i used to work in the office of a company that sold imported timbers. Once i was leaving for the day when one of the drivers said "Stef, you've got a spider on you" i thought he was winding me up, but when i looked down there was indeed an enormous black hairy spider on the back of my leg. i started jumping up and down screaming "get it off get it off!" while all the men laughed at me. Eventually one of them took pity and got rid of the disgusting thing. Seriously, that was no British spider! dunno what it was but i've never seen anything else like it. *shudder*
once, when i was about 10, i made my mum get out of bed when she was realy sick to get rid of a spider from my bedroom. turns out she had pnumonea. i felt kind of bad about that....