Salt – The Art of Cobwebs

My one brain cell is obviously trying very hard at this remembering lark because looky here . . . the THIRD Friday Post! I never dreamed I’d make it past the first one so to be here with the 3rd is nothing short of unbelievable to me!

Last week we did internet vexations. This week we’re talking again about ‘lessons’ I’ve learned during the past week. You need no more introduction from me so I’ll shut up and let you read while you enjoy that … erm … actually … what exactly is that which you have there? C’mon now … Share it with the rest of the class!

Things I Learned This Week.

1. I learned that sprinkling salt onto cut tomatoes you’re about to eat is NOT a clever thing to do when you’ve chewed on the inside of your lip. That salt (yes, even the lo-sodium variety because that’s what I use) will suddenly become a product of the DIVIL, and will make you pull a face like a sucked lemon due to the unique pain you WILL suffer when that salt and your chewed lip meet for the first time. What occurs when they become acquainted is nothing like a meeting made in Heaven. You know that brain freeze pain you get when you eat a too big a spoonful of ice cream? WELL IT’S WORSE THAN THAT, let me tell you!! Moral of this story . . . don’t chew your lips!

2. I learned that I’m obviously the only driver on the road, where I live in my corner of the UK, who has read and remembers how to ‘operate’ the Highway Code.

The ‘ejits’ who are obtaining a driving licence nowadays are obviously getting them via Christmas Crackers and/or Lucky Bags, and don’t realise that those types of licences really aren’t legal!!

They’ve either never read the Highway Code or, if they have, they’ve forgotten most of what’s written in there, and especially a) that you mustn’t cut corners at junctions.

And b) they know nothing about passing parked cars [which are parked on ‘their’ side of the road], and how they should wait and give way to the on-coming traffic, before THEY try to squeeze their car and bully their way, at speed, along the road causing the on-coming traffic to slam their brakes on; skim the kerb (and leave half a ton of tyre rubber behind); or mount the kerb in order to keep their (my) car in one whole, undamaged piece. grrrr!

3. Due to point Number 2 above: I learned that I know some curse words I didn’t think I knew, – and have also found I have an ability to invent other curses which I don’t think have been invented yet, – but I heard them all pop out of my mouth because of some idiot, rat-fink, ‘youth’ I doubted the parentage of, who nearly took the side off my car.

And finally … although why I’ve left this to the last one I don’t know, for it is the one which . . . aw, no. I won’t give the plot away. I’ll let you read it for yourself.

4. SPIDERS. I could leave it right there . . . but I feel you need to hear the drama which spiders have caused this week, here in my little cottage. And also, by blogging about it, there will be dated written evidence, if the police should need it, of how these bl**dy creatures are planning to terminate me!

Dearest readers ... I hope you know nothing about the horror of the rigor mortis fear which happens, when, in the darkness while laying in your bed at 2am in the morning, in the heat of a sticky summers night, with just a cotton sheet covering only the lower half of your body . . . you become aware of something moving over your skin. You feel every. single. one. of the slow foot steps of … a big spider walking over your back.

(ahhhh …. come out in a cold sweat have you? . . . read on, dear reader, read on) . . .

I lay comfortably in bed, on my left side, not quite asleep – but not really awake either. It was 2am in the morning.

I felt … a sort of gentle, ticklish feeling on my upper back. In my tired, sleepy headed state I remember thinking that it was a hair which had escaped the ‘twist’ I make with my hair every night.

I always collect my hair at the back of my neck, twist it round and then hold the twist of hair up on my head while I settle down on my pillow. It keeps it all out-of-the-way on hot nights.

Suddenly, a thought WHIZZED through my mind like a bullet being shot from a gun, – my eyes popped wide open and I froze.

I . couldn’t . move. Fear held me in a freakish suspended moment.

My mind was racing. My eyes, I swear, were the size of saucers. You see . . . I realised that the ‘hair’ I thought I’d felt falling on my back, couldn’t be a hair.

Why? Because if it was, it wouldn’t have been falling UPWARDS.

NOTHING . . . falls . . . UP!

My brain was now fully alert, racing at a million miles per hour, and trying to come up with a plan.

I considered shouting out for Mr. Cobs to rescue me from this assassin which came in the middle of the night … but he was deep in sleep and snoring so loudly that I doubt very much that The Band of the Coldstream Guards playing right next to him would have woken him up.

Besides which … I actually couldn’t make any sounds other than: Ehhh. Oahhh. Arrrr. Ehhr. Uh uh. – and none of these sounds made up the sentence:-

“Dearest one, could you possibly raise yourself from the depths of your slumbers and gently cup this little rascal on my back who’s having a round of that famous song: ‘You put your left legs in, your left legs out, in out, in out, y’ shake ’em all about. Y’ do the hokey cokey and you turn around, and that’s what it’s all about!’.”

Which, obviously, was what I was trying to say.

I’m scared witless of spiders. I’ve never been able to co-exist with them. I won’t kill them because … well … I don’t believe in killing anything. However, right at this point I’d have welcomed James Bond (Daniel Craig version please) as my hero who rescued me from the deathly grips of this eight legged creature. (Who am I kidding … I’d have welcomed ANYONE at that point who could have gathered up that beast and thrown him out of the window!).

I could feel this thing making its way up to my left shoulder. My time was running out. The panic within me at this point was so huge, so big, so wide, and inside my head I was screaming blue murder. I HAD TO DO SOMETHING. I HAD to stop this creature from walking up my neck and onto my face – because, something inside me said, if he got to my face then I was going to die of panic, fear and shock. My heart was pounding SO hard that I could feel each beat in my throat.

Thoughts were racing through my head so fast and just the one shone out as being the only one which had any merit…..

I rolled, gently and as slowly, so as not to alert this vile creature to my plan, onto my tummy, but fast enough so that the spider didn’t have time to get onto my neck. My upper shoulder was now hanging just over the edge of the bed … and with my hand (of the arm now trapped under my upper-chest), I SWOOPED it over my shoulder and cupped my hand so that it would scoop this little blighter off my back and onto the floor.

Straight away I turned my bedside lamp on and looked down at the floor. Nothing. Couldn’t see a thing. No Spider! I looked over to where the dog sleeps in her bed, next to me. I held my breath, waiting to see if I could see a spider running for dear life. Nothing. I sat up in bed and looked around … nothing. OH. MY. STARS! Was he still in the bed with me???

I got out of that bed faster than I knew I could move and quickly lifted each pillow and waiting for just a second to see if anything ran. Nothing.

I lifted the sheet. Nothing.

That little b*gg*r was nowhere to be found.

Was He Hiding In My Hair??? I grabbed my comb from the dresser and combed and combed and combed. From every angle, and frankly, I’m surprised I’m not bald.

I climbed back into bed … and for a while I first sat there, then lay there with the light on. Terrified.

What if it came back and hid spiders eggs inside my ear?

What if it came back and made a spider’s web over my face?

What if it came back and . . . on and on. One scenario after another. At around 4am I turned off the light and went to sleep. (but not before I’d double checked the floor again – for around the fourteenth time).

The following morning … I told Mr. Cobs about my tormentor and asked him if he would do me a big favour and vacuum all around the bedroom, under the bed, behind the bed head, around the edges of the skirting board, the bunting hanging against the wall behind the bed … I gave him a list of all the places I thought a spider might choose to hide, … and you name it, bless his heart, he vacuumed it for me. He said he found nothing.

No, he wouldn’t.

Of course he wouldn’t.

He wouldn’t …. Because that &*%$£# spider had re-located to the bathroom! And later that morning, … when I was brushing my teeth, I looked into the mirror over the sink and saw . . . THAT BL**DY, BU££ERY SPIDER (or one of its henchman) DROPPING DOWN FROM THE CEILING, ABOUT TWO INCHES AWAY FROM THE RIGHT SIDE OF MY HEAD! It was clearly aiming for my shoulder.

I have honestly never ever screamed so loud in all my life. Over and over and over again I screamed out Mr. Cobs. name. The bathroom door had the lock on. The spider was between me and the bathroom door, and there was no way that I could reach around it to get to the door, without it falling onto me.

Mr. Cobs was now at the bathroom door, banging on it and trying to open the door, yelling, trying to break in and save me from whatever it was which was making me scream like I was. I couldn’t talk. I couldn’t tell him what was wrong. For some reason I was unable to re-direct the effort of my panic to my voice-box and get that working instead.

I had an idea which I could try … I reached up and with my index finger, I dragged that spiders web ‘string’ towards and over the sink, so that he would land in the sink and I could then safely reach across and open the door. But NO. Mr. ‘I’m going to GET YOU’ Spider was having none of it.

What did he do? HE RAN BACK UP THAT WEB ‘STRING’ AS FAST AS HIS LEGS WOULD CARRY HIM. I was totally PANIC STRICKEN – he was fast heading towards my hand … – I lowered my hand quickly and dropped him inside the sink, but I knew that I had to ‘dis-connect’ myself from his webby string … so dragged my finger over the edge of the sink, as if wiping it off. I instantly went to reach for the lock, but all the time kept my eye on the spider … and that monster did what spiders can’t normally do. HE CLIMBED THE SIDE OF THAT DAM*ED SINK!!! By the time I’d managed to unlock the door and Mr. Cobs launched himself through it … that spider had one huge, chunky leg already waggling and waving over the top edge of the sink.

Mr. Cobs had hold of me by the shoulders, shaking me slightly, asking me what was wrong. Why was I screaming?

I pointed to the sink… I watched and saw his shoulders drop. I could feel his relief.

“Get it out. Please. Get it out!” He pulled a couple of sheets off the loo roll and caught the spider within the folds of it. “PLEASE MAKE SURE YOU ACTUALLY HAVE IT! PLEEEEASE MAKE SURE!”

He did. He had. He took it outside to the big bin and deposited it in there.

I. . . . HATE. . . . SPIDERS.

And they know it. And now … they’re having a laugh by tormenting me.

I . . . HATE . . . SPIDERS.

“Hello God, it’s me again. I wanted to have a word with you about spiders.”

The moral of this tale is … don’t let spiders know that you don’t like them, because if you do, they’ll torment the living snot out of you.

And these things, beautiful readers, are some of the lessons life has taught me this week.

Has life taught you anything this week? If so … do share … if only to take my mind off spiders, because all the way through typing this to share it with you, I’ve been itching, scratching, fidgeting and feeling like every bit of ticklish hair touching my body, caused by the ceiling fan spinning around, isn’t a hair but actually a cluster of spiders all popped round to assassinate me. [shudder]