Spiders & Conkers

I'm hoping for better luck tonight and that as I near the end of my blog, it doesn't disappear from my screen never to be seen again!

Today's blog isn't very long or hilariously funny, not they ever are, but I can promise it's authenticity. True from beginning to end.... I think.

Now, I don't want you to get the wrong impression and think that I'm the next David Attenborough, all my animal and bird mentionings, but tonight I turn my attention once again to spiders.

Last week I listened with interest to the story on Sir Terry's radio show about the potential increase in spiders due to the fantastic weather conditions. On his programme he is joined sometimes by the voice of the balls, Alan Dedicoat, and he offered some very useful information for people that are not fond of our 8 legged friends. Apparently, and I had heard this before, if you place a conker in each corner of the room it keeps the spiders at bay. Cue the cynics.

So last weekend we had some very dear friends around for a Mexican evening, and yes, I even donned a very large sombrero. As the beer and wine flowed, sorry Miss Rawding, I retold my story of the conker theory, of course everyone laughed. When asked if I'd tried it, I had to admit I hadn't due to a lack of conkers. So nice and early on Monday morning, Miss Rawding turned up on my doorstep with her 4 year old son's conker collection, poor boy, so now I had no choice but to test it out.

Last night, Master Grumpy carefully placed a conker in each corner of the dining room as a trial, I must admit, I now began to have my doubts, would this act simply drive them in to the lounge? And then if I put conkers in the lounge, would I just drive them all clod hopping up the stairs? I'm now starting to sweat, the thought of anymore spiders in my bathroom terrifies me, I already have to shake my towel every morning for the ones that are snuggled up on it. The conkers were in place and I went to bed.

I woke up bright and early this morning and came downstairs for the first of many cups of tea before work, and as I was waiting for a very important e-mail, logged on to the laptop on the dining room table. It was at this point, a small movement caught my eye, was it my imagination? were my eyes still a little sleepy? No. There abseiling from the light fitting, in true SAS style, wearing hob nail boots was an enormous house spider. He deftly dropped on to the table, dropped his rope and what do you think he did next? Yes, he ran, at warp factor 5 to hide, where did he hide I hear you ask, only in the bloody pile of conkers!

Needless to say, the conkers have now been collected and if Master Freeman would like them back he can have them. I'm sure they'll be far more use to him than me!