That’s Sylvia Plath’s way of saying ‘ouch, I cut myself’. It happened to me the other day: I opened my box of kitchen belongings and found two knives my mother had put in. They were stuck in hard plastic packages for safety. I asked myself, ‘Shall I walk across the room to get some scissors, or shall I just try to yank them out of the packets?’

So I yanked. The real tragedy was that the first one worked. It came out so easily that I did the second one without hesitation. Then I noticed that there was a dark bit on my arm. It was cut down into the purple stuff, and blood was running freely. The knife had been very sharp. It didn’t really hurt.

Now I’m going to have a scar about as long as the last bone on your little finger, just down from the inside of my elbow. When you ask how I did it, I’ll refuse to say. Your imagination will get the better of you, I think.