I don't like spiders. It's the way they move / scuttle, their eight legs flying about at once enabling them to go in any direction. And they can jump. Eee!

My Mum used to grab spiders quickly in a tissue, then find the nearest door / window and throw them outside. My Dad would try to do that too, but they would always escape him and run into a crevice. Sometimes we have vacuumed them up, but then there's always the fear that they might bide their time before crawling back out the bag, up the tube, out the end and run free once more.

Once, at University, I went to leave my room and saw a huge, HUGE spider above the door. I knew, 100%, if I went underneath it it would launch itself at my head, I would scream and flail wildly and then fall down the stairs and DIE. There was nothing to be done. I rang my housemate and told her she had to come back from campus and save me. When she arrived I had fashioned a spider catcher from a plastic beaker tied to the end of a feather duster with giftwrap ribbons. She ran in the door and then looked up. 'Ohmygod' she said, realising the extent of our predicament. 'It's huge.' She ducked out the door again and came back with the vacuum. 'Never mind your beaker, let's suck it up!' she said. So I plugged in the vaccuum and extended the handle as far as I could and turned it on. The spider didn't move. Even when the vacuum hose was directly over it's body on full power, it clung on. 'Ok, I said. Back to the beaker idea.'

I stood on a chair and pressed the beaker quickly over the spider. It flinched. Then slowly, I wiggled the beaker down the wall, keeping the spider inside at all times. It reached the skirting board. A sticky spot. My friend leaned a book against the wall so we could slide down it to the carpet. There it was, on the carpet, in the beaker. 'Right, she said. Let's squash it with the broom.' She ran downstairs and came back with the broom, over which she had tied a teatowel. 'That's so that the bottom of the broom surface is flat and it doesn't run into the bristles for safety,' she explained. So, on three, I lifted the beaker the spider made a dash we both screeeeeeamed and she stabbed it with the broom. Then she pressed down hard on the broom and we waited. One minute later she lifted the broom tentatively from the carpet. The spider made another dash. We screeeeeeeamed again and she stabbed at it once more. 'It can't be killed!' she said. 'We have to crush it!' I reasoned, and we took it in turns to stand on the broom head and rock backwards and forwards, trying to crush the beast. 'I'll lift the broom up,' I said, 'and you look to see if it's dead.' 'No!' she said, it'll leap at me.' We pondered, and eventually I left her standing on the broom and went to the kitchen.

I came back with transparent cling film, which I laid on the carpet. We made a quick lift-and-shift and stamped the broom down on the cling film. Then I wrapped the clingfilm around the broom head, encasing the teatowel and spider. Then we wrapped sticky tape around the handle, securing the clingfilm and our prey. 'Ok,' I said, 'It's over.' We carried the broom downstairs, out the patio doors to the tiny garden. I held the broom upside down and we looked at the black clingfilmed blob. Then it moved. We screeeeeamed and flung the broom away, ran in the house and locked the door.

Our other housemate came back later. 'What's happened?!' she asked, 'You both look like someone's died!' 'There was a spider.' I said. 'We killed it.' 'Ok...' she said. 'You can look at it. It's in the broom. Outside.' Later that night she said 'You know guys, I didn't want to say anything but... there was nothing under the clingfilm.'

Eeeeeee!!