Homely

Before moving to our current house, we rented a place in Stratford-upon-Avon for a year or so. It was fairly new, all white walls, all solid floors, blinds but no curtains, a decorative chimney. It was well built - no gaps in the timber, no cracks in the walls, draught-proof doors and windows. After a while, it dawned on us that the slightly sci-fi atmosphere of living there was down to the absence of any visible fauna inside. We are accustomed to flies, beetles, ants, butterflies, moths, bees, wasps, woodlice, aphids, earwigs, lacewings, silverfish and, of course, spiders of many kinds. Not all of these were always warmly welcomed, but their total absence left us feeling slightly detached, as if we had entered a world where we did not entirely fit and were not entirely welcome. No such concerns here, where some of the above have been a little over-keen to establish permanent cohabitation.

Spiders get a particularly bad press. The scheming cleric in the latest His Dark Materials has a spider-daemon crawling across his shoulder. Anthony Sher's famous portrayal of Richard III brought Shakespeare's Tudor propaganda of the 'bottled spider' fully to life as the embodiment of evil intent. Tolkein's spider Shelob is a guardian of malignant Mordor

We are mildly phobic of large, black and hairy, but tolerate these guys until they start spinning too many webs or become too numerous, at which point a general eviction takes place. I think this one might be carrying an egg-sack, which is also a trigger for relocation. Some people call them daddy-long legs, but that name is also applied to harvestman spiders and crane flies. I learned from the Internet that they are also called cellar spiders, which is nice, but not a restriction they respect

On the whole, though, we are much happier that other creatures find our home healthy enough to live in