Facing my Fear

As the nights start drawing in and the seasons shift once more, my house seems to become the local Air B&B for many uninvited but (mostly) welcome guests. Over the 17 years I’ve lived here, a whole menagerie of creatures have chosen to call my house their home for the colder months. We have had shrews in our shoes, a pheasant called Brian in the bathroom, endless mice, a few rats in the roof and a partridge on the sofa… But there is one creature that I have had to work very hard to learn to live along side, and it’s probably one of the smallest of them all… or sometimes not, in this 1700’s cottage! They lurk in dark corners, I find them in the washing basket, in the bathroom, on the blooming stairs in the middle of the night, and once, I even found one in my bed… I am of course talking about our 8-legged arachnid friends, spiders! Now you might be wondering how on earth Dylan’s daughter is scared of anything, let alone something so small as a spider. I grew up with moths in the fridge…