Not many people know that I am highly arachnophobic. I generally don't tell people because knowledge is power and arachnids are perhaps the one thing that will bring me to my knees and weaken me to the point of complete destruction quicker than anything else. I made the mistake of telling someone this once and he chose to use it against me. I have since repressed the exact details of the two incidents that followed, but suffice to say they were horrible situations that still invoke goosebumps as I type this.

I can't even TYPE the S word, hence the use of the word arachnids. A couple of weeks ago a friend send me an email with a photo attachment about a camel S that the troops in Iraq encounter. Well thank fuck I read the email first because I didn't open the attachment. She didn't know and has since apologised.

I was reading Who magazine yesterday and as I turned the page there was a picture of an S on the new page. I threw the magazine down on the floor and shut my eyes quickly. I had to put my head down and breathe deeply, focusing on something else. I realised I had to do something with the magazine so i grabbed a facecloth from the clean wash basket, flipped the page and threw the facecloth over the picture. Ironically, it was a story about a guy who overcame arachnophobia and now works in the S enclosure at Taronga Zoo. I still get the shakes when I have to pick that magazine up and will probably carry it by the corner and put it in the outside garbage, unfinished, before the end of the day.

My Mother tells me that when I was a baby she had my pram under a tree and an S fell from the tree and dropped onto my face. According to her it didn't bite me or anything but I guess the shock of that would be enough.

I live in a fully screened unit where every window and every door has flyscreen on it. I always have fly spray in my house. When I was in my senior year at high school, I used to spray my room every night before going to bed and then sleep with the windows and doors sealed shut. My Mother eventually got me out of that habit because I had constant headaches.

I guess it's improving slightly - I can now kill a daddy long legs, or spray one as big as a five cent piece, but anything bigger than that and I'm wiped out. I guess everyone has their achilles heel.

t.