Arwyn, Ailse and Duncan are little Scottish terriers terrors. Their parents are both fairly ardent Scottish patriots, and I expect that in the devolution referendum, they didn't just vote yes yes, it was yes, YES YES YES!!!! (with clenched fists raised triumphantly.)

According to them, one of the cute little traditions of many Scottish nationalist families is to spit on England when they cross the border heading south. This quaint folk custom had been solemnly taught to Arwyn's mother, my friend Fiona, by her parents when she too was a child. Fiona's father is a very senior lawyer, and I tried to imagine him duly winding down the car window and having a good gob on England, and wondered what his legal colleagues would say. On the other hand, perhaps his Scottish compatriots all did exactly the same thing. A gang of them heading south on a train for a convention or something would be worth seeing: bewigged, be-silked or black and red stripes suited, heads out of the window, and, altogether now, just like a rugby club on tour, and...splat!

Perhaps there is some olde Englishe customme of spitting on Scottish soil when heading northwards, but no-one has bothered to initiate me into it?

This tradition was not just described to me, but also demonstrated. I found it unfortunate. I happened to be sitting between Ailsa and the window. Duncan was on my lap. Being little at the time and consequently short on lung power, he too missed the open window. I got spat on from two sides.

My fastidious friend Kate, luckily for her jammed at the other end of the car, averted her eyes in horror and sympathy. Afterwards it was agreed that at least while we sassanachs were present, the spitting would be symbolic, but for whatever reasons, it turned out that the next time Kate and I went visiting, we brought a separate car!

Arwyn, Ailsa and Duncan have got a pet called Denis, a long-haired Siberian hamster, otherwise known as a black and white rat.

In central London, you are never more than ten feet from a rat. In my cellar, I often fear it is a lot closer than that. So, I'm not particularly fond of rats.

Staying in a holiday cottage with the kids and the rat raised the awful question of which was worst, and who was going to survive. I made it quite clear that if they let their pet near me I would not be responsible for any instinctive reactions such as kicking it, stabbing it with the poker, or batting it into the open fire. My baleful looks at the long-haired Siberian hamster - even from a distance - did not go unnoticed.

When we did a treasure hunt for them, I slipped one clue under the rat's cage (at arm's length), while the clue which led there was just a picture of Denis, headed "The Evil One". We could tell when they discovered this one - a hundred yards away down the beach - from the sudden screams of horror. Three panic-stricken children came stampeding back into the house, trampling me aside with shrieks of "She's killed Denis" and "What have you done to our pet?"

Actually the thought of quietly disposing of Denis had crossed my mind, but I was unfortunately closely watched when left near him in his cage.

My friend Eamonn once had to crash in a friend's living room, where the pet rat's box also lived. Eamonn was pretty dubious about his room-mate, but was assured that the rat slept like a teenager all night long and wouldn't go near him anyway, so he settled down and was soon snoring. In the middle of the night, he woke up and thought something had touched his head. When he got up, there was nothing there. The rat was lying in its box, so he went back to sleep. Once again, he woke with a start, sure that he had been touched. But yet again, the rat was in its box and all was right with the world. He put it down to nerves, and went back to sleep.

The third time he was woken, he whipped the light on, and was just in time to see the rat's bum disappearing back over the side of its box. When he peered in on it, it was lying on its side actually feigning sleep.

Another friend of a friend also had as a pet long-haired Siberian hamster. This one was schizophrenic and thought it was a cat. It had the disgusting habit of pouncing on woodlice, pawing them about and toying with them, then sitting up and crunching them. After a bit, it would decide it didn't like them after all, and spit them out.

Two of my pet hates in one go! I hate animals and I hate creepy-crawlies.

Gardening is a nightmare. If I turn over a worm, I have to leave that patch of earth until it's dried up and the worms are six feet under. If woodlice crawl out from under a pot, I have to circle around the area just in case they suddenly take steroids and start sprinting up my leg. When creepies get in the house, I am always secretly convinced that they are merely the advance scouts for an invading army which is planning to field-test its new anti-human artillery on me. As far as I'm concerned, bring back DDT.

Like other insect-haters, I can spot one even when cunningly camouflaged and half a mile away. Thus, I can maintain my distance and keep my conact with them to a minimum. So, you wouldn't catch me doing what some mad friends did and go on an outdoor survival course where they had to make shelters out of leaves and twigs and sleep cocooned in wildlife. One bloke woke everyone up with a shriek in the middle of the night when a slug fell on his face. And on the same course, another madman got up in the morning, or crawled out of his cocoon, to find a slug still attached to his cheek!

Then there was my friend who was sitting up in bed happily drinking hot chocolate and thought her last mouthful was a bit crunchy. Yes, it was a spider, or half a spider by that time. And her sister woke up one morning with a spider squashed between her pillow and her face!

There is a point to these beastie stories. Diana Wynne Jones's characters are so well-drawn that all their individual personalities become very vivid. I can understand and empathise with all of them except one - Helen from The Homeward Bounders. This character has a disgusting habit of collecting and petting bugs and creepy crawlies. I actually skip over the bits in the book where she is coo-ing over them, and as for the bit when Jamie gets her out of a sulk by finding her a nice rat, well if it was anything like my friend's pet, it would have gone for the woodlice in her collection and that would have been that for Jamie's efforts.

So, sorry Diana Wynne Jones, but The Homeward Bounders is probably my least favourite book of yours (apart from the fact it was a bit sad and quite tricky to understand), and there's one bit of your writings I don't appreciate!

"Salmon sandwich, anyone?"

• Diana Wynne Jones in her own words - Interviewed by Maureen Kincaid Speller
• Neil Gaiman's thank you poem
• I Blame It On The Parents - Parents and children in the books of Diana Wynne Jones. Article by Chris Hill
• Fire And Hemlock - by Maureen Kincaid Speller
• The Ogre Downstairs - Reviewed by Arwyn Finnie, with illustrations by Ailse and Duncan Finnie
• Rats and Things - Meredith and creepy-crawlies
• Further Along The Bookshelf - Penny Hill's other favourite children's books

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