Posted by sean on July 7, 2020 at 7:44 am in Spiders with No Comments


Most of the stories I post on my blog are about me, which, unsurprisingly, is why the website is called Sean’s Stories.

In a change to the norm, today I’ll be telling a tale from my mum – mainly because it is as funny as it is horrific.

A few weeks ago, my mum woke up to a weird sensation inside her ear. Her slight worry turned to concern when she started to hear what can only be described as crawling. The reason why this is such an accurate description is because something was crawling inside her ear!

Her natural reaction was to poke around inside her ear and investigate. This gave her the sound and feeling of a bug being crushed to death within her skull. As with the sound of crawling, this was because she had just crushed a bug to death.

I believe the realisation into what had occurred, kicked in when she discovered tiny legs. It sounds like she reacted in a surprisingly calm manner. Many people would have smashed their head violently against a wall, or cut off the invaded ear like Vincent van Gogh. Perhaps old Vinnie found a creepy crawly in his lug!

My mother’s solution to extracting the remains of the late bug, was to flush it out of her ear using oil – there’s nothing like a dignified burial! Before you wonder if this is safe, she didn’t dash to the local car garage and pour Castrol into the side of her head. Nor did she ask the local chippy for any chip fat.

Apparently, the best way to deal with a severe ear blockage is to use a small amount of olive oil. Italians are said to swear by it. I bet they do! Something along the lines of “why the bloody hell did I just pour this stuff into my ear?”.

I don’t think it matters whether or not you have Extra Virgin, or just the normal stuff. It’s probably not a good idea to use Garlic-Infused olive oil, although it’ll ward off vampires – not to mention family, friends and colleagues – for months to come.

By the way, I feel that I must warn you all, as I am in no way medically trained, DON’T TRY THIS AT HOME! I have waited over 16 years to write that on my blog!

The plan to flood my mum’s ear with oil worked brilliantly, although did result in a disturbing discovery. The bug that had taken up residence in her ear, turned out to be none other than my old nemesis, the spider!

Anyone who is of the belief that people inherit phobias from their parents can now finally have their stupid theory crushed like a bug…

I hate spiders. You only have to read the hundreds of blog posts on the matter to know that.

My dad, on the other hand, is very indifferent towards them. He wouldn’t sit in an armchair by the fireplace, spider on his lap, gently stroking it as if you would a cat. Neither would he hunt down and murder one in cold blood, simply for running across his living room floor.

Luckily for mum – given her recent encounter – she is even more relaxed around these eight-legged beasts. While you or I* would place any found in our house back outside, my mum is happy to live alongside them, as if they were tenants.

* When I say “I”, I mean Claire. You wouldn’t find me going anywhere near a spider. If my wife was out of the house and I encountered one, I would flee.

In fact ‘tenants’ would not be an unfair description, considering the size of the monsters she resides alongside. She lives in a rather old building, with lots of nooks and crannies – a perfect lair for creatures fit for a Tolkien novel.

Throughout September, she will frequently send me photos of spiders the size of dining plates which she has discovered in her home, as if trying to reciprocate my kindness for all the cute pictures of Roman.

Most people her age who want an animal companion, will get themselves a cat or a rescue dog. Not my mother. Arachnids rule.

Cuddly!

Is it fair to say that whole ear invasion was as a result of her hospitality towards anything with an exoskeleton? Possibly.

Was it fair to wind her up something rotten about her ordeal? Of course not. Although suggesting that eggs may have been laid within her ear canal, or webs spun to catch flies, was rather funny.

Posted by sean on March 16, 2020 at 9:45 am in Roman, Spiders with No Comments


It is said that people learn fears. I didn’t believe that it was possible to catch fears, although it appears you can!

Anyone who knows me well or has read this blog for any length of time, will know that I suffer from a phobia of spiders.

I don’t know when this fear began. It was certainly many years before I started blogging in 2004. Incidentally, for those interested, my spider-related blogs stretch back 16 years!

I believe that I may have passed on my phobia, or at least some of it, onto Claire. Don’t get me wrong, my wife has never been a fan of creepy crawlies. Before leaving home to live with me, she would always call her dad, should she spot a ghastly, eight-legged creature.

Since we have lived together, all spider catching duties have been carried out by her. There is more chance of me entering and winning a marathon, than putting a glass over a house spider and sliding an old magazine underneath.

At the weekend, Claire had a close encounter with a spider. A little too close. She was cleaning out Roman’s cage. It was during this weekly chore that she let out a blood curdling scream of terror.

If Wes Craven is ever in need of a screamer for his next scary film, he need look no further than my wife.

I should be fair to Claire. If I was to have the same meeting with a spider as she did, I would have screamed too. Except mine would be louder and higher pitched.

Anyway, where was I? Oh yes…

Claire let out a scream loud enough to awaken the dead. A horrible spider, with big, black, hairy legs was on her arm. As well as screeching, she flicked the creature off her body. Thankfully it missed me. It isn’t worth thinking about what would have happened had it landed on my lap!

I can fully sympathise with my wife’s reaction. During my early-teens, the same thing happened to me. I had just returned into the house from outside – coincidentally, after feeding my pet rabbit, Snowy. I felt something on my left hand, took a look, only to see one of those huge house spiders casually resting on me.

It showed absolutely no concern. Perfect proof, if it were needed, that we humans are more scared of spiders than they are of us.

LITTLE BASTARD.

Like Claire, I slapped the spider, sending it flying off my hand – not knowing or caring where it ended up. I am starting to wonder if this childhood experience is what triggered my arachnophobia.

As with my ordeal, Claire’s crawling tormentor also became lost and has not been seen since.

You may be interested to know that during my better hall’s moment of terror, our rabbit Roman was darting up and down his run in alarm. Once Claire’s screaming had ceased and the situation defused, Romy sat at the opposite side of his run, glaring at his human mummy, as if to say “how dare you make all that noise!”

This us rather cheeky by Roman. It is very likely that the spider that so viciously attacked my wife, had been residing in our bunny’s cage.

Roman clearly hadn’t read the lease agreement on his accommodation. If he did, he would have seen the section on keeping pets and livestock in his living quarters…

Section 15.2.1b
Not to keep any spider or other animal, arachnid or insect whatsoever in the premises that may cause a nuisance to your human parents or occupier of the other parts of the building.

Roman is a naughty boy. The nature of his punishment is yet to be confirmed.

HOW ABOUT A RELOCATION, ROMAN?

Posted by sean on February 13, 2020 at 9:57 am in Spiders with No Comments


People say that you should never tempt fate, and this is something that I may have inadvertently done, in writing Wednesday’s blog, about the girl with the spider hoody.

Yesterday afternoon, I was lying in bed,  following an enjoyable few hours spent downstairs with Claire and Roman.

Back in bed, my feet were getting hot, so Claire offered to take my socks off. Thank goodness she did, otherwise what was about to happen could have been a hell of a lot worse…

It was when my wife removed the duvet in order to get to my feet, that she screamed and jumped backwards, away from the bed.

It was clear to me what had scared her, and it wasn’t my smelly socks…

In the past, Claire has spotted what she believed to be spiders, only for her to realise that she had simply seen a bits of fluff.

However, this was no bit of fluff. This was a real life, running, biting, fire breathing spider. OK, I didn’t see it breathing fire, but that’s not to say that it couldn’t.

Small details aside, there was a large spider in bed with me, right next to my leg. A SPIDER IN FUCKING BED WITH ME!

I won’t apologise for swearing. This is my #MeToo moment. A spider was in bed with me! Nothing gave it the right to be there.

My natural survival instincts kicked in and I did what any grown man who values his life would do. I shrieked like a little girl.

When somebody’s life is in danger, it is said that they react with a ‘fight or fight’ response. Prior to my scooter accident and being confined to bed, I would have done just that.

Fight. That would involve me destroying the spider with a tin of bug killer. Either unleashing chemical warfare, by spraying it with poison, or literally hitting the beast with the tin itself, until it became a crushed mess.

“Bring it on, Spidey!”

The flight response would be a safer choice, which would simply be a case of running away and hoping that the spider would have died of natural causes by bedtime, when I would require the bed again.

With my current health situation, neither ‘fight’ or ‘flight’ were an option. I only have ‘shriek or screech’, both of which I immediately put into action.

All the commotion must surely have been heard by our neighbour and possibly even by people in the street. Given how I was screaming like I was being brutally murdered, I am surprised nobody phoned the police.

Come to think of it, what if I was being murdered? What if Leatherface, from The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, turned up in my cul-de-sac and started hunting down Leeds fans? A fat lot of good my neighbours would be!

Downstairs, Roman had certainly heard our screams. Claire informed me that he was looking rather scared. I would like to think it was concern for his human parents, but doubt that very much.

Have you noticed that there has never been a TV show about a hero rabbit? Lassie – a dog. Flipper – dolphin. Skippy – kangaroo. There’s a reason for this…

Given the amount of love we show Roman, it’s a shame he didn’t help. Upon hearing our screams, he could have leapt from his run, ran up the stairs, jumped onto our bed and using his back legs, stamped on the spider. Honestly – I have more chance of being saved by a Giant African Land Snail.

Anyway, I digress…

When Claire ran out of the bedroom, in search of a glass to capture the unwanted guest, I seriously considered rolling out of bed to escape. I was aware that this would have resulted in more broken bones, but this was a case of desperate times, desperate measures and all of that.

I can picture the look of amusement on the faces of everyone in the hospital, when I would tell them how I had seriously injured myself because of a spider!

No doubt my story would be told by consultants at fancy dinner parties for years to come. A junior doctor would mention me in his autobiography. I would even end up trending on social media.

“Broken bones in Sideroom K. Found a spider in his bed, which frightened him away!”

Thankfully, I didn’t have to roll onto the bedroom floor. My heroic wife captured the bed monster, using an empty tube of sweets. The spider was then placed in the back garden – a far more appropriate location, although I am sure the arachnid would disagree.

Hopefully there will be no more spider blogs for some time.

As a result of yesterday’s incident, I have done something that I don’t normally do. I have put my foot down.

I have insisted that we keep a glass in the bedroom, in case of any further invasions.

Yesterday just showed how important it is to always be prepared for an attack. There was no glass or other means of capturing scary creatures upstairs. Quite frankly, it is lucky nobody was killed.

An important lesson learned.

Posted by sean on February 12, 2020 at 9:24 am in Have I Got News For You, Spiders with No Comments


In today’s blog, I am going to tell you of one of the most horrific and frightening stories, I have ever had the displeasure of reading.

No, it isn’t Boris Johnson’s 2020 Manifesto. Although that is terrifying, this tale is far scarier!

Take a look at the photo below. What do you see? A woman in a hoody. A little overkill on the eye makeup, perhaps; but nothing to get perturbed by.

Take a closer observation…

Have you spotted it? Hiding in her hood…

It’s the stuff of nightmares!

The story tells how this woman took a selfie, after a heavy night out and feeling rather hungover, before sending it to her girlfriends.

Amazingly, the woman didn’t notice the Spawn of Hades, casually chilling out next to her head. It must have been one major drinking session!

While the selfie-taker’s eyes were too affected by her intoxication, her friends who received the photo were not so blind drunk.

Unsurprisingly, her mates were mortified by the sight that befell them – and I’m not referring to the eyeshadow!

Thinking that the end was nigh for their friend, the girls replied with messages containing understandable alarm and concern.

The story did not say what happened next, apart from how the selfie-girl was not troubled by her friends’ discovery, which quite frankly is remarkable.

I honestly couldn’t tell you how I would react if that had been me. Once the realisation had kicked in that I was not dreaming, and there really was a spider the size of a dinner plate within an inch of my ear, then the result would probably be one of these catastrophic outcomes…

  • Pour a Jerrycan of petrol over myself and light a match.
  • Find the nearest mallet and repeatedly hammer my head until the spider dies.
  • Feed myself to a Great White Shark, under the agreement that it also eats the spider for dessert.
  • Slowly but calmly, remove the hoody, before carefully collecting the spider under a glass and releasing it into the back garden… haha! Yeah, right!

Posted by sean on October 27, 2019 at 6:21 pm in Spiders, Work Activities with No Comments


The clocks have now gone back, I had a good night’s sleep and have now settled down to blog the second installment of my Friday Frights, while Claire watches Liverpool play Spurs.

Where did we finish off last night? Oh yes, I had cleaned Neil Warnock and nursed him back to full, loud health. No idea what I am on about? Read this.

Let’s forget about Neil Warnock for this post and move onto the second scare I had at work. A scare, which I like to call, a ‘Friday Fright’.

Unlike dropping an ear bud onto a dirty bathroom floor, this ‘FF’ really was a moment of terror!

There couldn’t have been more than fifteen minutes before the end of the day, and indeed the end of the week, when I saw it…

I had not seen it before. At first I thought it was a bit of string or a mark on the wall. It could have even been a bit of dirt – the IT Department isn’t the cleanest of locations.

I then realised, to my horror, what the mark on the wall really was, and the reason why I had not seen it before. The reason why I had not noticed the marking until Friday afternoon, was because it hadn’t been there before. Not there because the thing on the wall had legs – eight to be exact – and had previously not walked/crawled into my workspace territory.

There was no way I was going to deal with the eight-legged freak – anybody who knows me, or reads this blog will be fully aware of that! I purposely give spiders a wide berth. My two colleagues share my hate of the things, so there was no chance of me calling upon them for aid. Even if I was a spider lover, catching the thing would involve climbing up onto the table. Asking me to perform such a feat would be a wasted effort – you may as well suggest I conquer Everest, such is the impossible nature of the challenge.

A helpful colleague from another area of the office appeared. Clearly hearing my cowardly wimpers, they had made their way to my workspace, to see if they could help rescue me from the cause of my peril – I.e. catch the spider.

I was warned that it may not be possible to catch the spider, as it had positioned itself in the safety of a gap in the wall. What’s worse, is if the monster was disturbed and knocked from the wall, it could fall onto my desk or the floor! Horror of horrors!

Now thankfully BANNED by the British Board of Film Classification.

If the spider is hiding on the wall, I know where it is – despite hating the fucking thing. If it becomes lost under a pile of papers on my desk, or on the floor, I would forever be on edge, waiting to be attacked, as a spider runs up my arm or trouser leg.

It was decided that the safest thing for everyone involved, sadly including the spider, was to leave it well alone and hope it dies, or decides to go back to where it came from – how very Brexit!

Ever wondered why the European Union don’t seem bothered about the UK leaving?

I was happy with this. My positivity was certainly helped by the fact that I was going home for the weekend and I was able to forget about the scary creature for a couple of days.

Those couple of days are now over. I am due back at my desk in the morning. The spider will be waiting for me. Gulp…

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