Country Lite: Spiders and Other Nastiness

Here am I with not much to say.
How can this be! Has the Princess of Verbiage (West Country version) really run out of fuel? Perhaps I should just re-hash an old one. Surely no-one would notice?
Kitty Corrigan will be nodding in self-satisfaction. After all, “The three we chose, after much debate, all have the potential to write a column centred on rural life without being repetitive.”
Well, correction, still not much to say but of a sudden without the words to say it. I rather hope that this trimming of the soul is a temporary thing but some stuffing has been knocked out of the Mad Milla Typing Machine, not to mention my peepers which are strained rotten by all the obsessive computer work over recent months.

In any case, thank goodness Ms Smith in her wisdom – by omission – judged my work
“not to stand out above all the rest” since, “Writing a magazine column is very different from blogging, and the blogs were judged not only on writing style and structure but also on the subject matter and how well it related to CL. The shortlisted blogs are the ones that we felt had the most potential to be turned into a regular column.”
Nice to clear that one up. Thanks, Suse.
Phewee.
Could all have turned quite nasty. I would have dried and died and how deeply unpleasing that would have been.
Kinda kicking myself, though, for not sticking to the one subject, a hen, and talked about it over 5 very short paras.
Or, if wisdom were mine, I could have mentioned a mole catcher: oh, we’d have laughed, how exceeding quaint! or a horse licking a window: how very country, what larks!
Fool!
Victory could have been mine.
Mwah, hah, ha.

You get the point.

So what goes in the day-to-day lives of one of the spurned?

Now that I can admit not giving a flying *uck about chickens, I can at least concentrate with a vaguely happy heart on the true business of the day – gossip if you dare!! (that’s enough, Ed, the silly green duck will be set on me!) – which is my bathroom.
Chaps, it is a triumph. Spanking new white bits and pieces. An enormous splendour of simple oak, being the basin unit. Groovy, but discrete, shiny chrome shower. Travertine marble smooth on the walls, a running line of the juiciest little glass tiles – all seconds, so crazed and millefleury in places and, importantly, cheapish – and good enough to make me Squeal.
True, it’s all taken a month or so, and still the lights aren’t in or the paint splashed on but it is all so so near and I can at least stand in the doorway and sigh big fat happy sighs.

A thumping big spider was trespassing away in the bath this morning, threatened to send the sullied lot in the skip pronto.
Shudder.
Blimey, what a turn I was given when shimmying in for a quick matutinal admiration session to confront the big black beast o’too many legs. That’ll larn me to get me about my chores quicker, rather than mooning around in dazed smuggery. Down to the cereal boxes, girl, do not linger over glass tiles, they will prove your downfall.

Spiders, I just cannot abide, which basically rules out travel in 9/10ths of the world: a teeny tiny Cinderella Carbon Footprint is mine through mimsy.
The darting scuttle, the sullen stand-off stance when they sense the air suddenly saturated with adrenaline (mine). The ones in our house all but wear sunglasses to express their disdain at my fear.
I had thought that September was their month. I imagined that that was the deal and had tried to come to terms with it. Not in this house, though, due to those pesky fields out the back, where an open season is declared from February to November and they saunter about at will. Only the bleakest, most bone-sapping months are spider-free, which is prompting me to relinquish my Seasonal Adjustment Disorder ways in favour of promoting winter as suddenly a Very Good Thing.

Darn it, all twittery and scared again. Should have stuck to moles. Aaah, how sweet! Squeal!