Scary Monsters.

The general consensus is that it was a Brazilian wandering spider which wandered into the garden at my daughter's daycare this morning and was promptly captured and sealed inside a plastic box. In case you didn't know, the Brazilian wandering spider is the most venomous spider in the world. In addition, the venom gives you involuntary priapism which is, however, excruciatingly painful, so your loved ones don't even get to say you went out with a smile on your face, even though, by all accounts, you should have done. It is hard for me to reconcile myself to the presence of such a creature at my daughter's daycare, because I love that place with a passion that borders on mental. It's a tiny, brightly-coloured utopia with a swing and coloured flags strung everywhere and amazing food and a little jabuticaba tree that grows shiny black fruit on its trunk every few months, thereby winning it the award for weirdest tree in the world. I like to think of it as a microcosm of what the world would be like if it wasn't run by dicks and there was a much higher percentage of three and four year olds running around covered in paint (which would surely be a good thing).

It seems to me that the mother and daughter team who run it have harnessed all the most exuberant, warm-hearted and joyful characteristics of Brazil and married them to a sophisticated intelligence that makes it playful in all the best ways and rigorous about the things that matter, like caring for people, being creative and having really nice coffee. So, like I said, it was hard for me to reconcile myself to the presence of a Brazilian wandering spider in the garden because my natural response as a father was to run out there and napalm the garden then demolish the house and run like shit for the nearest shopping mall, where the only nature is in the passion fruit scrub.

To any Brazilians reading this, please understand that this reaction originates in the fact that I am English, which means the most poisonous creatures we have in our country are several geriatric adders with lifelong contracts at the BBC documentary department and UKIP politicians, who only recently emerged from the Protean swamp to gurgle into a proper English pint glass. I'm not sure where I'm trying to go with all this, except to say that it was a strange morning. (The video is of a forró band playing at last year's festa junina party, which I include here specifically to offset the bladder-loosening effect of the picture above.)