Dreadful Nonsense

If you were fortunate enough to be walking past my house at around 9.45 this morning, you'd have been right in thinking that it was my voice screaming out "YOU CUNT! YOU FUCKING CUNT! GET OFF MY BAG!" If you'd been standing in the doorway of my bedroom - and I'm fairly sure you weren't but am willing to be corrected - you'd have seen the hand flapping and foot to foot skipping and entire body shuddering that accompanied the screaming. There's a very simple explanation for this. There was a spider on my bag.

Holy crap. That's not the way to start your morning. It's not the way to do anything. When I'm in charge, all spiders will be banned, and I'll have a large, hunky man servant who would be on hand night and day to make sure there are no further spiders lurking anywhere nearby, even though they've all already been banned (spiders cannot be trusted to stick to the laws of the land, because they are made of pure fanged evil).

I mean. Christ. It's about 14 hours since that happened and every tiny movement around me is being translated by my brain as SPIDERQUICKRUNOHMYGOD. I can feel all the little buggers crawling along the back of my neck. I have to keep readjusting my scarf. If I actually do set eyes on one in the next few hours I would probably die right there on the spot. That's how fraught I am.

Dee and I were once trapped in her kitchen for a good 30 minutes. We had spotted a spider, a freaking huge one, about the size of a small car, running across the floor. Dee shrieked, I shrieked, we both started doing the patented 'I'm a lady, there's a spider' dance, and Dee threw a massive cookery book right on top of it. But then. We realised. That book now lay between us and freedom. It was in front of the door, which couldn't be opened without disturbing the book, and all ladies harbour a fear of that rare strain of spiders that can press themselves flat to the floor and survive heavy book drops and even foot stomping. You may snigger, but it's happened to all of us at one point. You think the blighter is dead and then it suddenly makes a lunge for your face.

But back to this morning's monstrosity. After the initial bout of screaming had been covered, I sprang in to action, darting around the bed - but never taking my eyes off the demon - to grab a tissue. I returned to the original position - still hand flapping like an autistic - and dived in.

This is a skill only recently acquired by me. In the last six months in Edinburgh I was forced to dispose of spiders myself, due to my flatmate having odd working hours, and none of my friends being willing to come round to help me out at all hours of the day and night. It was either get rid of the spiders myself, or abandon the room altogether, and since we lived on a ground floor flat most rooms would eventually have spiders in them, and I'd be living in the corridor with no belongings.

I'm vegetarian, we all know that. I don't kill things, either for food or sport or the sheer pleasure found in killing. But I will kill a spider. It's an involuntary reaction. I want to pick them up in the tissue like my mother does and then flap it out the window until the spider safely descends on to the sill and down the wall. But the moment my tissue comes in contact with spider, my hand goes in to a crushing spasm from which there is no return.

I popped it.

I made the spider pop.

I feel sick at the thought of it.

But secretly delighted.

Don't judge me.

This entry was posted on 06 January 2005 at 11:23 pm. 0 comments

Dreadful Nonsense

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