Stuff of Nightmares

Spiders have been around for 130 million years. We must all be thankful none of them evolved to the size of a dog.

Of all the creepy crawlies that give people the willies, spiders, those eight legged twin fanged arthropods with their six to eight pairs of eyes would have to be in the top league of nightmares had nature allowed them to grow to the size of a large dog. Fortunately for us nature limited their size to range from that of a pinhead to the 12-inch dinner plate spread of the Goliath Tarantula. As a result few are dangerous to man and the chances of being bitten by one of these is remote. That said if you travel a lot here are five it would be wise to avoid.

The Funnel Web Spider Australia’s most poisonous
The Redback Spider of Australia
The Brown Recluse Spider of the USA
The Black Widow Spider of the USA
The Wandering Spider of Brazil often fatal to children

There is the case of paraplegic David Blancarte who was bitten by a Brown Recluse Spider that brought the nerves of his legs back to life some months later allowing him to walk again. But this is the only recorded case of a beneficial spider bite.

As a rule spider’s prey is restricted to insects though some of the larger varieties are known to feed on frogs, lizards, snails and occasionally small birds. But it is their methods of devouring their meals that comes close to horrific. Being unable to eat solids, spiders predigest their food by injecting digestive fluids from their stomachs directly into the body of their prey to liquefy the inner tissues and organs to a thin soup before sucking them out, reducing the body of the victim to an empty husk in the process. Worse, if not hungry at the time of capture the spider will enmesh its victim in web, paralyse it with venom then leave it fresh and alive until hunger returns.

Mating is a problem for male spiders. Spiders have voracious appetites and the male being much smaller than the female has to approach his love with extreme caution, spending some time stroking her legs until she is sufficiently pliable for him to do his duty. But once sex is completed she usually awakes from her torpor, binds him in web and eats him. But though not around to see it he often has his revenge. After laying around 40 eggs, the Australian female social spider cannot reproduce again. During the summer she collects large insects for her young to feast on while she fattens on the leftovers. But as the young spiders get hungrier, they suck the blood from their unresisting mother's leg joints and when she becomes too weak to move, her young attack her, injecting her with venom and digestive juices before eating her alive.

But like them of hate them the spider has survived for 130 million years and has learnt some pretty nifty tricks along the way. The tensile silk they spin is stronger than steel and so light in weight that a strand to encircle the earth would weigh only 16 ounces and is sufficiently ductile to stretch 40% of its length without breaking. Using their web they are capable of flying or ballooning for hundreds of miles on the wind, controlling their altitude by releasing or reeling in the silk. They have highly tuned sensory hairs on their legs, so sensitive to air currents or low frequency air vibrations they can sense a flying insect and catch it in mid air. In fact we owe them a debt of gratitude for their prodigious taste for insects, as it has been calculated that in the United Kingdom alone the weight of insects eaten by spiders every year exceeds the weight of the population.

Cunning creatures with the mathematical ability to construct an intricate yet perfect web within an hour make them all the more formidable. If they were ever to achieve the size of a dog our worst nightmare would surely have come to pass.

A Different View of War

I was about four and a half at the start of the Battle of Britain and though it may sound disgracefully callous I have to admit I thoroughly enjoyed it. But then at an age when concepts, even of war, are niether acknowledged nor understood and life revolves largely around picture impressions that is not really surprising. It was a wonderful summer in 1940 with the deep blue skies a perfect backdrop to the white vapour trails of fighter aircraft as they twisted and turned in daily combat, with the occasional white parachute that to me seemed to hang in the air forever. There were lots of spent machine gun bullets lying around the garden and I remember putting one in my mouth to suck then accidentally swallowing it. After admitting my crime to nanny I was promptly dosed with cod liver oil then sat on a tin pot until a rewarding ping announced I was ammunition free. I remember a German bomber in flames flying low over the house before crashing in the next door field and being taken to have a look at the remains the next day.

But the highlight of my memories was an afternoon walk to Burnt Mill. Nanny seemed to have set walks and judging from how often we went on this one it must have been her favourite, that is until that fateful afternoon. Presumably because it was a hot summer day she was dressed in white, spotless and starched. Which might sound strange by today’s standards when she would more likely be wearing short shorts and a loose shirt, but this was 1940 and things were different then. It was a long way to the old burnt out mill, well to me it was, down a narrow road across the fens with ditches on either side. I used to walk most of the way though Nanny always brought a push chair along in case my legs gave out. Anyway we had gone about half way when we heard the plane which sounded much louder and lower than usual. I remember hearing some cracking noises, then Nanny scooped me up and leapt into one of the ditches. The plane never returned and looking back I can only assume the pilot decided to use up the last of his ammunition by shooting up the road and us. But it was Nanny who made my day, emerging from the ditch her face speckled with dirt, hair all over the place, her spotless white now dripping with black mud and her buckled shoes squelching with every step. I didn’t dare laugh, but I think it made my war.

Private Promotion

All authors know that with eight hundred books or so being published each day the art of promotion has probably overtaken the art of writing. Those who command large advances from major publishers are relatively few and can rely on the publisher, who needs a handsome return on investment to stay in business, to concentrate on the promotion of book and author in an attempt to guarantee it. Proven successful authors and leading politicians with memoirs lead this group, followed by famous actors, sports people, pop singers, cooks, gardeners and anyone who has been in the media spotlight long enough to be named by the general public. Publishers have good reason to be selective of the books they choose, as promotion is an expensive business. The list below refers to one large UK bookshop chain and is taken from an article in the Times of 2007 so prices may have escalated since. But as there are two further major chains in the country it gives an indication of the costs facing a publisher.

What it costs
£45,000 For one book to appear in window and front-of-store displays, and in the chain’s national press and TV advertisement campaign
£25,000 To feature in a bay at front of store as a ‘gift book’ in its genre and be displayed at the till
£17,000 To be one of two titles promoted as the ‘offer of the week’ for one week in the run-up to Christmas
£7,000 To be displayed at front of store as a ‘paperback of the year’ and be mentioned in newspaper adverts.
£500 Price of an entry in the chain’s Christmas gift guide, complete with a bookseller review

Making the promotion of one book in one chain cost £94,500 in the UK alone, to which on occasion must be added further costs for press and TV coverage. Assuming other book chains in other countries work in a similar vein, publishers are faced with a considerable investment when selecting a book, making their many rejections understandable. Which is also why the rest of us are on our own when it comes to promoting our own books.

At our disposal are press releases, reviews, interviews, book signing and sometimes the help of friendly radio and TV stations. But by far the most valuable conduit to the reading public at our disposal is the Internet, which gives us access to a hitherto unimaginable worldwide audience though here too we are up against commensurate competition. Thousands of books from fiction to needlework go online every day, not to mention the ever growing multitude of ebooks. The Internet is a promotional world where knowledge and technique are king. Web content, photoshop and HTML are vital, with CSS for the advanced, plus a helpful familiarity with wordpress and blogger. Most young people take all this as the norm having been brought up from school with computers, but for Old Codgers it’s a definite problem. We must either learn or find help; we might like to hark back to the days when the writing was all important. But like King Canute it won’t do us any good. He got his feet wet and without Internet savvy our books will sink without trace.