Freddie's Family - the never ending story....

Well, I sprayed half a can of Paral on the places where the spiders were. The wind blew it back into my face, and after I had stopped choking thanks to the speedy use of my asthma spray, I looked outside and saw some cheerful spiders jumping up and down and thumbing their noses at me. What a waste of my good fly spray! After watching the merry antics of F's family for another 24 hours, I asked the girls on the scrapbooking forum over at DC if anyone had a hot tip for me. Sue B told me to try hair spray. As most hair sprays really smell awful, I thought that it was worth trying, even if it only stiffened the hairs on their little legs....Decided to do the evil deed this morning before I left for work. So I sneaked onto the balcony, armed with a pump bottle of super-hold hair lacquer from A*** (guaranteed to fix the most extravagant punky hair styles) and sprayed, under the motto, *Let us spray*. Well, it smelled even worse than the fly spray, but as there was no wind, it arrived at its destination in enemy headquarters. Then, cowardly as I am, I left them to their fate and went to work. I got home again at about 7.30 this evening. No spiders. No bungee jumping in front of my window. OMG, what have I done?? I still have a compulsive urge to look out of the window and see if they are there, but it's all quiet outside.
Anyone got a good tip for cleaning super-hold hairspray off the window??

Revenge on eight legs - Freddie's family is mobbing me!!

After a couple of cold, blustery and wet weeks, we are now enjoying warm winds from the south. And in case you think I'm talking about farting, I'm not! On the one hand, mild weather is good, because it keeps the heating bills down. On the other hand, it has evidently encouraged Freddie's family to hold a wake for him and Frieda. At the moment, 3 (yes, THREE) of them are dangling from the roof of the balcony. As usual, they are directly next to where I am sitting at my computer. And they are hypnotising me to keep looking at them. I can feel their little spidery eyes watching me and see those hairy legs quivering, ready to bugger off to the top if I go outside to splat them. I have my new, yellow spider-splatter at the ready. I banged on the window with it. They never moved an inch. I banged again and they never budged. I KNOW they must be making fun of me, telling me that I can't get rid of them. I opened the door to the balcony and zoooooooooom! They spun off to the top where I couldn't reach them. Before I had time to sit down again, they were dangling in position at my eye-level, reminding me that I murdered two of their family. But I will not be threatened. Tomorrow I will advance to chemical warfare. The dreaded Paral spray is ready on the window ledge. Watch out spiders, the final countdown has begun. High Noon is on its way.

Freddie's Family - the saga continues

Are you superstitious? Do you think that Friday the thirteenth is an unlucky day? Well, I don't. But it was a bad day for Frieda. Freddie's big sister (or cousin? or was she his wife?) You will have noticed by now that I am writing in the past tense. She may have been a good spider, even though she had hairy legs. But as far as I am concerned, the only good spider is a dead spider. Today I had to work till seven this evening. Came home, sat at the computer, and there she was, jumping up and down outside my window. It was too much for me after such a long day, so - splat! Now she is with Freddie. But she had the honour to have been splatted with my new, yellow fly swatter. But now I really must clean the windows .

Freddie's relations?

Did I say yesterday, *Tomorrow will be another day?* Well, after murdering poor Freddie yesterday evening, just looked out of the window, and there's another one bungee jumping out there at exactly the same spot!! It's a bit bigger than Freddie was, perhaps it's his big sister come to revenge him. I'll give her till tomorrow to spin-off peacefully. When not, she will be meeting Freddie again sooner than she thinks in the big white spider home above the sky. I'm just wondering how many other relations they have?

The ancient mariner and bungee jumping

Yesterday evening I really was a busy bee. Made 10 (ten!!) post-it note holders, chatted to a friend on DC, baked a batch of shortbread, talked to my friend on the phone and switched on the dishwasher, wanted to get everything cleared away for once. Then I went back into the kitchen to get something and got wet feet -
*Water, water, every where,
And all the boards did shrink ;
Water, water, every where,
Nor any drop to drink.*
Well, actually there was still water in the tap , and the (laminated) boards were not shrinking but puffing up, and the water was trickling like a silver stream out of the dish-washer - eeek! Panic, help, why me again??? Switched the machine off and grabbed all the towels I could find to mop up the water, took the skirting off the kitchen cupboards and mopped underneath, moved the dresser and mopped there, too, reached under the fridge as far as I could get and removed the water there. After an hour the kitchen was more or less dry, the space under and behind all my cupboards was clean - yuk, where did all that dirt come from? and I had enough washing to fill two machines. Thank goodness that the washing machine is in the cellar and can't leak all over my kitchen. Anyway, as we should think positive, I want to say that my kitchen is now gleaming like it never did before, and the laminated flooring does not look so boring now that the edges are puffing up, looks really different. *Always look on the bright side of life....* Then I went into the living room and sat at my computer, where I saw something moving on my left side, outside the balcony window. It was Freddie. Freddie is a spider who has been bungee jumping outside my window for a week now, and always there where I sit and can see it out of the corner of my eye. I felt like it was observing me. I don't like spiders at the best of times, and this was NOT the best of the times after Noah's flood in my kitchen. Well I did warn Freddie. I banged on the window and told him to spin off, but he didn't. As I said, it had been a hard evening for me, and that after a long day at work. And then it happened. Sorry all of you who like spiders. I don't. So I shot out and splat! That was the end of Freddie - *Always look on the bright side of death....* But now I have to clean the windows, too. Oh well, tomorrow is another day!

More witches seen by Gina!

Thanks Gina for another lovely photo, which has been somewhat altered in Photoshop.It has beeen great fun making the halloween LOs, perhaps a return to the pleasures of childhood, where it was so nice to be scared of something that one knew were not really real....

Gina's witches

Gina, AKA Mrs TSV, met these witches while on holiday in Cornwall. She sent me some pics via her magic wand, and here they are - enjoy, and thanks a lot, Gina!