“A butter knife”, I said, like Lady Bracknell enquiring about a handbag.
Like a best-selling author I’ve jumped into the good bit and now there’s the boring back-story. The kitchen door managed to lock itself shut. Fortunately the Antipodean architect, anticipating such an inconvenience, designed another way in without a door (an economical method of ingress and egress) so not a disaster but an inconvenience, as it makes the journey to the cellar into a yoyage, like detouring round the Cape when the Suez Canal is closed.
It was not clear if I needed a specialist locksmith or a handyman. Fortunately a bathroom tap was broken so I got a plumber who could advise on the broken lock. He took a look and said “do you have a butter knife”. I was out of my depth. A Polish accent and my deafness meant I thought he wanted a butter knife when of course he needed some special knife from my workshop – the envy of DIY enthusiasts in W6. He kept saying “butter knife” until I moved things along asking “do you mean a knife for spreading butter?” He was remarkably patient and when I gave him a butter knife opened the lock in a few seconds. I suppose it’s part of every burglar’s kit.
A definition of a gentleman/woman is someone who uses a butter knife, even when alone. I confess I do not use a butter knife to dig into the Lurpak, slightly salted, spreadable carton. On the other hand my grandparents would have been unable to transfer a pat of butter from the silver (glass-lined) butter dish to a side plate without a silver butter knife.
Roger Hudson, in An Englishman’s Commonplace Book, furnishes two more definitions.
“The hereditary characteristics of a country squire, namely considerable ignorance, under the guidance and direction of strong prejudice, without any mixture of deliberate malignity whatsoever. (The English Chronicle, circa 1780)
“Someone who can make a grouse do for six”. (Adam Nicolson describing his father in, The Gentry)