The oven door yawns open and a pale yellow light reveals a tray – sizzling and spitting away. The heat from the oven wells up like a 42 degree Melbourne summer scorcher-that dry sort of heat from the North – no humidity. My hands are draped in thick oven mittens that insulate my delicate skin from the sizzling surface. I pluck out the tray and rest it on the bench. Roast potatoes and the smell of rosemary suffuse the air as the lump of well browned meat is stabbed with the carving fork and transferred to the carving block. I open the top draw, the cutlery clatters together as I search for the sharpening tool. It’s handle is cloudy and yellowed from age and sits easy in my hand, my fingers protected by the butterflied ends, safe from being sliced off. I withdraw the carving knife from its scabbard and slide it along the sharpening tool toward me . It’s metal grinding on metal in a thin silver sound. I flip and push it away, flip and pull it back again, the blade gets caught in the barbs of the sharpening tool’s grooves as it goes against the grain.

Now sharpened to perfection I run the blade beneath the tap, the water pings hollow against stainless steel and echoes through the kitchen. The knife is rested on a crunchy bit of seared flesh and then glides through the roast lamb leg – easier than a surgeons scalpel delivering lean slices of meat slightly pink in the middle. They build up on the outer edge of the carving block. Steam rises up infused with the tang of lamb and rosemary. I taste a morsel and a gamey explosion of juices shatter the tranquility of my dormant tongue. My mouth begins to water, anticipating the cloudy insides of the roast potatoes, currently trapped in a their brittle scorched shells.