The owner of a bridal boutique says finding an enormous spider lurking in her window display was the 'final straw' in deciding to close the shop for good. Belinda Blanshard was changing the front window display when she discovered the 'hand-sized' beast before she fled to the street.
The 47-year-old had arrived for a normal day of work on Friday August 26 at Love Lace Bridal Boutique on Bramhall Lane, Davenport, before being too 'frightened' by the creepy crawly to carry on. The mum-of-four enlisted the help of a confused stranger on the street to evict the uninvited guest via a glass into some nearby bushes.
Belinda says the encounter has given her sleepless nights and she now shakes down each dress before any appointment she has. She also says it was the 'final straw' in deciding the close the store permanently.
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"We've had the shop for just over five years, it's mainly personal reasons that we're closing," Belinda, from Stockport, said. "This spider appearing makes me think this was the right time, it was the final straw. Done and dusted, I'm now leaving. We've got a massive closing down sale this month.
"Whoever gets the shop after us can deal with all the monsters down in the cellar. I have no idea what type of spider it was. I've been told it looks like a giant house spider, I can't even bear to look at the pictures so I don't know myself.
"I've been keeping one eye open in the shop ever since. I've not slept since, I'm not joking. I just keep thinking 'if they're in the shop, they're going to be everywhere'.
"I don't even like going down to the cellar in the shop, now I'm aware that there are spiders down there. It's making my skin crawl going down there to get a dress. I've been shaking every dress for each appointment this week."
She added: "I was shaking, it was massive. I've never seen a spider that big in my life - it was huge. It was the size of my hand. I just thought 'I can't do a whole day of appointments with that in here'. I just had fears of it being in the dresses."
Belinda joked to her business partner that the arachnid was so big it could have worn one of the dresses itself and that it could have been heard walking if it were on the floor. "I didn't give it permission to be in my shop and it certainly didn't have an appointment," she said.
The man she asked to banish the spider from the shop even said "bloody hell, that's massive," she said.
"I wanted it as far away from the shop as possible, I didn't want it knocking on the door trying to get back in. That glass went straight in the bin afterwards, I wasn't going to be drinking out of it."
This wasn't Belinda's first run in with a frighteningly big spider. "A couple of years ago, I'd gone into the shop and there was one sitting on the veil of a dress looking at me. I had to get a guy to come and help me then too," she said.
"I've no idea how this latest spider got into the shop but I'd like to think it was a one-off and it's never going to happen again. But I'm pretty sure it came from the cellar.
"I had a few brides who came in that day saying 'is it still here?' once I told them. I said 'no, I wouldn't be here if it still was. I'd have cancelled the appointments'."
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