As any fiction writer will tell you, procrastination is a great thing. Anything to avoid sitting down and really having to Think. This morning’s great excuse is Martha. She’s a spider who is sitting in the bath.

Had it not been for watching the last five minutes of Autumnwatch last night she may well not have been a reason to procrastinate at all. After all, I didn’t want to run a bath. And I’m not one of these people who can’t bear to be in the same room as one of the hairy beasts. I actually quite like spiders. Apart, that is, from a certain anonymous specimen in Corsica that bit me zealously and wholeheartedly when I picked it up by mistake (it was hidden in a duster).  And Autumnwatch reminded me that spiders like to use flannels to climb out of baths and sinks.

I watch Martha do a couple of circuits of the bottom of the bath reminiscent of Hoy at the Olympic velodrome and begin to feel sorry for her. The flannels on the edge of the bath are way out of reach. So I take a hand towel and drape it over, ensuring that one end of it is well into the bottom. Martha is not impressed and does a further half circuit away to the other side. However, when I have finished cleaning my teeth, I look down and see no sign of her. Hooray, I think, she has escaped. I pick up the towel to replace it on the rail to see that Martha has not escaped at all but is hiding beneath it, and we are now back to square one. I position the towel again, and go to switch on the laptop.

When I return I gingerly pick up the towel, examine both sides, the inside of the bath, the bathroom floor, but no sign of Martha. I give the towel an extra little shake. No. She’s gone. Thank goodness. Now I can get on with my writing…perhaps I should just check that she hasn’t climbed into my underwear drawer…