There's a spider in the old barn

This morning I went into the garage to put the recycling bin away. The garage is an outbuilding, a barn, well over 100 years old made of local stone. I find it fascinating. Unfortunately when I moved the ordinary bin out of the way there was a huge, giant, enormous, big, enormous (did I say enormous?), big spider on the lid. I think that it was a Cardinal spider.

The French Wikipedia is more dramatic as it gives the maximum length of the spider, including legs, as up to 13 cm which is just over 5 inches! The English Wiki talks of body length only. Mine wasn’t that big. It’s fast too; speeds recorded up to 3.5 Km/h = 2.17 mph. As it happens it is harmless to humans (excepting heart attack when you see one up close).

In bad weather I hang the washing out in the garage – I really hope that the spider does not like fabric conditioner. This is what I wrote about the barn a few years ago: The barn

The tunnels mentioned in the story were built many hundreds of years ago and were a way of moving protestants to safety during the many religious conflicts.

Evacuation

I went shopping a week or so ago.  It was pretty busy in the supermarket when the alarm started.  A voice came over the loud speaker asking us to leave calmly and quietly.  The message was repeated in English too.  So we all walked to the exit calmly and quietly.  I found somewhere to leave my trolly/cart, that I would remember, but most people were still pushing their shopping towards the exit. 

After a few seconds everyone was coming back again.  Then there was an announcement to say that the alert was a computer error.  See how exciting life can be?