animus

A couple of weeks ago I was wandering aimlessly toward the craft department in Newcastle’s Fenwicks when my eye was caught by a potato peeler in the shape of a monkey. A monkey potato peeler! So appealling! So well-made! Our potato peeler was conveniently blunt and clearly needed replacing. What we were in obvious need of was . . . a peeler in the shape of a monkey!

The monkey was reasonably priced. I purchased the monkey. I felt remarkably pleased — both with myself and my monkey. I took the monkey home.

Then it was time to use the monkey. Its first task was to peel some carrots. The blades of the peeler were covered with some protective packaging which I attempted to remove. Bad idea. Before the monkey even got a chance to attack the carrots, it had hacked off the top of my thumb. Blood actually spurted from the wound. I became foolishly faint and had to sit down.

My scientist companion calmly bandaged my thumb and berated me for my carelessness. I protested that it was not I, but the monkey who was at fault. I looked at the monkey. The object that had appeared so cute in the shop now revealed its true malevolence. Its hollow eyes glinted. It held its blades aloft in an attitude both savage and determined. It was clearly out to get me.

The monkey wound is still healing. It has affected several everyday activities: knitting, writing, putting in of contact lenses, general waving about of hands. It will probably leave a small scar. I don’t want to admit it, but I must, I do, I fear the monkey. It seems possessed of an evil animus and I am evidently its target. This realisation is all the more galling because I misread its character so profoundly in the shop. How could I ever have thought it benign?

A short while ago I passed it in the kitchen and this is what I saw. I ask you to dispute my sense of its iniquity. Is it not an evil monkey?

Theres probably a moral about The Commodity in there somewhere….