Pete Cashmore: Home sweet home, curse of spiders & drink is just the tonic

Having lived most of my adult life in London and spent most of that period coming back to Wolverhampton every chance I got, I think we can safely say that, for this chap, there is no place like home. I love the city, the people, the culture and, above all, the pies.

One thing I would say about being a Wulfrunian, though, is that people do have a tendency to mock the accent. They just can't resist it. If you told 100 people that you come from Wolverhampton, then – a conservative estimate here – maybe 75 of them won't be able to resist the temptation to say 'WULLVERRAMPTUN!' back at you like it's the most original and hilarious response ever uttered, rather than a stock response that makes them look like a bit of a poltroon.

Even so, I would be a great big fibsy if I denied that my accent didn't carry with it a certain amount of baggage. By which I mean, people think that I, and we as a people, are a bit thick.

Ours is the British version of the redneck accent of the type spoken by Cletus the Slack-Jawed Yokel from The Simpsons. I was reminded of just how thick a Midlands accent can make one sound last week, when West Midlands Ambulance released a recording of what may well be the stupidest human being who ever lived.

You may have heard it – it features a young lady who has called for an ambulance because she has been shopping all day and her feet hurt. Yes, she called an ambulance for THAT.

What makes the snippet all the more gobsmacking is that Mrs Hurtyfeet doesn't want an ambulance to take her to A&E to have her throbbing plates checked up. Oh no. She just wants it to take her home. "They're burning!" she tells the operator. "I can't get home in this condition!"

Showing a level of patience and understanding that quite frankly would have evaded me after about 10 seconds, the operator explains to her that they can't send an ambulance to give her a lift home. This was information that just does not seem to compute with the caller, if indeed she possesses the faculty to compute anything. Eventually, though, she realises that she is being condemned to the hell of, you know, actually getting home under her own steam, and signs off with the words, "I don't think that's good enough." She doesn't know how right she is.

The spiders are coming! Yes, it's that time of the year when we are grimly warned that an INVASION of the BIGGEST HOUSE SPIDERS EVER is about to befall us, as the mercury starts to dip in our thermometers (does anybody even use mercury thermometers any more?) and spiders start seeking refuge indoors.

If this story seems familiar, it's because newspapers like to repeat it every year to fill up space, and every year the spiders are always more fearsome than in previous years. This year's version are being billed as 'cannibal spiders' because they eat their own kind, which sounds suitably terrifying, except of course that pretty much all spiders do this. It's part and parcel of spider life, especially after the act of spider nookie. And nookie is what it's all about – one of the reasons why the horrid critters are heading indoors is because it's mating season and the chap spiders are hoping to get a minimum of one leg over. Now, none of these need concern you if you're not actually scared of spiders. If, however, you're like me and anything larger than a 50p piece reduces you to a shrieking wreck, Spider Season can be a bit of a problem.

Lesser newspapers than this fine journal have been quick to come up with all manner of ways in which you can safeguard your home against these marauding arachnids. But let's face it, they're going to get in unless you hermetically seal your entire home with Clingfilm.

If I was going to be unkind, I would suggest that if you really want to use a newspaper to sort out your autumn spider problem, then just roll one up and use it to send that cannibal spider up to the great terrarium* in the sky.

Of course, there are those who suggest that spiders are much more scared of you, than you are of them. I can categorically state that this is not true. If the spiders were that scared of me, they wouldn't be coming anywhere near my flat in the first place.

* The spider equivalent of an aquarium, apparently.

Of the four stories that I covered in last week's debut column, the one that provoked the most response by far was that of 'Woman' beer. The new light ale was derided as being sexist for apparently being marketed at women mainly on the grounds that it isn't very strong. Somehow, the idea of it being a weak beer for strong women didn't seem to cut much ice. . .

A fair few people hit me up on Twitter, not least the shady character known only as 'The Wench' who runs the excellent blackcountrypub.com beer blog, to make it known that they'd be having none of this dodgy foreign ale – literally 'duff beer' – thanks very much.

So I thought I'd end on a happy pub-related story this time to appease my enraged readers, and bring you the news that a pub in Galway, Ireland, have delighted locals and the wider world by unveiling their new cocktail – a Buckfast mojito.

Now, as I understand it, Buckfast is a somewhat fortified tonic wine generally beloved of men of leisure, so it's not exactly the drink you would expect to become an ingredient in a version of the cocktail seen very much as a symbol of modern swish living. And yet the McGettigan's drinkery have apparently pulled it off and it's, by all accounts, delicious.

It rather reminds me of Wolverhampton University's own in-house cocktail, now presumably discontinued, known to those in the know as 'Damage' – there's a prize for the first person who can tell me the ingredients of that delightful concoction. Cheers!