IT’S amazing what fear can make you do. This week it pushed me to commit murder with a shower head.

The grizzly scene unfolded at my Giggleswick home where I was aided and abetted by a plug.

Before anyone starts dialling 999 I must point out that the victim was a spider - a tarantula actually - although to some of you I know it will still seema cruel act. I like to reason in these situations that I am suffering from diminished responsibility, overtaken by fear. And in this case there was an element of self defence too as boy, did this beast put up a fight.

It all started when I was in the bathroom brushing my teeth.

Fellow arachnophobes will know that sometimes you get a sixth sense about a ‘presence’ and this was one of those times. In the bath was a brown specimen, its eight thick legs spanning more than two inches.

My stomach lurched and I froze for several minutes wondering who would move first and in what direction.

It did, racing up the rear of the bath. It was so large I could almost hear its footsteps. There was nothing for it. I grabbed for the shower head from the opposite end of the bath and turned the water on.

It may surprise you to know that although I live with a plumber my power shower has been broken for some months now and instead of ‘power rain’ or ‘soft jet’ the blast of water you get could remove graffiti.

A lesser arachnid would have been flattened instantly, but not this one. I chased it around the bath with the water, drenching the walls, soaking myself. It danced here and there until eventually the plug hole loomed. But it was too big to be washed away and nor did it seem to be drowning in the flood of water beating down on its worryingly large body.

Steam was filling the room.

I grabbed the plug and lowered it by its chain over the plughole where it sat in place over my victim. I began bashing it with the shower head, water spraying around the room.

I didn’t dare to raise the plug, thinking if the spider had evaded drowning and GBH it might at least suffocate, so avoided the room for the rest of the day before getting the plumber to fish the beast out and flush away the evidence.

The following day my friend described how she had been sleeping at her aunt’s Ingleton house and woken in the night to feel a spider crawling over her face. In sheer panic she reached up and grabbed it, throwing it towards the other side of the room.

She swears down that she heard a small thud as it hit the wall.

She also says September is the peak month for spider activity, so, my two-legged friends, beware.