Seán Moncrieff: This is a delicate matter, but Herself needs a sharp knife to feed her addictions

We all have notions occasionally. Anyone who says they never have notions is having a notion right before you, in real time. They’re having a notion about themselves: which is the most notiony of notions.

Anyway, I had this notion about wine – that it was about time I got myself one of those fancy wine openers: a big, complicated-looking yoke that would effortlessly slide the corkscrew into the bottle and then glide the cork out without so much as a pop; the sort of thing that would highly impress family and friends while I waffled on about the grape and what side of a river it came from.

I wasn’t admitting to this, of course. I had a cover story: your bog-standard corkscrew – the waiter’s friend – is grand, but it comes with a certain danger. In the scenario where you’re opening a second bottle – having imbibed from the first – there is a possibility of the corkscrew slipping, of skewering your hand. It’s never happened, but it might. Hence the need for the fancy corkscrew. It was all about health and safety.

The fancy corkscrew worked as expected the first time, but when Herself used it after me, she managed to push the cork into the bottle. Naturally, I assumed some level of incompetence on her part, but when I came to use it next, I did the same. I googled, I took it apart and put it back together, but I couldn’t discover if I was doing something wrong or if the item itself was faulty. It’s in a drawer now.

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[ I never cry. My generation of men had the tears bred out of us ]

[ I get lots of feedback from readers, but this letter was the most interesting (and embarrassing) ]

Looking around our kitchen, I can see many objects that have had a similar trajectory: and I suspect we are not alone in this. Across Ireland, kitchens are full of devices that were intended to transform the preparation or consumption of food and drink but end up in the back of a cupboard. The kitchen is a graveyard of notions.

In ours, there’s a massive saucepan that was used once, a fancy weighing scales that’s never used because we also have a cheap plastic one that’s easier to clean, a slow cooker that we never got the point of, and the inevitable block of knives, all of which are quite blunt. We did buy an electric knife sharpener, but it’s somewhere in the back of a cupboard.

The next notiony thing we’ll be getting is a special tomato knife. To protect the structural integrity, only Herself will be allowed to use it

Herself blames me for the poor state of the knives as I have, on occasion, put them in the dishwasher. I’m more inclined to blame the cheapness of the knives themselves. They were never that sharp to begin with. And why do we need six knives in a block anyway? We’re not sushi chefs. We might need to cut bread or cake, or carve a roast chicken or a joint of meat. But that’s about it.

Herself’s mother doesn’t have a block of knives, but she does have an electric carving knife. It’s so old, it went to school with Éamon de Valera, but it works perfectly: and on occasion, Herself has expressed some admiration for it. So, on a notion, and making sure to point out that in no way whatsoever was this a present, I bought one. It’s in one of the drawers. We may use it someday.

In reality, the bluntness of the knives isn’t really an issue except for one specific situation. This is a delicate matter, but Herself needs a sharp knife to feed her addictions. She’s addicted to cheese and tomatoes, and as you may know, there’s nothing worse than when a blunt knife flattens the tomato rather than cuts through it.

So, the next notiony thing we’ll be getting is a special tomato knife. To protect the structural integrity, only Herself will be allowed to use it. We’ve agreed that the handle will have her name on it, expressly forbidding use by anyone else. We haven’t bought it yet. There’s nowhere to put it.