Saturday 8 February 2014

Aged Hoodie & Spiders


One of the quirks of living in a centuries old cottage, is the amount of spiders who share themselves liberally around the place. So much so that I spend a lot of time looking at their regular web sites (no pun intended) Mrs H used to have a pet spider in the bathroom called 'Itsy' which I fear may have been inadvertently sucked up by the dyson !


All of our rooms have wooden ceilings. Our front room, which was the old kitchen until I relocated that function to the rear of the cottage; it has a hipped ceiling which is donkey's years old. Twenty-three years ago when I first moved in it sagged a little, so I stiffened it up with a few equally spaced small beams which gave it adequate support.



This is our turf (peat block) basket which our small cat Squeaky frequently adopts as a sleeping nest. She is very fortunate in that I always check the basket before tipping in a bucket of turf.


I acquired this colourful hoodie for five Euros yesterday in a Birr charity shop, it had been sitting there for several weeks and is brand new. I can only presume that it is too loud for the average person in this area. It is light in weight and keeps me warm which to my mind is the sole purpose of clothes.

25 comments:

  1. Good price, and no spiders on your head.

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    1. Thank you Joanne. I don't mind spiders actually or their webs. What I rely don't like is the accumulation of dust that gathers on them. I recall having volunteered to clean a church tower in England where the cobwebs were as thick as ropes and I removed six large black bin bags of debris - ugh.

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    2. We use to remove the spiders and their webs till one day I noticed a scorpion caught in a spider's web. Decided as long as they were working they could stay.

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    3. Many thanks for your comment Janet.
      Thankfully the only Scorpions we get are the ones with that as their birth sign :)

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  2. I don't mind spiders, as they get rid of the truly annoying insects. We were pretty neglectful last summer, though, until we noticed spider sacs in one corner of the blinds seldom used window. Thank goodness we caught them before they did any bursting out...

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    1. Thanks for your comment Anne- Marie and yes you have to limit their movements.

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  3. not too loud for my town, as you know :-D
    I also like my hoodies, in fact I'm wearing one right now!

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    1. Hello Kath good to hear from you. Actually it was Mrs H who first spotted it and said to me that there is a bit of hippie gear about your size in the Chernobly Charity Shop ! She was right and it is a comfortable fit too, all I need is the afghan coat to go with it he'he'

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  4. Looks good and warm, excellently modelled as well.

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    1. Thank you Susan and you are very perceptive because I was a photographers model at the age of about 18 months :-)

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  5. I love your hoodie, Mel! What fun! I don't think it's too loud at all and it suits your eclectic nature :-) Spiders? If you live on an old barge, I suppose it's much like a centuries old cottage. They go with the territory. I have colonies of them nesting under the hatch-boards. Your little cat really is little, isn't she?

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  6. Thank you for the compliment Val :-) yes of all my clothing this is definitely the best so far. As for spiders I prefer them, more than I do than the dreadful mice -ugh.

    Squeaky was most definitely 'the runt of the litter'. She was born in our back garden, in a hedge. On a sunny day, whilst she was playing with her siblings; I picked her up brought her indoors and here she has stayed. She very rarely ventures outside for any length of time and when she did it cost her, her tail ! I tell people who don't know her history that she is a rare breed, an Irish Stumpy as opposed to a Manx Stumpy.

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  7. I let the spiders roam in our house. Think St Felix is the patron saint for spiders? Apparently the spiders spun a big web and hid him from the Romans. Spiders are great for keeping the horrible fly insects away. We also get swallows in the cowshed every year. They fly to South Africa and back every year. All because their staple diet is insects.

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    1. Thank you for your contribution Dave. This is the first I have ever heard of a St. Felix. In fact I have only known two people called by that name, which I associate with cats :-)
      We too have Swallows that nest in our sheds and last year for the first time they nested in the porch roof space of Mrs H's studio which delighted her enormously and when it is getting near the time of their departure they congregate on the electricity cables opposite our cottage, I counted over seventy last year, which was the most I had ever seen on those wires.

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  8. Excellent hoddie, i hope it keeps the wind from your ears! I have at least two, one is orange and the other yellow and they are great when walking the dog-also very helpful if I fell off the cliffs along the coastal path as both colours could easily be seen by rescuers.
    Big house spiders and me don't get on at all. I do my very best to catch them and put them outside but I really don't like them in the house. We used to have a spider called Boris who lived in the garage, he was there for years and then there was Son of Boris.
    Outside we do share the garden, greenhouse and outbuildings with many false black widow spiders as they love the warmth here in Devon. They don't really frighten me as they are not fast movers, but you have to be very careful not to get a bite from one as it can be very painful and even result in hospitalisation.
    One thought that has just occurred to me is that any large house spider would be well camouflaged on your new hoodie!

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    1. Oh many thanks for your comments Suzie. I don't mind spiders, it is only there webs that I remove from time to time and your last comment made me smile :-)

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  9. Not overtly keen on spiders but young Ollie loves them & shows no fear in picking them up, although they are not so keen on his grabbing little hands!
    Your hoodie looks fabulously warm & you have always suited bright clothes, very handsome x

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    1. Thanking you for your perceptiveness and enlightened intelligence Snapdragon!

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  10. I love the hoodie, very bright and cheerful! Spiders eat all sorts of other beaties so they count as good guys in my book. Spiders don't worry me half as much as the rats we hear running up and down the decks at night, perhaps I could borrow your cat? xxx

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  11. Hello Fran good to hear from you. Our black cat named Magic is an excellent ratter. You will have to come over for him because he is too large to go in a postal tube.

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  12. You carry that hoodie off splendidly!
    People around this village are freaked out by spiders, I never can figure out why as they do so much good.

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    1. Thank you for your discernment Gwen :-)

      Mrs H says that for her it's the number of legs that Spiders have that she does not like. I think people are fearful that they might catch some dreadful disease from them, considering the dark places that they inhabit.

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  13. I used to have a pet spider named Webster!

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