Going through a drawer, this old penknife brought back some memories! It was always in my blazer pocket at school, and accompanied me on many adventures - I would use it to cut pegs for the snares I set when I sneaked out of the school grounds, and then use it again to skin and joint the resulting rabbits for cooking up in the brew-room. Carry one of these in school today and you'd probably get counselling, or a criminal record. That's progress for you.The knife was a present from my dad. As you can see, it had a hard life. The carbon blades got rusty and discoloured, the horn scales split and I mended them with Araldite, and I sharpened the main blade almost to destruction!
One of the many useful lessons this knife taught me was about not cutting towards yourself. I was trying to cut a notch in a wooden box (part of an elaborate plot to spotlight and shoot a fox that was prowling round the pheasant pens) and foolishly held the box in my left hand while slicing with the knife in my right. Well, you can imagine what happened. The doctor put two stitches in it, and the scar is still there today!
3 comments:
Knives unlock memories as well as cutting fingers!
SBW
Cool post! So what sort of knife are you carrying these days?
Mostly this Gerber Air Ranger, but that one probably* falls foul of the law here, so if I'm going in to town I'll usually carry this Spiderco which falls within the legal definition of a 'folding pocket knife' and shouldn't get me into trouble.
*So far as I know the law hasn't been tested on this point, but the general interpretation is that any locking knife could be dodgy. On the other hand, it might be argued that a knife that can be folded one-handed as quickly as a non-locker is 'capable of being folded at all times'. Personally, I'd rather leave someone else to fight the system; a thankless task, and expensive too!
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