I persevered last night, and opened my first coconut. Dan handed me the nut and a hammer and told me to start in on it. He suggested I toss it up slightly with each blow so as not to end up with a bruised hand at the end, but that was simply not possible given my level of coordination. My hand survived, and even my thumbs escaped the experience unscathed. The coconut, however, did not survive. After much pounding, it eventually yielded to my persistence. The floor was littered with bits of shell and tiny shreds of coconut.
“There’s no accounting for taste.” That’s my dad’s favourite way of explaining personal tastes that are incomprehensible to him, like living downtown, and riding bike in winter. The inexplicable factors which determine an individual’s likes or dislikes are probably the only way I can explain why my favourite nativity scene contains a horribly caricatured black magus, a random adoring child attired – to my fancy – like a Roma person, an old shepherd carrying some sort of blunderbuss. And a haloed holy family with an 18-month-old baby Jesus. This is the "Christmas Manger Set – the Christmas story in beautiful cut-out scenes and life-like figures." See how the 1940s-era family admires the realistic flourishes, like raw wood beams and straw protruding from the edge of the roofline; the rough, broken wood of the stalls; the tasselled camels; the richly dressed magi; the woolly sheep; the Bethlehemites on the path in the background, ostensibly out to get water, judging...
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