Looking around my room, in a strange place (um, again, yes, in central Asia), I see that I seem to have acquired two Swiss Army 'Explorer' models. I like them, handy, useful, easily stashed away in a briefcase, (one of them) while the other resides on my desk in my room.
I also seem to have acquired the monster, the 'Grand' model - I bought that before returning to Bosnia for my third election there in two years in 1998 (a model that came with a strangely self-indulgent fork, for the wusses amongst us, in which company I can be counted as an honourable, venerable and most esteemed member, as well as a countless number of knives) - an extraordinarily well-equipped set of blades. The thing is fat, well-equipped, inviting; inexplicably, nobody ever stole it from me in the meantime, and I still seem to have it, fork, spoon, and everything else (I sometimes have to consult the detailed manual that came with it to remember what it contains).
During an extended spell in the Caucasus, a few years ago, a knife obsessed ex Gurkha officer (with whom I was quite friendly - we shared curry recipes), gave me a farewell gift of a Wenger knife (equipped with an adequate sufficiency of appropriate and lethal, blades; my farewell gift to him was several jars of curry paste, from Asian shops in western Europe, which I brought back from leave, an offering he received with whimpers of joy).
Anyway, while - most of the time - the Swiss Army knives are regarded (by me) relatively tranquilly, and accident free (cutting your nails while slightly inebriated - and, of course, missing - doesn't really count, to my mind, as something serious; plasters on digits can always be explained away relatively easily), the Wenger, regarded by my Gurkha ex-officer friend as 'much better than those Victorinox, because Wenger are real knives', led, most unfortunately, (while sober, worse still) to several sad encounters, most of which weren't even felt at the time, until one saw (with growing horror) the rubicund flow which followed (invariably, during a fatuous attempt to clean the damn thing).
When my Gurkha ex-officer friend enquired, enthusiastically, how I was getting on with his (lethal) offering, I lied (perhaps, the expression: "I was economical with the truth" might sound a bit better?) and informed him, with suave mendacity, 'brilliantly'. The Wenger sits in my bedroom, at home, in western Europe, and looks reproachfully at me when I return. "Take me out to play," it pleads. Hm. Maybe.
Now, I did allude to the cleaning issue, as, (aforementioned slicing of digits had occurred while said digits were trying to scrape fruit from the damned thing - which, yes, granted, did slice through everything as a hot blade is said to do to butter) and received the wonderful reply. "Oh, didn't I tell you? We always cleaned them by wiping them on a blade of grass." Right. Okay....I, um, hear you....
