After breakfast, but before coffee, I went up the garden to see whether we have a couple of folding chairs in the kind of shed/cupboard thing that's on level 3.  

Our garden is cut into a steep hill.  If you count our downstairs as level 0 then my studio is on level 1 and it opens out onto some steps up to level 2 (which I also call the "first lawn" even though, embarrassingly, it's astroturf) then there's the "upper lawn" on level 3 which also has a plastic cupboardy thing in which I hoped there were some camping chairs.  Not totally relevant to this story, but for completeness, there's some controversy (in my mind, nobody else has ever given this any thought, ever) over whether the next two levels are 4 and 5 or 3.5 and 4.  The next one up from 3 is much shallower and just has the greenhouse on it and the base of the sturdy steps up to the decking which is the edge of our domain and where I was thinking of sitting this morning, at least for as long as the heat is bearable.  

God, I'm glad I've cleared that up, it's been bothering me for months that nobody else knows about the numbering system.  Yes, I have a wife and family and friends who have visited since we moved in, but none of them can be trusted with this kind of information the way you can.

Anyway.  The main plot point here takes place on level 2 (about which there is no controversy except whether the hyperbole of calling it the "upper lawn" is sufficiently obvious – you haven't seen it, but you can probably imagine me saying it, pompously.)

What I didn't know when I climbed the stairs from the back door to the astroturf was that there was a mahoooosive spiders web hanging between (I think) the Narnia lamp post (don't ask, we didn't put it there but we haven't got rid of it yet either) and one of the olive trees.  I think that's where it was but when I walked through it, my chatty brain kind of shut down to focus on the involuntary squawking and flapping that the rest of my body was doing.  The next thing that I thought was I hope nobody saw or heard that, while at the same time secretly hoping that everybody saw and heard me.  The second thing was poscessing that what's stuck to my glasses and my face is probably the guts of some insects that have been caught earlier and already nibbled on by the spider.  But I also kept moving and noticing more stuff in my hair and beard and then realise that my skin is super sensitive and I'm imagining that every tickle and twitch is actually some half-dead creature that I'd missed in my first round of slapping and wiping my head.  Has something gone down my t-shirt?  Did anything go up my nose?

It's only when I'm up the steps and finding that indeed we do not have any camping chairs in the cupboardy thing that I'm laughing at myself and realising how impossible it would be to recreate that scene authentically on stage or screen.  I mean I could have a go, and you'd all laugh too, but part of that laughter would be because of the tiny gap between my prowess as an actor and the reality of seeing a grown man squawking and flapping at the web that has just ensnared him.