Longing for life uncomplicated by packaging

Packaging is the bane of my life. There is a type of very tough plastic which is impossible to break without resorting to shears or flamethrowers. I once watched Frank Skinner banish the same stuff on his TV show Room 101 after needing scissors to open a package, only to discover the scissors came wrapped in the self-same material.

I chuckled but it’s no laughing matter. The latest fad to annoy me is cooking instructions stuck to the bottom of food packets.

I grab the ingredients from the fridge, rip off the top cover then end up in an insane yoga position trying to read the instructions without the contents dropping out all over the floor.

Is it just a man thing?

We are not known for trusting instructions but sometimes even chaps need a little guidance on how long to cook a chop.

Meanwhile, the bin is overflowing with discarded plastic.

Wouldn’t it be nice to go back to the dark days before we all became obsessed with this ‘green’ recycling rubbish?

You know, when milk was delivered in glass bottles on electric floats and the empties were collected the next day to be cleaned and reused?

Everything was wrapped in paper bags which would rot?

Or the rag-and-bone man took old clothes, pots and pans and shoes to repair or turn into glue?

Recycling was a way of life after the country was forced to ‘make do and mend’ during the war years.

Nothing was wasted.

Mums kept a box of buttons to repair shirts and coats.

And kids could dine out on sweets on the proceeds of ‘deposits’ from empty bottles of pop.

We all took a ‘bag for life’ to the shops. In those days, we called it a shopping bag.

Life was a lot less complicated then.

‘I end up in an insane yoga position trying to read the instructions without the contents dropping out all over the floor’