The herringbone pattern has featured in a few of my columns of late, most notably in relation to patterns on stones used in Yorkshire moorland cottages, and as a decoration used by clock and watchmakers. But it also features somewhere I was definitely not expecting, and I challenge you to guess where. The answer lies further down this column.

Twice in the past week I have had to call on the services of my son Jasper to rescue me from being attacked by that most venomous and deadly of creatures, the house spider. OK, they are not venomous (well, not to us) and they are not deadly (again, not to us) but I don’t know if it is a result of global warming or what, but I am convinced they are getting bigger. Every year I come across them, they seem to be more monstrous than the year before.

I know by the way they scurry across the floor that they are more scared of me than I am of them. I am after all a gazillion times bigger, and I am not too worried if they remain at a respectable distance. I just don’t like the idea of them being ON me.

Jasper has no such qualms, which is why I summon him whenever I’m confronted by the not so wee beasties. Earlier this week, one was waiting at the top of the sitting room curtains, poised to pounce on me when I walked past, and the next night, another was skulking around my bedroom floor, no doubt waiting for me to get into bed so it could creep over my face while I was asleep.

Jasper’s way of dealing with them makes me shudder. He simply catches them, usually in his naked hand, then lets them wander around his arm a bit and has a good look at them while I panic in the corner. Finally he deposits them outside. It is utterly bonkers, isn’t it? Not the letting them go, but the letting them scuttle around his arm. The curtain one was quite high up, so he used his mobile phone as an aid, and the spider crawled on top of it. He then thought it was hilarious to wave it at me before putting it safely outside. For the record, we never kill spiders in our house because, as everyone knows, that will make it rain (But judging by our summers, there must be plenty of people who do!).

Anyway, back to herringbone – any ideas yet?

According to the Natural History Museum, a houses spider is: ‘A large spider with a brown cephalothorax (the fused head and thorax) and a tan-coloured abdomen that often has a characteristic ‘herringbone’ pattern. Six species of this group are commonly found in homes, and you may often find them in the bath or dashing across the living room floor.’ Although I did know what a house spider looked like, I had not heard a herringbone pattern mentioned before, and thus it provides a comforting (albeit slightly tenuous) link to my previous columns.

As the seasonal temperature cools, male house spiders leave their webs to look for mates, wandering into our homes through open windows, under doors, and down chimneys, making we unsuspecting inhabitants flip out when they pop out.

If you are not too squeamish to get close to one, you will be able to see its herringbone pattern quite clearly (or maybe you’d prefer to just look a picture up on the internet). Several other species seem to enjoy cohabiting with humans, including the daddy long legs, the lace web, the zebra jumping spider, the scary-sounding false widow spider, and the brilliantly named missing sector orb web spider. False widows look like their deadlier namesakes but are harmless (although they can give a small bite). The missing sector orb web spider is so called because of the way it weaves its web. From a distance, it looks like many traditional spiral webs that you find in your garden (called the ‘orb’ style in the trade), but with a couple of sections missing. When building its web, this spider will turn back every time it gets to that sector, so it never fills it in.

So next time you find a web with a big gap, you’ll know why!

Do you have opinions, memories or ideas to share with me? Contact me via my webpage at countrymansdaughter.com, or email gazette@gazetteherald.co.uk