Monday, 7:30am and I’m semi-awake under the shower. Two, three minutes into that process of transferring life and consciousness to the body via hot water, I glance down.

I yelp one of those violent, strangled yelps that’s pure fight/flight reaction.

A spider the size of a dog is clawing at the side of the bath, scrabbling to escape the steady trickle of water headed to the black hole plug hole.

Its body is artificially enlarged by tiny water droplets, but even so, it’s a giant spider and it’s inches from my leg.

Fleet-footed, Mrs Chewing Pixels bursts into the bathroom, also still half-asleep. “What? What? What?”

I’m standing in the middle of the floor now, naked and dripping, pointing and gawping lik a Tex Avery creation.

“Oh,” she says, peering over the side of the bath.

“From the way you screamed I thought maybe it was a dwarf with a knife.”