The Disappearing Act

During the summer holidays, for two weeks, my family and I always go to rural France to spend time with the French side of our family. As you can imagine there all sorts of bugs and critters, of every shape and size. I have never been a big fan of insects, so when I am faced with a wasp or a spider, it is in my nature to run to the other side of the room. However, earlier on  in that holiday I was in a situation when I couldn’t run from the spider the size of my finger nail … the smallest finger nail. I was in the shower, when I saw the little spider. I was singing, so I am beginning to think I am acquiring Snow White qualities. When I sing, creatures from all over the land come to watch me … in the shower. Anyway! Swiftly banishing that thought from my mind, as I was showering, I stared at it, trying to figure out what was so scary about it. I looked at its spindly legs, and its tiny body. It still creeped me out, but not as much as it bugged me why I was scared so I continued to stare…

However this story has a similar ending to a spider I met in Suffolk …

I was sleeping in ‘The Snug’ – it’s like a second living room. I was up at 2am skyping my friend in Korea when I saw it. A spider about the size of a baby’s fist (if I had said my fist you would probably think that I was exaggerating – and I would be – but it pains me to tell you, that with the ‘baby-fist’ comparison, I am not.) I was sitting in semi-darkness when I saw it scuttle into the middle of the floor. I froze mid sentence, actually paralyzed with fear as I watched it go about its spidery ways. I was so scared that it actually took me a couple of minutes to hear my friend repeatedly say my name and this is where it gets embarrassing. When I looked at her, finally out of my reverie, I began to cry; silently, because I still had the sense not to wake the whole house. I looked back at the spider to make sure that it wasn’t any closer, I was in luck. It had scuttled into the middle of the rug, half in a shadow so I could only see part of its body. My friend had begun to laugh at me at this point and I turned to tell her not to be so horrible and cruel, at which point she hung up on me. (We are apparently close enough for her to be able to  do that without me being mad, I wasn’t aware of this, but this is what she has told me.) So I went back to focus my attention on the baby-fisted spider, but when I saw the patch of shadow where the spider had been spidering about, it had gone, I couldn’t see it anywhere, and this is when I realised. That’s what I don’t like about spiders.

So naturally, I spent the whole night staring at the flooring without blinking with the majority of my head under the covers.

Last updated: April 16, 2020