Author Afloat: Spiders

The story so far: a freelance writer and editor for 20+ years, I jumped ship in April 2015 from bricks and mortar to live on a historic narrowboat – currently permanently moored in a busy marina in greenest Staffordshire.

Tuesday 24 June 2015, 18 degrees, bright sunshine

When I moved into the boat my chap said there were no spiders. I knew that in fib terms this was as chunky as some the black bodies of the larger British arachnids.

‘If I’d said there were spiders you wouldn’t have moved in,’ he said when I brought it up this week. Even though I knew it was untrue, yet I still found it comforting that my knight of the waterways insisted there were none. (I’ve been squeamish about spiders since an experience at night in a long-drop toilet in the Himalayas when my torch beam inadvertently lit up the roof.)

Activities this week have illuminated the scale of our in-boat spider issue though, and I’m not talking about the teeny money spiders that parachute down to eye level and say hello while I’m boiling the kettle. Removing tongue and groove panels in our living room for an electricity repair revealed a decade of dead beasties and old lace webs. Vac’ing those out made our environment physically lighter.

But I won’t rest easy in my bed until we’ve removed all the old ‘black spider spaghetti’ as I call it, or ‘dark web’ – Miss Havisham-style webs left over from yesteryear. When in the noughties the boat was lovingly restored, its interior was hand-crafted in wood leaving an abundance of hidey-holes perfect for spiders. Naturally, a dude living on his own never saw these spaces (I hasten to add that my chap always kept everything that’s visible spotless.)

Talking about beds, our bedroom has been largely spider-free – surprising because the ceiling is currently a mix of plank, broken plank and tarp to stop the rain coming in. In other words, it is close to the outside where the spiders huddle keen to clamber in (in their droves).

My chap is currently reading me The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe in bed.  We’re reviving reading to each other as a thing adults do too, and somehow – yes, I know it’s shocking – I missed out on all the Narnia books as a kid. (The last book he read to me in bed was Norman Mailer’s American Dream, which is less of a fairytale.)

Anyway, he’d just read the immortal line: ‘“I think it’s a nice beaver,” said Lucy’, when he noticed me staring at the ceiling. It took him a few seconds to adjust. A big ’un (spider not beaver) was standing upside down on the white plastic part of the light fixture and keeping very still – I’ve never thought keeping very still to be a good form of camouflage.

My chap made noises that I took to suggest we’d deal with the spider interloper once he’d finished his 10 pages. I shook my head. Obviously I wasn’t going to enjoy the story with that thing staring down. With a sigh my chap got out of bed and fetched the eco bug-box.

‘I don’t think it’s big enough,’ I said about the box. I’ve had lots of experience of using the box.

He fetched a newspaper instead. My chap rarely demises a spider, only when the number of spiders enjoying his space rent-free really gets him down.

‘Sorry, it’s you or my woman,’ he said, approaching it. I hid in the bathroom so I didn’t have to watch. I was waiting for the line, ‘Evolve, ****** ******!’ which he normally says after the kill.

‘It’s very much alive,’ he said, walking the length of the boat to throw it out of the front door.

‘Won’t it come right back in?’

‘Would you come straight back in if you’d been attacked by something 200 times your size?’

Climbing into bed, he picked up the book again, just as I spotted another spider on the ceiling.

‘Ah um, there’s one just there,’ I ventured, pointing to the corner of the room near his head. This time it was a spindly one with a tiny body – most of the boat spiders look like this and they don’t freak me out too much. Still, it’s a tiny bedroom.

He got out of bed again, fetched the bug box, scooped it safely inside and put it in the kitchen: ‘I’ll leave you overnight to think about your actions,’ he said to the spider (the bug box has air holes). He hopped back into bed, sighed and started reading.

And then, you guessed it. I saw a third spider on the wall at the end of the bed.  It was as if all the animals had come out to listen, like in Bambi. This one was trying to climb up and slipping down. He was a bigger spindly variety, one of the fast movers.

My chap had to empty the  previous occupant out of the box to fit the new one, who received the same verbals.

By the time he got back to the book, my chap was growling.

‘What you don’t realise,’ I said in a contrite tone, ‘is that you’re my hero. I love you more for removing the spiders in my life.’ Particularly the big ones, I was thinking, like the humdinger that jumped out of the sink when I plunged my hands in the washing up bowl the other day.

I don’t know how I got so wimpy. My mum is super practical and unfazed by spiders, removing them in a paper tissue with ease, and the fear thing is supposed to be passed down the female line.

My chap started reading again. We continued on until Azlan arrived. It got me thinking about the idea of getting a (big) cat. That might just work.

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