I’ve learned the pack drill, but I’m still struggling with an open and shut case

Workbench and vice? Check. Hammer? Check. Stanley knife? Check. Pliers? Check. Locking wrench? Check. Chisel? Check. Junior hacksaw? Check. Electric drill? Check.

I exaggerate, but only slightly. From the above list, the drill is the only item from the household DIY armoury kept under the stairs that hasn’t been pressed into action to deal with that daily trial of modern life, the sort of impregnable packaging which has us scrabbling frantically to get things open until our nerves are as shredded as our fingernails.

It’s an issue highlighted a few days ago by that champion of the consumer, Which? magazine. It claimed that four out of 10 people have hurt themselves while trying to open packaging, an assertion that rang true for me, thanks to a permanently scarred thumb that is the result of a frenzied attempt to get into a shrink-wrapped packet of kippers.

I had every sympathy with one of the magazine’s case studies, a man of 30 who despite putting in hours at the gym is defeated by the wrapping on Warburton’s crumpets, and nodded in recognition of the kindred spirits amongst the 66 per cent of those surveyed who regularly resort to knives.

There was a particularly gnomic example of what confronts us. A pair of scissors from W H Smith not only come encased in moulded plastic, but are held in place by a cable tie that requires – yes, you guessed it – a pair of scissors to cut it. If I were a betting man, I’d put this month’s mortgage money on someone, somewhere, abandoning the struggle and weeping tears of frustration over that one.

A new set of lights for my bicycle brought me to the verge of that at the weekend. It was the usual routine – scrabble, scrabble, scrabble to get through the plastic. No joy. Get the kitchen scissors out of the drawer and have a go with them. The plastic bent one of the blades. It’s going to have to be the serious stuff, then. Go into the understairs cupboard for the toolbox, and bang my head on the ironing board.

Just make a cup of tea and calm down, I told myself, before embarking on round two. The Stanley knife needed a new blade. Nicked my finger putting one in. Cue much sucking of finger and muttered oaths. 
Found a sticking plaster, but took so long trying to get the wrapping off it that I got blood on my shirt, which had been clean on not half an hour before. Counted slowly to 10 to stop myself hurling bike lights, 
Stanley knife and anything else that came to hand across the kitchen while bellowing in inarticulate and impotent rage.

Out to the garage to use the workbench to rest the lights on, and cut carefully around the 
edge of the package. It still didn’t yield. Cut a bit more. No, still not enough. A deep breath, and then a bold stroke with the knife. Success at last. Well, sort of. The package popped open, the batteries inside fell out and rolled all over the floor, and the new rear light’s got a scratch on it as a result of my handiwork.

A dentist once told me he saw a regular procession of patients who’d chipped their teeth or lost fillings as a result of reaching such a pitch of fury while trying to open things that they resorted to biting the packet in a last, desperate attempt to make an impression on it.

Of course, the irony is that the packaging is often more durable than the product it encases. In an age where anything that breaks is simply chucked away without any attempt being made to fix it, the packaging it comes in is the everyday equivalent of the sort 
of indestructible material that black box flight recorders are made of.

Whatever happened to user-friendly cardboard boxes and brown paper bags? Why does so much of our lives have to be shrink-wrapped and blister-packed and heat-sealed, with all the consequent frustrations? Absolutely everything comes with added packaging. Even cucumbers, that grow their own perfectly good leathery green packaging, come wrapped in plastic.

The greatest hazard in the home used to be the corned beef tin. I doubt that anybody who has ever lived alone does not have a tale to tell about an episode of slicing that had nothing to do with the corned beef itself.

No longer. The mania for packaging that renders our food and household items into a succession of miniature Fort Knoxes has produced a nation of the wild-eyed, desperate and furious, courting injury by jabbing away agitatedly with knives and tools that common sense dictates they should never go anywhere near because of serial incompetence, throwing caution to the winds and suffering a million cuts and grazes as a consequence.

Maybe it’s all a conspiracy by the people who manufacture sticking plasters to get rich on the back of all those mishaps. Talking of which, I’d better get the plasters out and ready. I’ve a new toothbrush to unwrap. Now then, where’s the Stanley knife?