Christmas has come early!

On Sunday evening I was going to bed, walked into the kitchen, turned the light on and found ... something crawling across the worktop. At first I thought it was a tiny harvestman, but since that didn't make any sense (it was late!), it had to be a spider. I presumed it must be Pholcus phalangioides but I popped it in a pot and went to bed. Looking at it in the morning it turned out to be a male Psilochorus simoni, although it took me a while to convince myself of that. This species is thought to be of American origin, imported first into France and then into Britain on wine bottles. There are only two previous VC55 records, one from the wine cellar of a very grand country house. I would like to point out that my wine cellar consists of a few bottles from Sainsbury's in the understairs cupboard, and that alone is pretty good evidence that this species is increasing in frequency. The only reason we don't have more records is because it is so easily confused with Pholcus phalangioides (he wrote, without any sense of irony.... ).