Spiders (please try not to scream)
It’s not exactly unusual to dislike or even have a fear of spiders. Although I don’t, I know that other people do and that they have a perfect right to. Bahkti has developed it into a new art form, though.
The crippie spiders of Valletta
One morning, while we were on on honeymoon, Bahkti woke me up and informed me that there was an albino spider in the room. He wouldn’t look at it, but told me that it had a crippie leg and that it was hanging from the curtain by my side of the bed. I looked several times before spotting it, but Bahkti wouldn’t go anywhere near it, as he said it had waved its crippie leg and looked at him with its thyroid eye. Was it a case of mistaken identity? Judge for yourself…
There was a bathtime incident (actually there were several) in the same hotel room. The one involving legionnaire’s disease and the dripping shower attachment is too convoluted to go into. But there was another spider-related moment of high strangeness.
This time, it involved an NHS metal spider. To appreciate this one, you need to be English and of a certain age. Back in the 1960s, short-sighted children from homes less fortunate than ours would have National Health Service glasses. This was twenty years before Steven Patrick Morrissey made them a fashion item. When they broke (and they always seemed to break), the unfortunate children’s parents would repair them with sticky plaster (why was it always sticky plaster?). Anyway, Bahkti saw an NHS metal spider lurking under the washbasin in the bathroom, while leaning back in the bath. Once again, was it a spider or was it a case of mistaken identity?