Le Roi des Eplucheurs

I have been told that in recent weeks I have been failing to maintain those high standards of political or philosophical debate and rigorous analysis of current affairs for which Other Men's Flowers has become a byword wherever top name academics and intellectuals forgather.
There may be something in this, for in my last few posts I have been dealing with some rather frivolous matters of no great consequence; I must now turn to more serious issues which concern us all.
I have always liked peeling vegetables. Not only is this best done while sitting down and watching TV (not the case with, say, playing squash), but is often a source of both sensual and aesthetic pleasure, which is also unlike playing squash. The gorgeous rich colour of a sweet potato that shows itself when the dirty calloused skin comes off, the smoothness of the dark green peel sliding away from a courgette to reveal the pale delicate flesh beneath, perhaps with a darker stripe where the pressure has been too light or the stroke went crooked, the soft hiss when you do a quick zip along the length of a carrot….
Ah, these are delights to savour! But, with peeling vegetables as with any kind of physical task, both the pleasure to be had from it and its effectiveness depend greatly on the implements used.

I have known quite experienced peelers who make life difficult for themselves by using the fixed-blade kind of tool (rather like those people who use anything other than a Waiter’s Friend for opening bottles of wine).
My own device is a real beauty, with a soft rubber handle fitting snugly in the palm and, of course, a blade that swivels; I have titled this post in its honour.


I hope this brief note dispels the canard that OMF is concerned only with trivialities of little interest to the thinking man.