Rutland columnist Allan Grey imagines giant arachnid dysphoria

Just imagine the situation, writes Rutland columnist Allan Grey.

You’re on the job, doing your usual 12 hour night shift, carefully minding your own business, creeping unassumingly across the floor of yet another bathroom in some grand abode, even hoping to take home some grub for your family hanging around outside when you sense this enormous presence enter the darkened room.

Only your highly sensitive pedipalps alert you in time, allowing you to scuttle away to safety, saving you from getting trampled to death by this alien species infinitely larger than you are, and guess what, unbelievably it’s then that you start screaming the house down, jumping up and down, blubbing like a little baby that needs its nappy changing, and then the lights go on and you’re blinded.

The next thing you know, you’re getting picked up in a large, trembling, sweaty hand at the end of a fully extended arm, two fingers clutching you by one of your several legs, a window is opened and you’re summarily ejected into the night. Much as you prefer it outside, you were actually doing good work in your job as a volunteer pest controller, hoovering up those very irritating little insects like ants, fleas, flies and the like that creep and buzz around everywhere, taking them back to your kids for supper.

Still, I guess it could have been worse. I’ve still got all my eight legs but I’ve heard stories of many mates that have not been as lucky as me, being intentionally crushed under the feet of the screaming aliens, that’s all the thanks you get for being a good citizen. It’s a tough life being an arachnid, I just don’t get it, I’m not even one of those that bite, we definitely need a PR agent.

D’you know, at the last census there were over 750 million of us in the UK, ten of us for every alien, 650 different species and only three species that bite, and nope, unlike Australia where everything and everyone is, none of us are poisonous, so what’s all the angst about? On top of all that we’re lucky if we live one alien year.

I’ve no doubt this terrified alien will now need time off work and will seek therapy for the emotional trauma they’ve suffered. Apparently there’s a new syndrome that like most things these days has been pathologised, it’s called GAD, or ‘Giant Arachnid Dysphoria’. Can you believe it? Does anyone ever think about us? If they did they would probably pathologise SAD, ‘Stupid Alien Disorder’. Hope so, then we could get time off and spend a few days working from our wobbly website.

When you are doing your good work, the one place you have to keep very clear of is those giant indoor ponds, baths I think they’re called. Apparently the aliens fill them full of hot water and lay in them for half the day, pampering themselves with all manner of smelly, bubbly stuff, frigging posers. They’re dangerous, whether they’re full of water or worse still when they’re empty. A mate of mine spent hours the other day, only just managing to clamber out of an empty bath as the taps were turned on. As he was leaving he saw a giant alien looking at him grinning, even laughing and saying to his wife: “Reminds me why we call Grandad Spiderman, he always has great trouble climbing out of the bath.”

Small creatures in the bath takes me back many years… the Lovely Lady screaming from the bathroom one morning before her daily pampering: “There’s a mouse in the bath, quickly, come and remove it before it kills me.” Ever the brave soul, I’m straight up there, and with a towel I gently picked up and enclosed the tiny little mouse, taking it downstairs to release it via the front door. As I gently opened the towel to release the little fellow, he’d gone, disappeared, done a complete bunk, must have wriggled out as we came down the stairs, the canny little creature. “Have you got rid of the beast?” she shouted. “Yep, he’s scuttled off into the front garden, you’re perfectly safe now,” I obfuscated, well downright lied really. Fifteen years later I felt it might just be safe to disclose the true story, which as you might imagine was not greeted with amusement, no still greeted with the sheer terror of a savage mauling by that tiny mouse. Yep, it’s a fact of life that us aliens have irrational phobias about all manner of tiny organisms that never intend us any harm, well apart from wasps, oh, and Saints and Saracens.

Now, I was always a left brain guy, good at maths, chemistry and more recently the techy stuff, but a complete failure at stuff like English and history. It always amuses me on TV quiz programmes like The Chase, I never get the history questions about our Kings and Queens right, but of course the chasers do. They know them all, their dates of birth, the dates of their reigns and their wives and husbands. Now, I am suddenly totally knowledgeable about Henry VIII and his six wives having recently been to see Six at the Stamford Arts Centre, an engaging girl power musical about the lives, and deaths of the six of them, it’s brilliant.

So showing off, here goes, their names in order, Catherine of Aragon, Anne Boleyn, Jane Seymour, Anne of Cleves, Catherine Howard and Catherine Parr, and their eventual comeuppance: divorced, beheaded, died, divorced, beheaded, survived. Now repeat after me…