If I Had A Penny For Every Time...

Long long ago, on top of a tall mountain they called Crystal Palace, there grew up a boy child who collected spiderwebs. Each morning, going from bush to bush, tree to tree, and all along the iron railings which stretched from the buttercup slopes of Penge to the northern limits of Crown Point, from Spa Hill along the ridge to Beulah Heights, a wild place festooned with sweet chestnut, holly, oak and beech, the young boy took his spiderweb collecting sticks, and treading seasonally, followed the millions of spiders, carefully removing only enough silk each time, in order to keep the spiders spinning year after year. Nobody had taught him this, he just seemed to know what to do.

Looking down on the green expanse of the Sorry Doons on the one side, and the great sprawling metropolis of Lungdom on the other, he sometimes wondered what he was doing, when all the other children had trainers and bicycles, attended youth clubs for their afterschool social interaction, played football and other sports, and generally did not behave as if they were living in a constructed fantasy world.

Sometimes people would remark upon his spiderweb collecting activities. "If I had a penny for every time people asked me what I am doing, I would be wealthy indeed," he mused.

His skills developed, and he won a scholarship to attend art school. He learned to make interesting objects from his spiderwebs, exhibited them internationally, and sold them for large amounts of cash. He moved from the top of the mountain into the great sprawling metropolis, where he became popular. "You are good at this," people told him, and the more they told him, the more he believed them. "You make really cool stuff with spiderwebs." His confidence grew, and soon his work was in all the major art galleries of the great sprawling metropolis, and in many more cities besides.

Some people, however, whilst appreciating his skill, comprehended neither the level of his success nor the origins of his art, the years of practise, the dedication and the long pursuit of the perfect spiderweb that were responsible for his singular abilities. Watching him collect spiderwebs, and make beautiful objects from them, they would remark helpfully, "You're good at that. You should do that for a living."

"If I had a penny for every time people told me I should do this for a living, I'd be skint," he mused. "The art world is far more lucrative than putting a tax on well-meaning but ignorant advice."

Here endeth the parable of the spiderweb collecting boy.