I am almost too tired to write this blog, but now that we have Internet back on, I feel I have no more excuses.  I have spent today brushing away cobwebs in a determined battle to reclaim the house from the spiders that naturally cluster all over our wooden home.  We (that’s me and my affianced) have moved into a house that we and the bank have taken a punt on in the hope that we can turn it into our own.  I naively thought that would take a lick of paint here, a bit of hard work there, but overall, a feat that any could manage with the right tools.  

Sure, I saw the cobwebs.  But I didn’t know.  

They.  Are.  Everywhere.

Outside, inside, underneath, above, in-between.  After almost four hours of hacking at them with my broom and my dustpan brush, I began to see Frodo wrapped in their savage white sacs, and I took to them as Sam might have done.  That’s when I thought it might be time for a little break.

The spiders have won round one.  I am exhausted, and a little scared of what they might plan overnight. Tomorrow I face the underside of the balcony.  It’s a dark place, apart from the glowing white of the webs spun before I was born.

But I will not be beaten.  In the morning I will arm myself more cunningly.  I will go to the supermarket and buy some chemical death warrant for them all.  I will spray them and then I will attack their houses.  They can scurry back to the bush, approx. one metre from the house.  There they will lurk, biding their time, thinking that the newness of house owning will wear off, and I will hang up my broom and gloves.

I can see their webs going up as I type, looping themselves from branch to branch in my front garden.  Be forewarned, ye beasts of the air: my next trip will be to the hardware store, my next purchase, an axe.