sharp practice

It's been blooming cold in these parts. So we've been doing indoors stuff. I've been encouraging young K to take an active part in kitchen work, because it's all got to start somewhere; the other evening, she made us a dinner of pasta in tomato sauce. And made the bread. And it was a jolly good loaf too.

And then there's knifework. I know people who are afraid of sharp knives and feel happier with barely-usably blunt ones in the kitchen. Bloody odd behaviour. "Sharp knives are safer," I say.

Up to a point....

That's my nice sushi knife in the picture, which John brought me back from Japan a couple of years back. It's my Best Knife. It's got lots of carbon in it and is so sharp it starts cutting things even before it gets to them.

So K has a go at the onions for last night's dinner (a vaguely moroccan thing with chicken and chick peas), with me hovering over her saying, "Right, now lay that half on its side and slice along that way..." and so on and being nervous as old heck. And the nervousness got on K's nerves too. "Don't be so protective," she finally said.

Oh well, payback time for all those years of riding motorbikes and dangling off cliffs and sailing through storms and walking through town centres after dark and keeping unsuitable company and.... generally doing the thousand and one things that would have all right-thinking parents breaking into a cold sweat if only they knew.

I remember someone in my house in Portsmouth once remarking; "We're the sort of people our parents warned us about...."