Parcel Wrapping 101

My first job was on the Deli counter at Coles, or it might have been Woolies. Well that was my first real job cos I don't suppose it is right to count the summer when I was 12 when I lied to a crazy cow with 3 small kids that I was 14 and so spent 6 whole weeks carelessly looking after those shitful kids and ironing the crazy cows sheets and curtains - yep that's something I am hoping the senility demon will eat up, and any time soon would be OK.

Anyway the Deli counter was an excellent place to learn how to wrap stuff.

It didn't matter what the 'stuff' was, it needed to be tightly wrapped in white paper as fast as you could manage cos there was always some angry old codger there waiting and going on and on about how short my dress was and wasn't my bright blue eye shadow just a bit much for this early on a Saturday morning. So I wrapped up the Salami and it looked like long thin dicks and I wrapped up the squishy coleslaw tightly locked into a baggie so it looked like some mad cloud, but it all needed to be tight tight tight, cos back in the day, the price was written on the package with a fat felt pen and noone was happy if the pen stuck a hole in the paper and made a big bloody mess.

That wrapping experience has armed me with speed and expertise that is somewhat staggering to my family, who all agonise over every fold and corner, and so if we are all around the table together, I drive 'em mad with my slap dash attack and they drive me nuttier with the fastidious care and inevitable tantrums when the sticky tape gets stuck where it aught not be.

If the parcel is a one off, like some special thing for a special person's special birthday, I am happy to take time and tart it all up a little with curly ribbon and bits of decos, but at chrissie when there are lots of silly little bits of nonsense to wrap, speed is all important I reckon, especially when we play, 'Guess what's in the parcel' based on some very obscure clue, the clues take me far more time than the wrapping.

So Zig and I got a start on today and I hope I have shown him that it's not always necessary for the wrap to be perfect. He must have heard me say, 'Ooops oh shit, Oh Well, at least it's covered.' a few dozen times so maybe he will have got the idea. Stevie will never loosen up, with the sticky tape. He will disappear with a couple of beers and reappear hours later, in a sweat, proudly placing perfectly wrapped bits.

Ah horses for courses.