I’m trying to “touch grass” more these days, to embrace embodied experiences and introduce analogue “friction” – and fun! – into my life, which is how I ended up attempting Rosamund Pike’s no-knife technique for eating a pineapple.
Admittedly, I discovered it online while consuming algorithmically suggested slop (the video is from 2021, but was reposted on TikTok last week and is enjoying a new flurry of attention). But shh. It’s great – Pike is infectiously enthusiastic, explaining that the Wheel of Time showrunner Rafe Judkins told her the technique, then gamely gets to work, worrying the pineapple base off with her thumbs, then popping off and eating perfect chunks. “Have you ever seen anything more beautiful?” she concludes.
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I hadn’t – and I wanted to experience it: mindful absorption in a manual task; the sweet, hard-earned juice of hand-dismembered fruit. It was time to touch pineapple.
I was pleasantly surprised to find a ripe specimen in the supermarket and prepared for surgery. First, as Pike demonstrates, you get your thumb into the woody base (“I’m trying not to say ‘butt plug’,” she says, with admirable, A-list composure). It looks hard and it is – I chipped away with my nails, scraping bits of base off until pollical penetration was achieved. It felt warm, astringent and deeply weird.
Prising the plug out, however, was another story. Pike achieves it in one elegant movement with a soft “pop” and an exquisite look of slightly naughty surprise. As my pineapple gushed juice, I heaved and pulled fruitlessly (sorry), like Peter Wright in The Yorkshire Vet trying to deliver a stuck lamb. I consider myself relatively strong, but even when I pitted all my muscles against a small, ripe fruit, the plug wouldn’t budge: how did that dainty woman do it?
I created enough space around it, however, to access Pike’s promised “beautiful, beautiful pineapple chunks”. Could I prise them out? No: I ripped off a jagged mess of mostly skin. The pineapple was massacred, as were my hands; the rest of me was humbled.
I suppose no one promised embodied experiences would be pleasant – and there was definitely friction. What have I learned? Hollywood A-listers are made of steely stuff – and so are pineapples.
Emma Beddington is a Guardian columnist