I really didn’t want to write this column. You see, I’ve suffered a bereavement.

Not a relative or much loved friend. No, it was much worse.

I lost one of my beloved pets a few days ago.

Her name was Circe and she was one of the first tarantulas I ever bought.

At first I thought she was just having a laugh, as spiders do. You know, like when they crawl into your bath to have a splash about with you? Or casually stroll into your open mouth when you’re asleep to tickle your tongue? The jesters.

I could see her body slumped lifelessly over her hide and I anticipated that once I touched her she would suddenly pretend to go all gangsta and sink her fangs into my chubby pink flesh. Nothing.

I even played I Think I’m Turning Japanese on YouTube. It was always her favourite song, despite the fact that tarantulas don’t have ears. Nothing.

Once it hit me that she really had moved on to that big, old spider web in the sky the tears set in.

I phoned my best mate, hoping to receive some sort of sympathy.

“That big, hairy thing?” she asked. “Yeeeaaahhh,” I whimpered.

“Good. I was sick of bringing hairspray to your house in case it got out.”

I became inconsolable at the thought of Circe choking on some Schwarzkopf Silhouette so my mate soon arrived with a bottle of rose and a large tin of L’Oreal Elnett “just in case”.

“Have you tried poking it?” she asked.

I just looked at her with wide, teary eyes that asked her if I was the stupidest person in the world.

Slowly she edged over to Circe’s tank, a can of hairspray in one hand and an oven mitt covering the other.

“She’s gone. She’s definitely gone,” I bawled.

Confident that her arch nemesis had expired, she gave me a hug.

“I know you loved her,” she cooed. “I don’t know why, but you did.”

We shared a moment and she lavished upon me some of the sympathy I offered her when my dog ate her new Colour Riche lippy in plum gold.

It was a sad day but on the plus side I’ve never carried around such colourful dog poop bags.

We decided to give Circe a good, Christian burial – because anything less would have been an insult.

I went to fetch my old Christian Laboutin shoe box and my mate lovingly fashioned a gravestone using a pumice stone from the bathroom and a Sharpie.

I even decorated the box with some colourful pictures of webs and placed a CD of I Think I’m Turning Japanese in with her in case she got bored later.

Full of tears I picked up my sweet girl, intending to lay her to rest in her fashionable casket in my disgrace of a garden, at the same moment the dog jumped up to see what I was holding (probably mistaking it for a lipstick) and my beloved took a dive and landed on my mate’s forearm.

A lot of screaming and a huge mist of Elnett followed.

After convincing said mate that it wasn’t a zombie spider, we laid my princess to rest.

My angel is now watching me from heaven.

She may have left this cruel world behind but at least now she’s sporting fabulous hair.

RIP, baby.