Incy Wincy

When I was younger I had a small toy spider called Webster. It was made of plastic with some polystyrene inside so that it floated. Little Webster wore a plastic set of goggles and a snorkel, and had a little wind-up propeller in his rear just where his spinnerets should have been. He wasn't built for making webs, this cheerful fella with his painted-on grin, he was made for hurtling around the bath at a rapid rate of knots. I used to think that he was brilliant as he ploughed through the bubbles leaving a little eight-legged wake behind but I understand that some people don't like spiders in general and the thought of one in their bath - even a plastic toy one like Webster - would be the stuff of their nightmares. If you fall into this category then perhaps this is as far as you should read. See you back here next week.

Still with me? Good.

So a few days ago I decided to take a nice long, relaxing bath. I ran the water, poured in a generous helping of Radox bath salts (I'm a traditionalist at heart) and gently lowered myself in.  I had the cricket commentary on the radio and a can of something cold and refreshing close to hand, ready for a relaxing couple of hours. OK, so at the end of it I'd end up looking more wrinkled than Cliff Richard's neck but what the hey, it was worth it. The only thing that could make it any better was if I had something to read so I reach over the bath side and picked up a magazine that I'd placed on the floor a few minutes earlier.

The magazine I had chosen was Take A Break's Fiction Feast, a monthly collection of short stories. Sadly this issue didn't include one of my contributions but it's always good to check out the competition and it's always a good read anyhow.  I lifted the magazine to my face. My  eyesight's getting worse these days and of course I couldn't wear my reading glasses in the bath. Not that I was reading anything steamy, you understand (ho ho, thank you very much). Out of the corner of my eye I saw something black slide across the page and there was a little 'plop' sound of something around the size of a hazelnut dropping into my bathwater.

Can you see where this is going? I bet those people who quit reading earlier are so glad that they did. Here we go…

I looked down to see a huge black spider - easily bigger than a two-pound coin - struggling for its worthless arachnid life inbetween my knees. I don't know whether he was doing some kind of thorax-stroke or a weird octopod paddle but whatever it was, it was ineffectual. The spider was just thrashing on the spot and not getting further from, nor - thankfully - closer to anything attached to me.

I didn't panic. I didn't let out a girly scream. I didn't even leap out of the bath and run around like the world's flabbiest and most nekkid headless chicken. What I did do was reach swiftly into the slightly sullied water, scoop the drowning invertebrate out and fling him a few feet into a nearby sink. Then, like the trooper I am, I slunk back into the relaxing waters and turned the cricket commentary up, just in case he were coughing his spidery lungs up in my basin.

To be honest the entire unsavoury even had put me off my bath somewhat and I curtailed my recreational soak to just under an hour. I wasn't really enjoying it any more. So I got out and dried myself (no further details required) and approached the sink.

I'm not particularly proud of what I did next. I'd saved him from drowning and deposited him back on dry porcelain, hadn't I? I'd given him a fair chance when, lets face it, if I hadn't been there he'd have quickly gone to that Great Web in the Sky. So as far as I knew he was safe and sound.

And that was the last I saw of him because by the time I opened my eyes, he was gone. Mind you, I had been running the cold sink tap for a good few minutes by then.

(c) Shaun Finnie 2013