Lady Hale’s spider brooch may or may not have been by way of a (well-deserved) pop at Fucko the Clown this week but it certainly got people talking. An enterprising t-shirt company quickly knocked up a special design – and are using it to raise money for Shelter (grab yourself one while you still can).
Spiders certainly carry a fair bit of conceptual/mythological, allegorical clout. I briefly wondered if there was some nod to the story of Robert the Bruce and the importance of perseverance but went off that idea when, despite a fuckton of perseverance, I still haven’t been able to locate my own jewelled spider brooch. (It’s not that one pictured to the left; mine is purple and green.) But I’ve been wearing a few other spiders over the past couple of
days, and thinking a bit about how a symbol can suddenly take off and mean a whole lot of things simultaneously. Spiders are suddenly a combination of fangirling Lady Hale (who is pretty kick-ass), resistance to Brexit/contempt for the worst Prime Minister ever and… all the other things. Perseverance, craftiness, destiny, interconnection, the ‘tangled web’ of lies.
It’s a hell of a time to be alive, but also a hell of a time to be a writer of stories. I’ve been working on a collection of bits and pieces inspired, in some way or other, by the current political clusterfuck. I know some writers have been finding it difficult to think of anything to write about, but it’s’ almost the reverse for me. Events are moving so fast that I have more ideas than I know what to do with.
I’ve yet to come up with anything that directly references spiders, but they are still on my mind. Not least because the leaflet-monkey dayjob, at this time of year, tends to involve sticking my head in several webs per day.