Home life
Pack drill
Alice Thomas Ellis
Janet went off and bought us a new duvet recently because the feathers in the old one had migrated into one corner which just about served to keep Someone's feet warm. I have no quarrel with the new duvet, but I'm terribly bored with the cardboard box it came in. It is still sitting in a corner of the bedroom doing nothing for the elegance of this already overcrowded chamber. I hate cardboard boxes. In the country all our shopping comes packed in cardboard boxes and they pile up in no time, together with milk bottles and egg cartons. Someone has evolved quite a good method of dealing with them. He leaves them out in the rain, so they go all limp, and then jumps on them. This is effective, but I find it somehow unseemly and cannot bring myself to do likewise. It seems rather amateurish and makeshift. I would prefer to disassemble them so that they go flat, only I can never wrench the staples out. In order to burn them you have to tear them to bits, and then you have to keep relight- ing them because the bits lie on top of each other, like the pastry in cream slices, and the flames can't get a hold. They are maddening things and only cats love them. Quite often I go to pick up a cardboard box and a cat leaps out, inducing incipient cardiac arrest. Why, I asked Janet, did they have to pack duvets in cardboard boxes anyway? Ours was also already sealed in a stout plastic bag, which I would `Come on, just for a laugh.' have thought quite adequate to exclude dust and moth. She explained that it would be difficult to keep piles of unboxed duvets in the shop because they would slither about and topple over, but I'm not con- vinced.
Manufacturers are potty about packag- ing. I'm sure they give it more thought than the stuff inside. I have broken my finger- nails on biscuit packets and practically pulled out teeth on frozen food bags — the scissors are always missing when it's time to heat up the peas. Those childproof medicine bottles are proof against anyone but children, whose ingenious little minds are currently conversant with puzzles. Most people forget how to do puzzles when they reach maturity. I can see why eggs and meringues and squashy chocs have to be put in rigid boxes, but why do tights and stockings have to come armoured in the ubiquitous cardboard? Even ciggies have three layers of protection, which seems excessive, and toothbrushes and the better class of pen come in virtually impregnable containers. I used to get cross when tubes cA toothpaste came in additional cardboard boxes — I expect the reasoning behind this is that, unboxed, they would slither about and topple over — but I prefer tubes to the new missile-type container. Shaving foam comes in precisely similar missiles and it is very horrible cleaning one's teeth with shaving foam. It can't be too pleasant shaving with toothpaste either.
Everything is wrapped up and I remem- ber wistfully the days when I had to scrape the grocer's grubby thumbprints off the cheddar. The cheddar now may be fright- fully hygienic but its consistency is pecu- liar. I had a fierce battle with two ham- burgers last night — plastic tray, madly gripping cling-film and cardboard box, all popped in yet another plastic bag.
When I was in Egypt I noticed very little packaging. On our arrival Abdul, the porter, went and bought us some falafal off the street in an old copy of Al Ahram. The meat hangs on hooks in the open air with its tail still on, and little boys chase the flies off the bread with a whisk.
Now I've got a theory about this. In Egypt chastity is of supreme importance and here it isn't. Egyptian ladies are all wrapped up and ours — weather permit- ting — aren't. Nevertheless all peoples have their quotient of puritanism and ours has simply taken on another form. It has put everything except people into chastity belts and it will be interesting to see what happens now that Aids threatens to curtail all the jolly freedoms. For the first time in years I have read articles boldly extolling the values of chastity and fidelity — not many as yet, but the tide is beginning to turn. The moment I find myself able to buy dirty cheese and loaves with a sprinkling of fag ash I shall know that morality has returned to its proper sphere and I won't have to worry any more about breaking my fingernails on cardboard boxes.
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