Ouch

A couple of weeks ago, in a rare trip to IKEA in Cardiff, I bought myself a few cheap kitchen knives. We needed a bread knife anyway, as the old one I bought in 1987 no longer so much cuts bread as squashes it into amusing, but inappropriate for sandwich making, shapes. Like everything in IKEA there was the cheap and nasty, and the not so cheap but still cheaper than most high street stores, and then the expensive but beautifully designed.

I see little point in paying large sums of money for razor sharp Japanese knives, lovingly crafted by some little old man in a back-street workshop in downtown Nara. I'm hopeless at keeping a decent edge on the things, so cheap works just as well for me. After some consideration I came home with a mid-range bread knife, a cooks knife* a paring knife and a little knife that is most likely to be useful for winkling things out of tight spaces.** All in, I spent about twenty-five pounds.

And they've been perfectly serviceable knives so far. They can all cut through a lemon, slicing the pips in half, which is my idea of sharp. The bread knife leaves my slices sandwich shaped and so far I haven't come across anything needing winkling out of a tight space, so it's still early days on that one. Today, however, I came across the downside of having sharp knives in the kitchen. They cut through things.

It's gone, but I don't know which dog got it for his supper

Yesterday we had roast beef for supper, and due to my inability to think things through, it was rather later in the evening than normal. Consequently the Horse Doctor had gone through the famished stage, past the 'where's my bloody supper***' moment and on into the 'I'm not very hungry anymore' sulk. She didn't eat all that was put in front of her,**** so this evening, I was cutting it up into small pieces to give to the dogs. I must have been distracted by something, as I managed to slice a sizeable chunk of nail, nail bed and the end of my left middle finger off in one swift pass.

As you probably all know, fingers bleed profusely. Surprisingly enough, this cut was pretty painless (I hadn't been cutting chilli peppers with the knife - done that once, don't want to go to that world of pain again.) It was a clean, sharp cut and it oozed blood like I might soon run out. I had to spend half an hour sitting down with my hand raised like I wanted to be excused class. Finally it stopped bleeding, and then the dull throb began.

It was inevitable with new knives that I would end up cutting myself. I've managed more than two weeks unscathed, so I could count myself both lucky and careful. This one is destined to be an annoying injury though. It's my mouse finger for one thing,***** and it's right on the tip of the finger for another. Guitar playing will be difficult for a few days, and this post took more than twice as long to type as I would normally expect.

Maybe I can use it as an excuse for my pathetic writing output.

OK, so maybe I missed the fingertip, but it hurts.

*why do they call it a cook's knife? I mean, aren't they all? Or are some designated as 'potential murder weapon' knives, whose purpose is to be on hand when a drug-crazed burglar breaks into your kitchen at four in the morning, and which have absolutely no culinary use whatsoever.
**until the tip breaks off somewhere awkward and it becomes a garden knife to be left by mistake in the compost bin and not found for two years.
*** we like our beef still lowing gently. A good vet could probably save it.
**** thus forfeiting her pudding.
***** no, I'm not a southpaw, I just prefer to use my mouse with my left hand. You got a problem with that?