Knife throwing class

Ok, not throwing...But it was still a knife class.
My friend Mary invited a few of us to Divertimenti, which is this lovely cooking school in Marylebone High Street. You had to walk through their kitchen shop to get to where they were doing the class, and I was itching to go shopping. It's one of those types of shops where you can buy mango slicers or something equally as useless, but it's supposed to make life sooooo much easier. I can't resist it somehow - it's having grown up on Ronco commercials on tv. Anything that slices or dices holds a certain fascination for me.

That's probably why I signed up for this course. I've always had the feeling that I've never really understood how to really use a knife properly - that's why I have these cuts all over my hands. Well, we spent 2 hours chopping, mincing, julienning and (not sure if I have this one correctly...) chiffonading, which I think means shredding. (But with a knife of course - which is doubly strange!) In fact, we spent so much time in the preparation, I almost didn't have time to eat the products of your time-consuming work.
I was enticed, however, to purchase a brand-new (read:expensive) knife - after spending two hours with the Global knife, I fell in love with the feel of it. When I got home, I promptly unwrapped it, used it and sliced my finger in no short order.
So I still don't know what I'm doing, but now I'm doing it with an expensive knife and feeling good about the pain I'm inflicting on myself.