RANDOM REMINDER

Press, Volume CIV, Issue 30768, 4 June 1965, Page 22

RANDOM REMINDER

BACKING THE SYSTEM

Are our old fingers losing their cunning, their feel, their nimble, supple strength? Or is it that the packaging boys, for some unknown reason of their own, are determined to turn us into a nation of frustrated neurotics? It’s one thing or the other with us for we are having more and more difficulty in peeling away the stuff in which they wrap everything these days. At moments of great stress, for instance, we find it quite impossible to break our way into a new packet of cigarettes. Ground coffee, in its ducky little plastic bag, streams all over the kitchen whenever it’s our turn to make the coffee. We can never get into a new shirt without some plastic coming clammily between us. We have caused some trouble on the first tee lately by

tearing at the plastic round our new golf ball with the teeth, a sight our opponents regard as designed to upset them. And afternoon tea is a terrible trial when you balance a teacup on one knee and attempt to break and enter a packet of biscuits with only one hand. Maddening too are the little cachets of sauce which come with our fish and chips. We would a dozen times over prefer to open a sauce bottle with a defective cork than attempt one of these without some sharp scissors. But we have heard, we think, of the ultimate absurdity—and it was not plastic wrapped in plastic. A castor on a colleague’s living room chair collapsed after 20 years’ service the other day and his wife sought a replacement. She found, however, that castors are no longer single, separata entities. They

are sold in sets like valuable stamps, wrapped in plastic; and rare indeed is the hardware man who will break a set of what he rates as rare, genuine and highly-sought castors for a customer who wants only one. But she is more determined than they; and after being refused at four of these establishments, she demanded at the fifth that the man behind the counter cut his way into the little plastic bag and sell her a quarter of the contents at a quarter of the price for the set. He saw reason in her claim that four castors are unlikely to go home at one time on anyone’s chair and once the word got round that his shop sold castors singly there would be a steady stream beating a path to the door. All of which goes to show that you can buck th* system if you really try.