Unwelcome Visitor

...and so I was just about to bend forward to clean my teeth when I noticed this unwelcome visitor! I don't know who got the bigger shock, me or him/her.

I'll assume this is a female, though I've no idea why I should think that. No doubt someone more enlightened will be kind enough to add a comment. Anyway, while she strutted about trying to decide which was her best side, I snuck off to pick up the camera.

I made my setting well away from the the subject, and with my eyes shut (because, had she moved towards me, I'd have jumped and dropped the camera) I held the camera at arms length, held my breath and pressed the shutter. She was a star. She never moved. What a poser!

What I don't understand is why I always encounter one of these intruders, in the bath or the wash basin, when my husband is away. And how do they get there? From the tap? I can't believe they walk the length of the pipes. My water comes from a borehole 200 feet underground. And at the other end, down the plughole, is the cess-pit, and that's a long walk, even for a creature with eight legs, through a pipe underneath the lawn - country plumbing.

It's only in a photograph that I can appreciate the beautiful markings on her back. In real life I daren't look closely enough.

Well, she's gone now. Husband came home and picked her up and put her out the window. But she's probably got a family somewhere all hoping to get in on the next photo-shoot.

PS. Perfectly harmless British house spider so I've always been told. Anyone know its proper name?