French girls with knives and other such obscurities

A few nights ago we made a chili that my mother would be proud of. We encountered one major issue along the way, however. We did not have a tin opener for the kidney beans, chopped tomatoes etc. Panic ensued.
Luckily for us, we live with a girl who is rather remarkable. She's called Camille, she's from France and she can open any man made container with a kitchen knife and sheer determination. She simply stabbed the tin and sawed until our kidney beans had been liberated. This was a pretty cool sight at the best of times, but it was made better by the fact that the last time I saw her she was opening a bottle of wine with a knife while holding a conversation about the French author Michel Houellebeq. Sometimes I feel British culture removes the need for such basic life skills. Maybe we should encourage a revival of self-sufficiency and cast off the shackles of our machine-dependent world.
Or maybe we should just buy a can opener.