After the huntsman raced across my windscreen, I had an arachnophobic meltdown on the side of the road. Then a well-coiffed vision in a Volvo rolled up her sleeves

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When I was about 19 or 20 I was driving through a genteel, leafy suburb on the north shore of Sydney when that most menacing of all Australian wildlife – a huntsman spider – raced across my windscreen. On the inside.

My arachnophobia is so intense that I would have vastly preferred it if a great white shark had crashed through the window. I’m surprised I didn’t lose the will to live immediately and simply died on the spot. Instead, I screamed, wrenched the wheel left and ran up the gutter, before hurling myself into a gasping panic on the kerb. I then proceeded to have what could only be described as a very loud, very visible breakdown.