I’m rapt to be useful at Christmas

“We’re going to have it in a Christmas box ... this is the final flourish. All we need now is a sprig of holly ...” — Rufus (Rowan Atkinson), Love Actually

THIS should be my time of the year to shine because blokes like me aren’t exactly thick on the ground. Not in my experience anyway.

Not only do I not mind shopping for Christmas presents, I don’t mind wrapping them either.

What’s more, I’ve done it professionally (the wrapping, I mean, professional shopping remains a pipe dream).

Strictly speaking, I’m your meat-and-potatoes wrapper. Nothing I like more than rightangled corners. When I’m confronted by a gift that is anything other than boxlike in appearance, the seeds of self doubt start sprouting again, I second-guess how I’m going to crisply fold along a curved edge and my finished job does tend to be marked down. But size doesn’t faze me. Way back when, I got my first regular job in retail. Like countless others, I had a casual Friday night/ Saturday morning job working in Myer. (The fact that this was before the era of allday Saturday shopping is perhaps indicative of just how long ago this was.) That translated into longer hours in the run to Christmas once school was done. And because I worked the floor in travel goods, I had to know my way around brown paper and sticky tape. Most customers were happy to have their docket wrapped around the handle of their brand new Airport, Tosca or Samsonite (for the real highflyers) suitcase as proof of purchase; others wanted the whole box and dice.

I could wrap the suitcase snugly, cut the paper to expose the handle — this was before wheels on cases were standard so every case had to be carried — and work out the precise amount of twine needed.

The end result looked bluecollar for 48 weeks of the year but in the dash to December 25 it could be positively festive.

These were the days when the entire business, it seemed, ran on carbon paper. Computers were a novelty, barcodes were non-existent and no-one looked at you blankly if you asked for lay-by.

Thankfully I was gone before the mantra of upselling was all-pervasive.

The closest we got was being taught to never ask a customer a question that could be answered in one word.