The Good Old Days

This morning, whilst preparing Andy's lunch, I sustained a cucumber related injury. Actually, it wasn't an injury from the cucumber per se; it was from the knife that I was using to prise the skin tight plastic wrapping from the cucumber.

Back in the old days, you could go into a shop and by a naked cucumber. I know this because in my youth I had a weekend job in my grandparent's farm shop, and the cucumbers would arrive from the wholesaler in a cardboard box, sans plastic but avec a delicate wrapping of dark blue tissue paper on top.

Why cucumbers have to be shrinked-wrapped in plastic these days I know not. Same reason that manufacturers of ketchup, salad cream, barbecue sauce and toothpaste feel they have to cover the tiny hole twixt bottle top and bottle cap with a sliver of foil, so when you open a new bottle/ tube you stand there squeezing like an idiot and wondering why your ketchup, salad cream, barbecue sauce, toothpaste is resolutely refusing to appear on your egg, chips, wedges, toothbrush.

It's Health and Safety gone MAD! Ironic, too, as I cut myself opening a cucumber this morning.

The only wrapping improvement since the 70s I can think of is the replacement of foil yogurt pot lids with plastic film lids. My Dad used to tell me off about licking the foil lids.
'You'll cut your tongue,' he said.

Well, yes, I did on the odd occasion, but it didn't stop me because we never take notice of our parents, do we, and besides, he always licked his knife after spreading jam on his toast and I was too young then to understand the theory of 'Do as I say, not as I do' that parents employ.

Anyway, after a morning of housework and running errands, I'm off for a spot of civilised lunch with my friend Jean. And then I need to go paint and carpet shopping because a man has been out to give me a quote for redecorating the living room, which I have accepted, and he can start next week which took me a bit by surprise on the 'am I ready?' front.

But don't tell Andy, cos he doesn't know yet.

Happy Full Moon! Mind the cucumbers!