I have a fear of spiders.

I don’t care that everyone knows.  I’m a 6ft tall, heavily tattooed man and I’m scared of teeny tiny eight legged beasties.

I can’t bring myself to pick one up if my life depended on it, instead resorting to the old ‘pint glass and envelope’ technique; followed up with moving through the house at great speed screaming “open the door/window quick quick quick QUICK QUICK!!”.

As you can see, I’m very butch and manly about it.

Mind you, in my defence, house spiders are big fuckers.

Anyway, yesterday I decided to attack my front garden which had grown to Jumanji proportions; towering above my kitchen window and plunging it in darkness.  I knew something had to be done when I realised that recently I always seemed to be cooking at night, no matter what time of day it was.

So I donned some heavy duty gardening gloves, hired a local jungle guide called UmBongo*, messaged my family to tell them I love them and ventured out into the leafy unknown.

It’s obvious that as soon as you start to uproot all sorts of flora and fauna the local wildlife will scarper like chavs in Poundland, but never before have I seen so many different sizes and shapes of spiders in such a small area in such a short space of time.

Did I squeal like a girl and cry for my mum?

Nope.

For some reason, because I had heavy duty gloves on, I somehow felt a bit invincible. I even had the little shits crawling over my flip flopped feet and I simply brushed them away like I was channelling Chuck Norris.

This reminded me of those times when I was a kid trying to get to sleep and hearing a noise or creak in the darkness of my bedroom.  I was shit scared and hid under the covers (with a little gap for oxygen of course) because that was somehow enough to protect me from a burglar, a monster or a fuck off massive chainsaw.

As I think back I realise how daft it was to think a duvet would protect me.  How could a little bit of material make an appropriate barrier to the nastiness outside?

And yet here I was, a full grown man, with ‘magic gloves’, providing a lack of fear of anything with more limbs than me.

Except Tarantulas.

Definitely not Tarantulas.

Tarantulas can fuck off.

Seriously.

 * Not true.  As if I’d have a guide named after a popular children’s beverage that’s too orangey for crows….his name was actually Neville**

** Also not true