knives of my lives
content warning: mentions of blood and abysmal knife sharpening skills
I was gifted my first knife, a small Swiss army knife with two blades and some essentials, for my 12th birthday. My dad looked me straight in the eye and made me pinky promise not to touch it until he had taught me how to use it safely. I assured him I wasn’t a fucking idiot, then immediately went and stabbed myself.
On a post-cake walk with the other kids, I found a shrivelled up corn cob from last year’s harvest in a field. I held it in my dominant hand for some godforsaken reason and drove the blade right through it and then my thumb, which instantly started pissing buckets of bright red blood – free fertiliser for the next crop!
All I have left from this is a life lesson and a thin white scar where my right thumb bends; the knife miraculously slipped right between the muscles, ligaments and nerves. I didn’t even get stitches.
A few years later, I got into art school and inherited my dad’s supplies; inks and paper stock, Letrasets and quill nibs, and five different blades. After the aforementioned incident, I waited to learn safe cutting practice before using them. We spent an afternoon making tiny booklets, and no blood was shed.
The two yellow craft knives were for slicing: the wide, sturdy one could go through thick board without bending, and the small, nimble one could cut straight lines with less than a millimetre of allowance. The scalpel was for precision work and could go in any direction I wanted it to. The two barber razors were for sharpening pencils to the exact size and width you wanted (and recreating scenes from Sweeney Todd).
Since then, I’ve taught countless classmates and coworkers how to cut safely and continued to use those knives – except for the small craft knife, which a classmate borrowed and immediately lost one afternoon. Sophie, if you’re reading this, I have not forgotten and I have not forgiven.
For the following years, I borrowed other people’s knives: my parents’ when I learnt how to make meals from scratch; my then-boyfriend’s when we’d spend entire weeks playing house in his mother’s kitchen; my employers’ when I emigrated to the UK, became an au pair and fed posh children in huge kitchens.
Eventually, I got my first big boy job and my own room that I paid for, in a damp South London flat that I shared with two grown but definitely not house-trained men. They did all their cooking indiscriminately with steak knives.
I took my newfound disposable income to IKEA and got the that-will-do-est knife set that money can buy: a Förslag three-pack, coming in at under a tenner.
Those knives saw me through the next four years, passing through the hands of five other flatmates and witnessing that kitchen go from mouldy glorified corridor, to painted-over glorified corridor, to eerily empty glorified corridor. When we all got evicted and became homeless, we put everything we weren’t taking with us out on the pavement, but left the Förslag set in the kitchen drawer. I hear it’s frowned upon to leave blades unattended on the street in Streatham.
Walking around London with a knife in your bag is also frowned upon – however, I’m not from around here. In many parts of France, it’s quite normal to always have an Opinel in your pocket, and it’s not hard to see why.
Since getting my second Swiss Army knife (the first one wouldn’t go through Eurostar security), I cannot begin to count how many times I’ve been able to enjoy trailside pâté at a moment’s notice, or how many loose screws I’ve tightened up when a screwdriver wasn’t around to save the day.
People’s initial reaction of horror usually subsides when I explain that I just need to be ready for foraging at all times. You never know when a chicken of the woods might pop up at the local dog park.
After a mercifully brief period surfing friends’ couches and having to borrow knives again, I found a flat. It had a big, sunny kitchen looking out on the Wimbledon hills and a wooden block holding a set of five knives in size order: paring, miscellaneous 1, miscellaneous 2, bread, and chef.
For almost a year, these knives and I enjoyed a respectful, professional relationship – until a heinous crime took place. My flatmate got one of those knife torture machines, those slide-through sharpeners, and ruined the knives’ edges so thoroughly they may as well be serrated. I’ve included a picture below, but be warned: it’s upsetting.
By this point, I was nearing 30 and had pretty much made food my whole personality; it was time to graduate. No more three-packs. No more relying on other people to take care of their things. I needed a big-ass German blade and I needed it now.
If I had thought walking around with a Swiss Army knife felt like keeping a thrilling secret, commuting with a 10-inch, exhilaratingly sharp Zwilling pro chef’s knife in my backpack felt like having the nuclear codes. I went home and cut right through a tomato, no hands; love at first slice.
The following day, I used the label maker at work to print the name I’d given the knife and stick it on its sheath: Nino, “the little one”.
Tell me about your knives in the comments! Tell me about your stupid injuries in the comments! Tell me about your flatmates’ baffling food habits in the comments!
My favourite knife is my Global chef's knife, a total allrounder. Had it for about 15 years, and it used to have a big notch in it from misuse that has been sharpened out--that's how much I use it. Close second is a little Japanese mushroom/veg knife I love using to cut up very small things, like blueberries.
At a pasta class many years back, the rather intense instructor (in between stories of love, depression and helicopter crashes) ordered us all to buy a £15 Diswoe 8” chef knife. I’m a sucker for following instructions, so promptly did so. It has served me quite well ever since.
In cut-related news, I once managed to slice myself twice in the same evening, on two different knives, before promptly fainting in front of my dinner guests. I wasn’t even in charge of cooking that night…