Spiders in Suits.

Today’s visit to the dentist was unusually painful. ‘Can you handle it?’ asked the lady hovering over my supine form and clutching a tool of torture with unspecified intent. In such a situation the first instinct is to say ‘not really’, but instead you feel obliged to reply ‘yes, of course I can; carry on’ and wish you hadn’t been brought up to believe that big boys don’t cry.

When I was a kid, dentists were just there for when they were needed. If you had a problem you rang one and went in to get it sorted, and that was that. These days you have to register and stay registered.

‘You have to come for a check up every six months,’ they tell you, ‘and if you miss two appointments without a reason which we consider acceptable, you will be struck off and cast into the wilderness, there to suffer for all eternity as fitting punishment for your transgression against the principles of an economy in which the retail and service sectors are the twin gods of a better world.’

And so it is with most things these days. Registration is the keyword if you want to belong and function in a world controlled by the men in suits (or maybe jeans and open-necked shirts with designer labels.)

They smile and simper and say ‘We are here for you. We care about you. We will strive to help you all we can because we’re very nice people and your interests are all that matter to us (but only if you register and step into our sticky webs where you can be controlled and manipulated and maybe even consumed when it suits our purpose.)

Ordinary spiders ain’t got nothing on these guys. The world is being ruled by a new generation of superior mutant spiders now.