Are you a traditional safety pin and paper poppy wearer or a stick-on poppy fan?

Personally, I prefer the traditional paper poppy pinned to the lapel. I find the sticky ones lose their stickiness after a couple of years.

The traditional poppy can plucked from the top shelf, dusted down, and worn time and time again without any significant signs of deterioration. Mine dates back to 1978 and was handed down to me by my father. I wear it with pride.

My son Bradley bought his first poppy the other day and he too wears it with pride.

"Looks good son," I said. "How much did you pay for it?"

"A pound," he said.

"Well done," I said. "It all goes to a good cause."

He looked at me and smiled. "Yes I know," he said. "It helps the soldiers."

Bless him. He then added: "How many guns will they be able to buy with the money?"

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Old homes come with their own problems as we've found since moving into one this year.

There's the dodgy boiler (insert sexist joke of choice here), the leaky walls and … spiders.

The first two are fine; it's the spiders that take some getting used to.

As a fellow creature of this planet we should warm to the spider and yet, what with its heart-stopping crazy running, penchant for spinning webs out of its backside (stop me if I'm being too technical) and the eight, count 'em, EIGHT legs, well, clearly, it's the spawn of the devil.

As the man of the house it is my duty to deal with the little blighters.

As a pacifist, I choose to use the trusty cup and sturdy card method of entrapment. When I say trusty, I mean you can trust this method to induce screams and panic as the spider evades the cup and card and leaps for my jugular. And you can trust me to set the spider free, albeit minus a leg or two (did I mention they have eight legs? Shudder!).

"Sorted the spider problem," my wife informed me as I arrived home last week. "Conkers," she said. "They hate them."

At last, she'd finally lost it. Dotted around the house were conkers.

They were in ever corner of the room, over little holes on our floorboards, against the skirting boards and in the cupboard under the stairs.

She reckoned she'd heard it somewhere and thought she'd try it out. I said I'd give it a few days before calling the men in the white coats.

A week later and still no sign of spiders. Conkers, it appears, are to spiders what Kryptonite is to Superman, or garlic to vampires. Told you they were the devil's spawn.

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Thanks once again to my wife for presenting me with another one of her word-mangling Michelle-isms this week.

During one of her daily attacks on my character (a woman's got to have a hobby you know. Man-baiting's hers. She runs her own night class) she accused me of failing to be a risk-taker.

"Crikey, I married you didn't I?" was my quick-as-a-flash retort (next time I might say it out loud).

During her tirade she blasted: "You ought to stick you head above the precipice a bit more often."

I would, but I don't have a ladder long enough.