While arriving home from a long day in Essex, watching Bath City (which I’ll come onto later), we were greeted by someone waiting for us outside our front door. Admittedly, I didn’t notice them until I had gone into the house and turned the light on. Our guest was far from welcome and gave me a huge fright! A huge, black spider was crawling up our front door. I did what any man would do in this situation – scream for his wife. Claire screamed back, asking where “the jar” was, so we could capture it. Whenever “the jar” comes out in our house, you know there’s a spider about. I don’t remember its original purpose, but it is big enough to hold a large quantity of spaghetti, so hopefully sufficient to contain any spider that resides in this country.

Frozen to my spot, I was unable to be of much help, so Claire ran past the spider – something she was scared of doing and understandably so – before collecting the jar from the bathroom. During her time upstairs, the spider had begun to reach the top of our door and was millimetres away from entering our house! At this point, I panicked and slammed the door shut, as hard as I could. The neighbours must have wondered what on earth was going on, with slamming doors and screams coming from our house. The problem with me locking the spider outside was that Claire’s car door was left open, as in her haste to assist with capturing the beast, had dropped everything else she was doing. She told me to open up the door, to which I refused. I knew what was behind the door – a very big, very pissed off and probably very hungry spider. Claire was getting angry at this point, which, on hindsight I can see why. Had her car been stolen, it would have resulted in a very embarrassing telephone call to the insurance company, given the reason behind the car doors being open and exposed to thieves. She opened the front door herself. The spider was still there – quite remarkable, really, considering the force of which I had slammed the door shut. If our house had been built with a chimney, it would almost certainly of fallen off. That was one strong spider! She caught it in a jar, which caused it to go berserk, before letting it go a safe distance up our street and ensuring it ran off in the opposite direction of the house.

I would, at this point, say “all’s well, that ends well”, except this morning, while I was in bed, I heard Claire scream from downstairs. While she was sat on our sofa, enjoying a cup of tea, another spider had crawled onto her neck. Tea was spilt in the process and the jar was used again. This spider was considerably smaller than the one last night. In fact, the one last night would have eaten today’s like I eat Wotsits.

I did some research into what type of spider the one we saw last night was. To my horror, I learnt it was a Tube Web Spider (Google it, as I’m not putting its photo on here!). It is not native to this country, but is now becoming increasingly common. While its bite won’t cause you any serious harm, it is said to feel like a deep injection. If that spider had bitten me, I would have probably died of the shock… after soiling myself.

As I mentioned at the start of this blog, we were returning from watching Bath City. We had travelled to Essex to see them take on Harlow Town in the FA Cup. I groaned to myself when the draw was made – I hate going to Essex – mainly because we never win there! Yesterday was no exception. Harlow play two divisions below Bath City, when it comes to league football. However, so did East Thurrock, who we played last year, and they beat us 7-1.

I thought things wouldn’t be too bad, when we took the lead early on. I was surprised. Not just because we were winning in Essex, but because it was on one of those 3G pitches. Predictably, City sat back on their lead, as I have seen them do so many times in the past, along with Leeds United and the England national team. This resulted in Harlow equalising and then taking the lead themselves. Thinking to myself that it was just another one of those days, we managed to score and draw the game, which means we’re all off to Twerton Park on Tuesday night for a replay… and there was me, looking forward to watching Karl Pilkington’s new series that evening.

The more blogworthy events of Saturday’s trip was not the game itself, but the vile following of fans that Harlow have associated with them. I know it isn’t all of them, but it was a large contingent. Throughout the game all I could hear was “fuck” and “wanker”. I’m not against swearing (I occasionally swear, especially when playing GoldenEye against John and Simon) but to hear it constantly, directed towards us and our players in an aggressive manner was not nice at all – especially from a self-proclaimed “family club”. Then there was, what they would probably call “epic bantz” directed at us. Firstly “shit town in Bristol” (how original), followed by an awful joke of “somebody should pull the plug on you, Bath”. One of them embaressed themselves when another attempt at an insult failed terribly – “you have shit taps, Bath”. I won’t mention the drum their supporters beat throughout the match – long term readers of this blog will already know my views on those things. Something I haven’t seen before is a portable air raid siren, which they set off at random times during the game.  At first I thought it was only reserved for goals, which, while annoying, would be understandable. However, to sound it off when the ball goes out for a throw-in is bizarre. Who uses an air raid siren these days, anyway? I know going to Essex is like stepping back in time to the 1940’s, but we don’t need the sounds from World War 2, while at a football match.

A section of the home support