If I ever say blogging hasn’t done anything for me…. don’t you believe me….please.
I can write a very long list about the perks:
- It has given me a new lease on life
- Many new friends
- And a very interesting knife!
After my sushi class a few weeks ago, I stopped at DOK to get a back-up bread knife and met Arnold again, the shop boss. They didn’t have any bread knives left….but they had this strange looking bread and butter knife! It wasn’t so expensive so I took one. By the time I got to the till to pay, Arnold walked up to me and said, ‘Don’t worry about paying – you can have it, I really like your blog’!
Excitement – if I was a drink, I would have been Champagne being poured into a goblet – all bubbly. However, being human, I gushed out numerous thanks, let the warm feeling of joy and recognition course through my veins and left the shop happy. Glad that things had changed and the chance to forgive and forget had been given to me.
See, it all started a few years ago when I got decided to look whats cool at the shop and got 4 knives after sufficient Google research. The verdict was buy good quality knives not cheap ones and so 2 years later, with 3 hardly-used knives and 1 over-used knife, I was very upset. And all because of €100. A whole €100….As far as I was concerned, there was only one good thing about the whole debacle and that only set me back a fiver…. who would make up for the rest €95?
On that fateful day 2 years ago, my hubby and I had purchased a selection of knives and 10 minutes later, well-educated on the finer points of japansese craftsmanship we went for the store’s own brand knives. For good measure, at the last minute, we threw in a small bread knife for an extra five quid. I did all the weight and size tests and felt satisfied. €100 later, they were ours.
After a few months using them, I noticed they were becoming blunt. So I used the knife sharpener, which we also bought that day. That didn’t work well…..and so I abandoned the knives.
Save for the bread knife. My favourite knife. My slice, dice and chop knife.
Fast forward to M’s visit 2 years later and a grudging visit to the shop…again. It is in the Hague’s passage (French pronunciation) – a lovely covered corridor lined with shops in their ownvery trendy ilk – shoe shops and bookstores, coffee and tea purveyors, antiques, cookware…to name but a few.
My mission: to get more of the great bread knife for a few of my friends in the UK who loved it (they’d seen it when they visited in the summer). While @ DOK, I happened to mention my blunt knives, to which the guy replied – ‘Do you sharpen them?’…I said ‘Yes’. He said again, ‘Do you sharpen them everyday?’ And I stopped in my tracks, asking ‘Are you supposed to sharpen knives everyday?’… to which he said, ‘Yes’.
If you have new knives, sharpen them daily. If they’ve sat too long and are blunt, don’t chuck them out, take them to a registered/good knife sharpener!
Relief. Comfort, joy and happiness. Forgiveness and peace…they all coursed through my veins with absolute delight. DOK a shop I loved (and could now admit to loving) had been forgiven, vindicated, restored to its pride of place in my heart…. with those few words. No longer deceived by the shop’s bright lights… or by my mind, I felt renewed and reinvigorated and left so, so, so happy with my bread knives.
Interestingly, when I went to London and gave my friends the knives, I was instantly rewarded with some money- apparently, if you receive a gift of a knife from a friend, you have to give some money (a token) in return so as not to ‘cut’ the freindship!
So back to this knife…my bread and butter knife, it is quite interesting. It has dual sides and uses – a serrated edge for slicing bread and a smooth side for spreading butter, finshed off with a rounded top…I (really can’t say tip!) which gives it an overall interesting shape.
Anyway, let it be known, I LOVE DOK! and I love blogging.
….check it out- F-2-F or online….
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