Boris the Spider

I managed not to pee on my shoes. Just. I wanted to take a picture of a spider in the gents’ toilet today and I am not the best at multi-tasking.

My favourite book of my early childhood remains one of my favourites today. I can vividly remember being 7 years old and listening to our teacher read a daily chapter from E.B. White’s Charlotte’s Web. Wise Charlotte the spider saves the life of a pig named Wilbur. It is a story of friendship and sacrifice; of an unlikely pairing which results in great things. It is a story of beating the odds and changing our fate.

I have warm memories of those end-of-school-day story times.  The teacher would tantalise us by reading aloud one chapter and one chapter only. We would beg to know what happened next and head home in anticipation of Charlotte and Wilbur’s next episode.

To me, each subsequent opening of the book brings back that first reading and that safe, loving Year 2 classroom. I have picked the book up dozens of times in the 42 years since: reading it to myself, my own children and to countless school children. It takes me back to the everlasting summers of my youth.

Two months ago, a long-standing Advisor, a partner in our drive to improve the school and pull it out of its failing category, retired. It was my deeply-held hope to rescue the school whilst he was still in post, so that he could directly share in that joyous day when we could open a bottle of good claret and say, “We did it.” Sadly, his retirement superseded that hope by what could prove to be only a few months.

About a year prior, the Advisor had first noticed a spider living above the urinal in the staff gent’s lavatory. The spider remained for weeks, holding its position, unmoving except for when poked with an extended index finger. He spoke of the tiny, motionless beastie as a metaphor for our school’s plight. He would joke with me that despite being subject to a twice daily blitz by a team of institutional cleaners, the spider survived. It was symptomatic of our school, he would relate, a sign that staff could not see (or chose not to see) that things were out of place.

The Advisor christened the spider Boris after the classic Who song:

There he is wrapped in a ball

Doesn't seem to move at all

Perhaps he's dead, I'll just make sure

Pick this book up off the floor

Boris the spider

Boris the spider

‘Visiting Boris’ became a euphemism for needing to pee; ‘Before the meeting starts I need to visit Boris.’ Soon every man on our staff was familiar with our unofficial mascot. He even got his own name plate made from a pink Post-It note. The Advisor continued to compare Boris’ now long term residence above the urinal with our school’s almost un-notable progress.

During those months I never thought of Boris as being a negative reflection of our school. Silently, internally, he made me think of Charlotte. Charlotte was all about hope and great expectations not defeat. It was reassuring to have the spider there as it made me recall those perfect story-times as a 7 year old. It made the failing school disappear for the time it took to urinate. I began to believe that while the spider remained, something wonderful could happen.

A few months passed and Boris became noticeably fatter. Male colleagues discussed his sudden weight gain. Female staff would sneak into the Gents’ loo just to catch a view of the famous arachnid. All assumed Boris must have caught and devoured a fly that had been buzzing the male toilet in the lukewarm English summer.

I arrived at work one morning, running late from unusually heavy traffic through East London. The two coffees I had slurped down before leaving home had taken their toll and I desperately needed to ‘visit Boris.’ I jogged straight from my car into the lavatory and sighed as the coffee was blissfully released.

As is customary, I glanced up to mouth a ‘good morning’ to our friend living above the urinal. The web was dotted with what I assumed was dust and Boris, now visibly smaller was huddled low in his web. I was mildly concerned (by this time I had given the team of industrial cleaners specific instructions NOT to disturb our eight-legged friend; as if he had been in any danger from a stray dust cloth in the months prior). Boris could be seen so I assumed some rogue dust had blown and become entangled in his web.

Closer inspection, dear readers, proved me mistaken. It was not dust caught in the sticky fibres that morning. No. Dozens of tiny baby spiders, no larger than the head of a pin, fanned out in concentric circles.

It was a bit of good news during a dismal run of luck for the school. I took out my phone and snapped a photo of the joyous web, teeming with life. I immediately sent it to The Advisor with the message BORIS IS BORISETTE- YOU ARE A GRAND DAD. (The Advisor later recounted the scene as he opened the message on his computer screen in a crowded office in the education building and upon seeing what I had witnessed, burst into laughter).

Meanwhile, I smiled to myself. Boris was indeed Charlotte. He was not the hairy black creepy crawly The Who warned us of. Instead he (sorry SHE) was that symbol of wonderful things, terrific things to come. For a split second my current school and that perfect school I attended as a 7 year old merged. There was hope for us yet.

Summer came and went and upon our return in September I was pleased to see that one of the baby spiders had remained behind and made the web its own. Borisette, no doubt dead, must have fallen away to the gentlemen’s toilet floor to be swept away by the stiff broom of the industrial cleaning team. Dead to the world, but alive in legend: a female who spent a year intimately spying on our male staff at their most vulnerable.

Borisette’s baby still remains. With every pee I watch for the tell-tale signs of weight gain. Like myself at 7, I beg to know what will happen next, what the next chapter will unfurl.

Today I received an email from The Advisor. He has now swapped the grandfather-hood of a spider for real life grandfather-hood. One can hear the joy in his written words, as he describes his retirement and the precious hours he spends with his grandson. I miss The Advisor daily. But our day of great joy will come. The school will be saved. And on that day we will open a bottle of good claret with the toast, ‘We did it.’

My retired partner closed his email by writing:

“I miss Boris - it symbolised the school somehow - a spider, clearly visible to all cleaning staff, allowed to stay and fuck himself stupid with other spiders for the good of special measures, and probably seeing too many cocks for his own good during the course of a day - including my cock.”

I chuckled and took a fresh photo of Borisette’s baby. Inside dear readers, I know it is really Charlotte’s offspring I was snapping. I washed my hands and looked in the mirror. I was 7 years old again and the teacher was reading the next chapter to a class bewitched:

 "Why did you do all this for me?" he asked. "I don't deserve it. I've never done anything for you."

"You have been my friend," replied Charlotte. "That in itself is a tremendous thing. I wove my webs for you because I liked you.

After all, what's a life, anyway?

We're born, we live a little while, we die...

By helping you, perhaps I was trying to lift up my life a trifle.

Heavens knows anyone's life can stand a little of that."

Keep the Faith,

The Head