Mystery of the Coconut Shy

One day, out of the blue, I discovered an amazing place in this otherwise scary haunted fairground. There amongst the ragged trees and broken stalls stood a Coconut Shy, the owner beckoning mysteriously (and for some reason I never quite understood giggling like a frog on helium). One hundred neopoints a shot, he said. I paid a brief visit to the bank and signed up. Gathering a pile of balls, I hurled one at the coconut, only to promptly miss as the ball curved to the left. Adjusting my aim, I threw another and hit a coconut square on. It started to wobble and then I swear it jumped back onto the pole. But I had made the coconut move and nearly knocked it off. Encouraged by this success, I threw another ball. Then another.

After a while I was beginning to feel a little disillusioned. Was it just me or were those actual nails I could see sticking out of the coconuts? After what seemed like a hundred throws I was getting into the swing of things. The pile of balls around the coconuts must have made it quite difficult to see the floor. I hurled them one after another like they were confetti. For every one I threw, the frog gave me a replacement. I still have no idea where he had all those balls hidden. Sorry to any golfers who have been deprived of golf balls recently. They are all at the Coconut Shy. It is probably best not to ask for them back. The stall owner seems quite pleasant apart from the odd giggle but there are probably dragons and ghosts lurking around the back.

Suddenly the clouds of my world were brushed apart. The frog told me to stop, saying “Oi, no more throws, you’ve had yer lot!”. Did he suspect I could see the glue holding the coconuts down? I had spent much of the day in the deserted fairground. Possibly it was time for him to pack up and go home, or back to his lair or wherever he lived. I have seen him at the stall from midnight to noon. He must sleep sometime. I left with no coconuts and therefore a little disgruntled, but determined to return the following day.

So the following day I returned. And the day after. In fact, I began to feel like I was his favourite customer. I got to know him so well that I accidentally called him dad. I could just imagine him winking to his compatriots as I approached and saying, “Look, here he comes again. You think he would have noticed the nails by now!”. I began to feel like I was single-handedly contributing enough neopoints at the Coconut Shy to keep the deserted fairground open, but I was determined to win a coconut. I would run up to the Coconut Shy and hand over all my money to the scary frog, then hurl balls at strangely shaped coconuts as he giggled in hysteria. He obviously finds my desperate attempts a great big joke. After so much time throwing balls I have developed muscles like a world weightlifting champion and with every throw the walls of the stall shake. Still no coconuts fall down. I am beginning to suspect that it is not nails and glue holding them down but faerie magic, or something darker altogether.

In fact, I am beginning to wonder if they are really coconuts. Some are yellow. Are they sick? Perhaps there is some sort of coconut disease going round. Others even shaped like rockets. Surely that cannot be healthy? I would not want to find one of those on my plate at dinner. Would you even want to feed it to your pet? The coconuts look as suspicious as the stall owner but still I carry on. I have developed an obsessive desire to knock one of them off, and am determined to keep up the attempts until I succeed. Practice makes perfect. I am certain that it is possible to knock a coconut off its stand. I have seen the albums of others who have successfully knocked down coconuts and placed them in their album. Perhaps I will send them a neomail to ask which type of coconut they managed to knock off. I have spent hours admiring and drooling over the albums of those who have full coconut sections, and then spent some more time wondering how someone could fit coconuts into a stamp album anyway.

Perhaps if I keep turning up and hitting those coconuts at the shy the mad frog will take pity on me (as a fellow insane Coconut Shy addict) and give me a coconut. Perhaps eventually he will even offer me a job. Or possibly one day he will forget to glue one down. I still have to ask him why he moves all the coconuts around (and sometimes replaces them with different ones) even if I miss. Sometimes I manage to make a coconut wobble, and it looks like it is moving on a string. If I aim the ball above the coconut and throw it hard enough perhaps it is possible to cut through the string. Maybe I could land a trick shot that ricochets off one coconut into another? The Coconut Shy has a vast wealth of interesting possibilities to explore, and the stall and its owner obviously have many secrets in their past. The more I investigate the Coconut Shy phenomenon the more I become intrigued. I am determined to keep at it until eventually a coconut cracks or I crack myself!