I'm pretty sure there was no microwave when I was growing up. There might have been a danger that the rays made food a bit foreign. I think my parents have one now, they're getting recklessly exotic in their old age. We did have a soda stream though.
The tarantula thing was real (it might have been a bird-eating spider). It leapt out of a box of Fyffes' finest at her. Or rather, I suspect, it woke up and thought fuck, where? The east-fucking-midlands? Nooooooo. Kill me now. I think it got its wish. Trust me, the people around there are no more welcoming to immigrants even now.