He had been studying it, on and off, for years. Knives, they were the important thing: buy a good one and keep it sharp. His knife had saved him and the squadron more than once, on ops. Such delightful games their masters loved to play, drop a handful of bods into Libya, single ticket, find your own ways home, last one in’s a sissy…. “Fortnight of sun and sand, gentlemen, there’s them as would give their right hands …” Oh yes, it was a man’s life in the army. As long as you had a tempered steel blade, however, you need not starve. Albert’s Sabatier had lived with him since Oxford days, although it was much thinner than of yore. Now it resembled a bodkin rather than a kitchen knife. He kept the blade keen enough to kill, skin and chop a snake, but today ossi buchi were on the menu and veal required less of an edge. Albert had cultivated the same butcher for years, until he could be assured of getting meat from a calf under three months old. Later he would use the same knife to chop parsley for the gremolata, which strictly speaking was against the rules, but a well-honed knife would always forgive.
