Spider Quest

This morning: I recall we have a shower, so I stand under it, foaming up shampoo and showery scrub things. There are three brewing bins to climb around, the floor is dank, and the room smells faintly of the long ago rat that died in the roof space. 

Once the shower is cranked the water abundantly trickles out at a temperature somewhere above warm and below hot. Outside I sit with my paper, pens, coffee, sunglasses. My hair can dry in the sun.

The arrival of Girl and Baby forms an impromptu picnic. Baby grubs in the mud, digging up some stones with my dinner fork. She has her first knee scuff. We try to keep a sunhat on her.

This afternoon: Through the car window I observe the underside of the overhang of the garage roof, while Mr wanders in to the garage shop to pay for a bag of coal. The white plastic grooves above are ornate with darkly clogged web lines. In shades of dirty white, pockets of spider eggs inhabit the ninety degrees of angle between plastic and concrete. Further down, between the squares of the lockable cage where the log bags stack, pale downy web strands float in a puffy little breeze. I look, until the coal is loaded up and we drive away, but don’t actually witness one spider.

This evening: Tomorrow’s hot water is being made by the lit fire and the back boiler. Today’s washing is brought in from the line, hung to finish in the airing cupboard. There is no spider in there either. Maybe they are out in the last of the sun, topping up on vitamin D to make stronger exoskeletons. If it works like that, for spiders. There are no arachnids in the porch, or the front room, or the bedrooms, or the bathrooms. Find two, finally, fingernail sized, in the kitchen window, next to three spider egg-pouches.