Missed connections

Sometimes I set a book aside for someone and for some reason it never finds its way to them, or they to it. I’ve been carrying this book about Australian Spiders around for ten years, so long the cover’s worn out. It’s a bit of a dry tome I have to say and written by people who love (to understand) spiders rather than something sensational like ‘Bite!’ or ‘Venom!’. But I still hold out hope that it’ll find it’s way to a home where it’s loved. That said, I have a complicated relationship with spiders. I grew up in a house where funnel web spiders lived under my bed, and that was years before Struan Sutherland tipped a container of paperclips on his boss’s head after hearing him say it wasn’t worth developing a vaccine – and going on to develop the vaccine that’s saved many lives. So I’m very tolerant of the spiders around the house these days, but I know I’m at least 3,000km from the nearest funnel web.