A moment ago, I opened a new tin of Nescafe Azera coffee. I say opened, It was more like attempting to peel my fingernails off with a blunt pair of garden shears. The lid did eventually remove itself with a loud FLUMP!!. But the foil? When I finally got that off, it made a noise rather like this: SNAP!!. Explaining the bloody stumps for fingernails I was left with.
That, you see, is the nature of the problem. Not the blunt garden shears, they have other uses (I use them for stirring paint). And not nature, even though I said it was. I have nothing against nature. No, the packaging. Modern packaging requires a kind of dexterity that humankind has yet to develop. Or at least, this old human, anyway.
It’s not just cans of coffee. Mary, my wife, needed the tea caddy filling up. A task I was more than happy to undertake. The cellophane around the box of Yorkshire tea, however, had other ideas.
Being a holder of the finest blend of tea in square tea bags, it had no intention of letting me remove the cellophane (a word that implies it is, in fact, a musical instrument, used by a hardcore punk band from Canada). It had no intention of releasing the tea. It just stood there, glistening maliciously.
I used a pair of garden secateurs to chop the corner of the box open. It’s a good job we keep garden equipment in the kitchen, like everyone else does.
Then, it was time to get the milk out. I mean, get the milk out of the container it turned out to be kidnapped in. A new milk container cap is fixed on by a particularly annoyed robot called Colin. He is annoyed because he doesn’t like the name, Colin. He wanted to be called Horatio, Arthur, or Tobias. Something grand. But he got lumbered with Colin.
So, in vengeance, he now ensures that all milk caps are tightened beyond human capability to open them. He uses a setting that Venusians would need to use on Venus to temper the titanium used for their tea mugs.
I wrestled it open by taking it out to the garage, locking the cap in my vice and using a power drill to slowly turn the bottle anti-clockwise until milk appeared.
Having been through these trials and tribulations to make a cup of tea, I decided a biscuit would be nice. Damn, the shortbreads were new. And still boxed. With a cellophane wrapping. I used the secateurs to chop the corner of the box open. A handy manoeuvre because it broke two biscuits, which I then had to eat. Of course.
Right, my rant about packaging is almost at a start because my keyboard likes the sound of the kettle boiling.
I will mention one other packaging crisis. That of the standard bag of chips from a chip shop. They wrap them in greaseproof paper. Paper that is about as greaseproof as my left slipper.
I happened to be in a Chip Shop last week that served them in a cardboard box. A genius move. They were the finest chips I have ever tasted. And the box tasted of chips, salt, and vinegar. Although, I found out afterwards that I wasn’t supposed to eat the box.
I believe this article is fin…
(The rest of Mr. Hawthorne’s column was eaten by the printer’s dog, who reported that it tasted of vinegar and greaseproof paper. — Ed.)