVE AND STARTED WALKING UP HER ARM. Hilary lost it.
“I started beating myself with the book shouting ‘DIE YOU FECKER!’” she explained. It was after a few seconds of this that she noticed everyone on the bus was looking at her. “I got off at the next stop,” she said.
Still, this tale of terror does not compare to Lisa and her pet spider. This happened a few years ago, when a spider “so big you could see the eyes” traversed Lisa’s bedroom floor. She was unable to kill it. “I was afraid I’d hear its little bones snap,” she said. Instead she put a bowl over it and waited for it to starve to death.
This went on for some weeks. Caro and I would get regular updates on the phone:
DAY 4: “I think it’s losing weight”.
DAY 9: “It’s spun a web in there. I think it’s mocking me.”
DAY 11: “I’ve decided to name it. It’s called ‘B*stard’.”
Unable to sleep with B*stard in the room, Lisa would slide the bowl into the living room. Unable to watch tv with it looking at her, she would slide it back again. Certain it was now starved and desperate for revenge, she flew into a panic when she kicked the bowl over and B*stard the Spider escaped. Fortunately for Lisa a male friend was called over and he eliminated B*stard with Extreme Prejudice.
At least he claims he did, but as we know – men lie. All the time.
From the description Caro gave me, it is just possible that the spider in our wall is B*stard. Or “Son of B*stard” at least.
In the interests of a decent night’s sleep, I have assured Caro the sticky-tape solution will hold. But tomorrow I will get some Polyfilla and get all “The Cask of Amontillado” on his arse. I hope that does the trick. It's either that or we deploy Hilary with her book again.
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