Instruction For Use

 We have all been gifted with this rather wonderful piece of kit- called a Self. It is made of of body, mind and spirit (or something like that) and every model is ever so slightly different.

The purpose of the Self is to explore the Universe. 

(Some say the Self is identical and coterminous with said Universe- and is therefore limitless and eternal- but let's not get too complicated.)

The Self can be run on autopilot, but if we are to use it to full advantage we need to study the manual and master the controls.

As was written over the doors of Apollo's temple at Delphi...

Gnothi Seauton

Nosce Te Ipsum

Know Thy Self.

This is the first requirement

The second requirement is that we should love It.  This reduces wear and tear on the Self and also on the Universe it is designed to explore...

We Were Given A Coconut

 We were given a coconut.

It's ages since I last tackled one. How do you split them without smashing them to bits? I don't think that's a thing I've ever managed.

Wendy looked it up online. The circumference is the weakest part so you tap round it with the back of the blade of a big kitchen knife. That didn't work so we moved onto a hammer. Tap, tap, tap. That wasn't working either so ... bang! bang! bang! And it split- not neatly- but at least we ended up with two halves and not lots of little bits. All the kIng's horses and all the king's men wouldn't have found reassembling it that much of a challenge.

(By the way, II've always thought of Humpty Dumpty as an egg, but the other day I read an article that explained him as an English Civil War cannon that got blown up.  A Royalist cannon presumably. I'm not wholly persuaded but the details fit. Cannoneers have always given their engines affectionate nicknames. There's Mons Meg in Edinburgh and Dulle Griet in Ghent. And of course the Germans in WWI had Big Bertha who was fricking enormous.)

Anyway, we had coconut to eat. I chewed a strip- and it had apparently fermented- and tasted funky and acidic. Cheesy in fact.  So that's why vegan "cheesemakers" use the stuff. 

I put the rest of it out for the birds.