Wednesday, 30 March 2016

The Family Knife


Once part of a wedding gift-set it now exists alone in the cutlery drawer, distinct in its ancient-ness from more modern implements. “It’s been part of the family for at least two years longer than I have!” I say, and my mother laughs “so it has son, so it has”.

My Dad appropriated this old knife; now handle-less, as if it had somehow gone bald in sympathy with its fond handler. He’d spread butter and jam on his toast promptly at nine pm every evening to sit down with his mug of tea in readiness for the news or perhaps a programme about Stalin’s gulags on The History Channel.

He’d always leave the knife standing in the jam jar.

This knife has lived with them from a single-end in Clydebank to leafy Enfield Town; from East Kilbride through Kilmarnock, Kennishead Flats until the end of time.


It is the fifth Beatle of the family…

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