We videoed his death

Friday night was Man Night. This is a frequent (if not regular) feature of Nelmes World. V is an honorary man, and looks unnervingly convincing in a beard, but this was an unusually restrained affair with no false beards and no pipe smoking. Humpty and the Punisher (which sounds like a film title) were on good form and I managed a late night without getting roaring drunk.

I had to drag myself out of the Humphrey’s spare room at the cracko to meet Julia, Ruth and Kevin near Stantonbury track. Kevin and his Garmin watch took us on a 20mile MK odyssey. Half the time I wasn’t even sure what direction we were heading in. More importantly however I felt really strong throughout most of it. I could certainly have pushed on an extra 5 or 10 seconds per mile faster if necessary. I was pleased to discover that my foot held up ok under the pressure and that jelly babies worked well as a fuel source for the 10-20mile segment.

After a judicious helping of sleep and carbohydrates tackling my increasingly overgrown garden seemed like a good idea and, with some help, I got it into much better shape. For the first time I have started to move plants while they are at their peak. This seems to be a much better way of sculpting the look of the thing.

While tidying up the garden I saw the most disturbing thing. An Orb Web Garden Spider was sitting in the middle of her web wrapping some prey when a smaller spider approached the edge of the web. I recognised that this was a male of the same species. He tapped on the web and edged closer. She moved towards him and he towards her.

When they came close together he began to tap and stroke her forelimbs. He clearly recognised the peril of his position (lady spiders being notoriously grumpy) and scurried back to his corner on several occasions. Finally, they came to what looked like a fond embrace. Unfortunately she had other idea and sank her fangs into him. In a moment he was bound in silk and hanging like a ham from her web. It was horrible to watch. I actually videoed the poor lad’s death. I’ll post it if I can get Quicktime file to upload.