Yellow and pink feathers sneeze around my face on the end of a dangly wooden pole. As I teeter on the chair in my socks, I can reach the ceiling corner cobwebs and twist them into a candy-floss chaos. Spider scuttles, stumbles and descends on an abseiling wire.

When I’m done, I don’t want to touch that sticky mass. Clicking the grimy dustpan brush out of dustpan’s grip, and swatting the duster clean into the fish-smelling kitchen bin. Picking the last remnants off the bristles by hand. Job done.

I feel bad about the spiders, and yet also ruthless. Sometimes, the long-extended pipe of vacuum cleaner pops them away. Do they live on in the hoover bag? I guess that’s barely conscious, thoughtless cruelty from me. If told as a human story, rather than arachnid, it would be news of horror and murderous violence.

Visiting friends at the weekend – even the solitary weevil on their kitchen drainer was a being to be rescued and cherished. What a contrasting world view. And yet, the taste of bacon is fresh on my tongue, and was on theirs too then. Just a confusion of inconsistent caring.