Tag Archives: reindeer antlers

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Reassessment

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CARVING WOODEN SANTAS, ELVES & GNOMESgnomes

Oar, Ross (Woodcarving Illustrated Books; Fox Chapel Publishing, September 2008, ISBN 9781565233836)

Several Christmases ago, I caught Karen home from work watching a home improvement programme that showed you how to build a procession of plywood reindeer for your lawn. You sawed the antlers and the reindeer out as separate pieces and then nailed the former on to the latter.

Imagine yourself sawing out plywood reindeer in your garage on a Sunday afternoon. What a sense of purposelessness must assail you. You had dreams once. How did it come to this?

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Reply to Johnstone’s “50 Proverbs”

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Give a man a fish and he’ll eat for a day. You’ll have him out of your hair until he comes by tomorrow for his next fish.

Teaching him to fish will feel like teaching a walrus to roller-skate. As soon as you break out the fishing rod he’ll look at you like you come from the seventeenth century – like you tried to tell him he could knap his own spearheads with a hammerstone and pair of reindeer antlers. He hasn’t got time to screw about with bait and fishing rods and sinkers. He just wants a fish.

Even if you get him to try it, he’ll just pretend to pay attention and spend most of the time fantasising about the woman in apartment twelve.

Give the man a fish.

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