Must I dust?

This last week, Rotterdam has been as dusty as a mid-west cattle town and without the excuse of any four footed bovines (note I did say four-footed). Every day I've come home to my barge to find it cloaked in a fine yellow layer as if has been sprayed with even handed care over every surface. Every day, I have dutifully washed it down with my long hose attached to the dompelpomp that I lower into the now dust and seed-covered harbour. For it's that time too; the one when all the seed pods fly off the trees and play in the dust devils, chivying each other up the street before landing on the surface of the water. Washing it all off makes no difference, though; not to the dust and seed pods, which simply settle again overnight; but also not to the spiders, whose webs I cannot avoid spraying when I'm on a mission against the demon dust.

Seed pods in the harbour. They form a huge island
and it drifts from one side to the other

Talking of spiders, have you ever noticed that their webs are almost unbelievably strong? You can point a high pressure jet of water at them and they won't budge. It's amazing.

All boat dwellers suffer from invasions of arachnids every year and if the boat has much wood on it, it's even worse. I have to say it just goes with the boating territory. But it wouldn't be so bad if they didn't spin quite so many webs in quite such inconvenient places. Some mornings I get up and have to fight my way through their overnight production to reach my loo.

And that's another thing; spiders are unbelievably industrious, aren't they? Outside, they spin webs between my barge and the one moored next to me (how they do that without falling into the water is beyond me - they must have invisible trapeze swings), over the steering wheel and between the engine room and the back cabin (roef). And they don't just do this once a week; they do it every single day. No matter how often you clear them away, they're busy rebuilding their BWW (Boat Wide Web) before you've even put the broom back inside.

My problem is that I grew up with a full quota of my mother's maxims, one of which was 'if you wish to live and thrive, let a spider run alive.' Ho hum. This presents me with a daily dilemma and I've probably consigned myself to a life of toil and destitution as I cannot move across my boat, inside or out, without destroying some hard working spider's home. I remain alive, but I fear the thriving bit will escape me.

But going back to the dust, I've heard varying reports about its provenance: it's rape seed pollen from Germany, it's just pollen in the air, or it's a Sahara sand cloud. I honestly don't know and can't say, but what I do know is there's more of it than ever before - like everything else these days. A friend of mine said we are just having more weather and I agree. But why is that? There are plenty who talk about climate change, but why should that also mean we get more pollen, more dust and just more of everything else? If it means we'll have more bees, butterflies and birds, I won't mind, but if we get more mozzies, spiders and bugs, I'll be having very stern words with the Boss...

Never mind, though. For now, I shall just keep hosing down my barge with dusty water from the dusty harbour and wait for the next extreme something from somewhere exotic to come our way.

I must admit that for once, I wouldn't mind if it was a bit of extremely clean rain!