Incy Wincy Spider………..

    When I was about eight or nine we used to eat as a family.  With my parents, my two brothers and sisters and occasionally my uncle Peter, all around the table at every meal.   Mealtimes must have been busy for my Mam!  Sometimes prospective brother or sister in laws were also there and on these occasions, when the table was cleared, we would have a table tennis competition.  Everyone played and it was great fun.  We had a small backyard and that was “Lords”, a venue for cricket.  Scoring was difficult; four for hitting the coal house door, ten for hitting the drainpipe, etc, etc.  If the ball went over the wall it was deemed over and out.

Dad was very competitive, a fiendish spinner and innings didn’t last long.  He was invariably the umpire as well and cries of “Howszat?” when he was batting were usually met with “Not Out!”  Good days.

    Years later, when I went to work in London, I went to a rock concert at the Oval cricket ground.  Dad phoned me to see what I was doing for the weekend and I told him that I was off to the Oval.  He asked me who was playing and I said, “Emerson Lake and Palmer!”  He asked, “Are they the Australian bowlers?”  Oh well..

    My Uncle Peter was a merchant seaman and would disappear for months to far off places.  He brought back great presents for everyone, stuff you just didn’t see in the shops at home.  On one occasion he’d been somewhere exotic and brought a huge bunch of green bananas home.  My mam used to snap some of these bananas off the bunch and put them in a fruit bowl to ripen.  We were all sat round the dinner table this day.  Mam and Dad, Pete and Liz, Bill and Joan.  Oh, and me as well.

    We’d just finished dinner when everyone’s attention suddenly focused on one of the bananas.  It was a large one and it seemed to have taken on a life of it’s own.  It was moving!  It pulsated and rocked in the fruit bowl!  Then, to everyone’s amazement, it started to unzip itself!  The usually animated conversation round the table was now silenced, as a multi-coloured hairy leg, thicker, and twice as long as my child’s fingers, appeared.  Then another, then another!  Finally it completely revealed itself.  It was undoubtedly the biggest fuck-off spider in the world!  Oh, and another thing, it had attitude!  It didn’t run off or try to hide.  It was stretching itself and having a good look round.  Just thinking about it now is creeping me out!

    For wasps and bees and other insects we would have rolled a newspaper up and swatted them.  Not this fellow.  It would have swatted us back.  No one wanted to antagonise it.

    My dad quietly said to me, “Paul, go and get the big sweet jar”.  I thought, fuck me, the bastards’ already had a banana and now he’s going to give it a sweet!  I brought the jar which dad quickly emptied onto the floor.  In one swift movement he placed the jar over the spider.  This was the cue for screams of relief from Liz and Joan as the spider frantically tried to escape.  Dad inverted the jar and screwed the lid on tight.  He punched a few holes in the lid and that was that.

    Next day my dad and I took the spider to the Hancock museum in Newcastle.  We didn’t have a car so we took the bus.  Though the bus was full we had plenty of room.  No one wanted to be near the spider!  At the museum an expert identified the spider.  It was a Bird Eating Spider!  Thank God it hadn’t seen Joey, my Budgie!

    My dad explained about the bananas and the museum guy suggested that he should burn the rest of the bunch.  We did that as soon as we got home.  I had nightmares for weeks!  From that day I have never eaten a banana.  I try never to even touch them.  Even small domestic spiders give me the creeps….

Oh well………