THE TABLE TOOLS

Auckland Star, Volume LXXIV, Issue 219, 15 September 1943, Page 4

THE TABLE TOOLS

AND MENU MIXERS

NO MORE BIG KNIVES

The British Standards Institution has announced that "no more largesize table knives and forks are to be made." The ear of imagination seems to catch from here and there a faint sigh of relief, remarks the London Times. Mr. Salteena, dining for the first time with Bernard Clark got "rather flustered with hs forks" True, Mr. Salteena was "not quite a gentleman"; and later in the meal he was nonplusseid with the costly finger bowls. But what , with grapefruit, and oysters, ana lobster; and asparagus, and cream cakes, the Persian apparatus tended in the past to be an embarrassment, and some slight measure of simplification may not be unwelcome even in the best circles. Spoons arc not to be restricted. That is good news, so far as it goes. It will still be the fault of the house or the restaurant if the same sort of spoon is lata for minestrone as for consomme, ancl if a man, with or without a moustache is expected to take his soup from an oval spoon bowl in complete silence. With forks, again, even a Salteena cannot make an irreparable mistake. Beef ancl mutton (and. still more, "spam" or "prem") can be speared almost as firmly on a fish fork as on anv other kind or .size; and the dessert, fork (so called, in the true English way, because it is never used at dessert) is small enough for Margaret Minnikin-mou' and big enough for Muckle-mouth Meg or her expansive English lover. Knives are a very different matter. There are practical difficulties about, them. It will not have escaped notice that some people (not all of them resident on this side of the Atlantic) take much more interest in the talk than in the food. It is their practice to begin by cutting up their helping, pin, the knife down, and thereafter eat a mouthful if and when they happen to think of it. All goes j well if they are lucky enough to; have picked up the right sort and size of knife. But. intent on the conversation, they take a knife at; random. A mere mistake in size j (which anyone may make) may leave the diner'before long trying lo put. butter on a brittle biscuit with a weapon that feels as large as a baseball bat. Such practical difficulties will no longer beset the high-minded and the unsophisticated. But there I is room for anxiety about the effect I of the new simplicity upon table \ manners. Time was when a gentle-; man could be defined as one who: never ate peas and cheese off the same knife. When all knives are cheese knives gentility will be much,' harder to maintain. Another refinement is threatened:

I eat mv peas v.'ith honev: I've (tone it all my life, It makes the peas tnste funny. But it keeps them on the knife.

The smaller the knife, the more need there is for the honey—and honey is nol easy to come by just now. Still, as the official announcements put it. there is no occasion for undue alarm (as if there ever was!). Fingers were made before forks, and wo have all known what, it is to gnaw a sausage off a wooden spike. Indeed, we may cheer ourselves with "O passi graviora." How long is it since in the garden of someforeign inn we thought, it great fun to sit at. table with only one knife for several course--- and a hunk of bread to wipe it on?