a plague!

For 2 summers we lived in a house miles from anywhere in the middle of fields in rural Lincolnshire and I remember that in the Septembers of both years I noticed huge numbers of daddy-long-legs. I assumed these 'swarms' arrived because there were fields and fields of crops all around us (unlike now when i live more or less in the middle of a housing estate). But it was never something that bothered me.

Well it bothers me now!! Last evening I was sitting reading at the dining room table and there seemed to be hundreds of them flying around! (It was only dozens really!!) But they really were a darned nuisance - buzzing and flapping and getting in my hair and dive-bombing my hands and shedding their legs (!!) and getting trapped in my book and flitting past my face and fluttering around the lamp - I almost began to wish Tully would come and 'seek and destroy'.

So what I would like to know is: has anyone else noticed that there are more around this year or am I only imagining it? and is there a point to their existence?