I quite like this time of year, once you learn to accept that summer is pretty much over, anyway. There's still plenty of sunny days left, and the afternoons can be blazing even if the mornings are chilly. The leaves are starting to turn, and in a mere few weeks will be ablaze with red and gold. I don't even mind having to put on a thicker jumper, or use the thicker duvet at night, or wearing slippers round the house.

What I don't like is the spiders. Huge, black, hairy, jungle-sized beasties that appear with some regularity in the bathtub, sink, hallway, garage, and recently, bedroom. Last night I was in bed reading, and jam_warrior was getting ready for bed. All of a sudden he shouts "keep an eye on that spider!" and rushes off to get a pint glass to trap it. I turn round to see a monster spider dropping itself down from the storage space above our bedroom, getting lower and lower on a thread. I leap out of bed and just before it vanishes behind the radiator I catch it on my book, where it starts to drop once more. I raise the book higher and higher, but it drops lower and lower until it hits the floor and heads off at full pelt towards the sofa. With Jam stil floundering in the hall I had no choice but to splat the bugger on the back of my manga. We stood staring at the book and the (presumably) flat spider beneath, both too scared to move it in case it had somehow survived and would scuttle over our hands in a last-ditch bid for freedom.

Eventually Jam flipped the book over with a long pencil and recovered the now-dead spider with some paper, chucking it out of the window.

I don't like killing them, but maybe by throwing them outside we're just letting them come back in again. I wouldn't mind if they just trapped themselves in the bathtub, but finding them in our bedroom is just horrible. I lay in bed that night feeling all ticklish and itchy and uncomfortable, certain one was about to drop onto me from on high.

Yick.