THE SPIDERS FROM MARS
My first true story from the Crazy life of Psycho Syd is my spider tale. Laos is the habitat of the largest huntsman spider in the world; the size of a dinner plate with a 12 inch leg span and was discovered in 2001. It is known as a huntsman cos it doesn't build webs; it runs after or ambushes it's prey, killing it with venom or strong mouthparts. The female is extremely aggressive and can give a very nasty painful bite as she injects her venom. Bloody hell it reminds me of the ex Mrs! They were prevalent in the caves I used to explore in the khamouane district where I used to be employed on a hydro-power project, although I luckily never met one of these angry big bastards. I do recall meeting two German spider buffs who were detained by the village chief for prowling around at night. They didn’t speak the local lingo so they couldn’t explain that they were only searching for the Giant Huntsman.
In 2003 I was living in Vientiane in a beautiful traditional detached Lao house with a huge tropical garden with palm trees and exotic plants. It only cost about £140 a month! You would be lucky to get a shit 2 up 2 down terrace house in Blackpool for a blooming week for that amount of wonga. In the dining room on the walls and in the corners lived many massive spiders the size of one’s hand. Big buggers to say the least! In fact in Laos spiders are known as Maang Mumm which means corner insect. Now, you know something you didn’t know before. The live in maid used to hit them with a brick and chuck their squashed bodies into the garden. I am not the biggest spider fan and am in fact extremely wary of these 8 legged creatures and would throw a fit if ever one came anywhere near me. However, the compassionate side of me felt pity for their cruel squashings sending them to an untimely death and off to Spider heaven wherever that may be. So, I ordered the maid to leave them alone and not kill anymore. She looked at me with confusion and must have thought, “Crazy falang (Westerner) “but she didn’t murder them from that point because she was on a good number. She had food and her own room, a high salary and didn’t have a heavy workload, had lots of free time and I treated her with kindness and respect and didn’t even knock on her bedroom door asking for a leg-over on the occasions I would stagger home pissed. Soon, the dining room was like a scene from the movie Arachnophobia; we were infested with the hairy long legged monsters living in harmony until one fateful day.
Now my good mate I am going to sing you a song. “Early one morning just as the sun was rising; I put my shoes, trousers, shirt and tie on, and rode my bike to work”. Right singing stopped. I got dressed and rode my Chinese motorbike for the 15 minute journey to the 21st Century School for my morning class. I parked my cheap two wheeled contraption and got one of the biggest shocks of my whole life. One of the most enormous multi-legged beasts my eyes had ever had the horror of gazing upon was covering my crotch. I froze like a statue in a long forgotten childhood game worried that this evil monster was about to sink her fangs into my cock and inject her painful venom. One plus point would be that if this painful event occurred it would swell my member to at least double its only average size giving me the pleasure of drinking in the smiles and admiration of any future conquests during the next couple of weeks. However, I decided to give this opportunity for a larger knob a miss opting to rely on my Mancunian charm and wit to impress the black widow like more deadly sex of the species instead.. So, I gingerly took a cigarette packet out of my shirt pocket afraid any sudden movement would inflict a painful bite or God forbid have this hairy bastard running down the outside of my trousers and up the inside of my trouser leg. I almost shuddered at the thought but I was a statue, remember. With one swift movement I flicked this beast onto the grass near my trembling feet.
When I eventually got to my second floor classroom still shaking from head to balls to toe I looked at the huge fearless swine on the grass confidently making its way to a tree which I presume it was going to scale and wait for some poor stranded cat to scoff or a UFO to transport it back to Mars to reunite with Ziggy Stardust. Then, I had a chilling thought. That massive arachnid must have been on the back of my new blue and white shirt which was left overnight on a chair in the dining room. I must have ridden that motorbike through the traffic to work! “What ifs” suddenly started racing around my already shaking shell-shocked skull. What if it had run down my arm or Hell's Bells inside my shirt collar while I was speeding to work? I would have been shocked to death and probably squashed under a bus or lorry, but my friend it wasn’t me who did the squashing so karma allowed me to live another day to make the hairs on the back of your neck stand on end recounting this spine-tingling tale. 
Once home I made the maid clear the house of spiders and not to kill them while I went to the pub to get bladdered and obliterate that terrifying memory from my tree and enable me to get some sleep that evening without imagining that one of the massive evil bastards was in my bedroom hungrily making its way to my manhood. You will be relieved to know that house was usually spider free for the remainder of the time I resided there
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