7 Reasons

Tag: environmental

  • 7 Reasons That I Won’t Be Sending My Christmas Cards Until Christmas Eve

    7 Reasons That I Won’t Be Sending My Christmas Cards Until Christmas Eve

    It’s almost Christmas and one of the aspects of the festival that I hate the most is writing Christmas cards.   But I’ve come up with a cunning plan for dealing with them.  This year, I won’t be sending any Christmas cards out until Christmas Eve.  Here are seven reasons why.

    A stack of envelopes with stamps affixed ready to be dispatched

    1.  Space.  When you’re buying your stamps or posting your cards, the post office on Christmas Eve is a far more convivial atmosphere than the post office on December 18th.  When I’m posting my cards tomorrow, I’m going to be alone, with just the post office staff wearing their Santa hats and antlers, and eating their mince pies, (which they’ll probably share with me).   And, instead of being stuck in a long mazy queue of grey people coughing, I’m going to have space to stretch my arms out and spin around.  And that’s what I’m going to do; just because I can.  And because it’s less cruel than swinging a cat.

    2.  Time.  Leaving the cards until the last minute will have other benefits too.  Had I written my cards early I’d have spent lots of time writing them out neatly, but I didn’t do that this year, and now that Christmas Eve is almost upon us, I’m doing the Christmas cards as a rush job.  So that’s a lot less time that I’ve spent writing cards: Time that I was able to use more productively.  I didn’t obviously, I spent it mulling things and playing Angry Birds. I also photoshopped a hat onto the statue of liberty.  But it’s still time saved.

    3.  Inclusivity.  It’s more inclusive if I send my cards on Christmas Eve.  After all, I’m notoriously forgetful, but I know who I’ve received a card from because there’s a bushel of them in the living room.  Or a gross.  Or a flock (I have no idea how quantities of cards are measured), so it’s easy enough for me to work out who’s sent them and reply.  So if you’ve sent me a card, you’ll get one in return:  And if you haven’t, then you won’t.  Obviously if anyone else is using the same system as me then that’s unfortunate, but if they are, that would benefit the…

    4.  Environment.  That the Christmas cards I’ve sent won’t be received until after Christmas is good for the planet.  Because no one sends out a Christmas card after Christmas, so people won’t send out any cards in reply to mine.  So there’ll be less wasted paper, and I’ll have less recycling to do in January.  Which is great, as the first recycling day of the New Year is usually like some sort of glass-themed labour of Hercules, but without Hercules and starring me instead.

    5.  Blame.  And no one even need know that their cards weren’t sent until Christmas Eve (unless they’re reading this.  Damn) because what’s the default opinion on the Royal Mail in this country?  It’s that they’re hapless and inefficient.  That’s not strictly true.  Most of the time, they’re dedicated people doing a fine, and quite thankless, job, but they’ll automatically get the blame for the tardy arrival of my cards anyway.  But that’s their problem and I don’t mind using it to my advantage.  After all, I’ve never been stupid enough to change my name to Consignia and they have.

    6.  How To Win Friends And Influence People.  When no card arrives before Christmas, friends, family and acquaintances will probably think “The bastard!  He hasn’t sent us a folded over piece of paper with a picture of a fat, bearded man on the front and some illegible scrawl within!  How could he do this to me?” But then, when the card turns up a few days after Christmas (“bloody post office”) they’ll feel loved and wanted again.  And they’ll feel bad for thinking ill of me, which they’ll probably compensate for by being even more well-disposed toward me than usual.  So if I keep doing this every Christmas, people will eventually feel so much affection for me that they will probably erect statues of me when I’m in my old age.  I could get canonized! I could become the next Princess Diana!*

    7.  Finances.  I won’t need to buy cards until the last minute, by which time I’ll know exactly how many I need.  So none will be wasted.  So I’ll be saving money.  That’s money that I can spend on other Christmas things like candles that get brought out once a year that nobody ever lights, or those owl baubles that my wife saw (because nothing says Christmas more than a rodent-terrorising bird of prey hanging from a tree).  By leaving the cards until the last moment, I’m going to be better off financially, and I’m going to benefit in many, many other ways too.  I’m a genius!  A mean genius.  I’m a meanius!

    *But my mother-in-law won’t be on the stamps.

  • 7 Reasons That Carrier Bags are Baffling

    7 Reasons That Carrier Bags are Baffling

    The carrier bag might seem like a rudimentary bit of kit.  Basic, functional, easy to understand.  But it isn’t.  Carrier bags are, in fact, among the most baffling things known to humankind.  And by humankind, I mean me.  Here are seven reasons why:

    a bag of old carrier bags. Screwed up.

    1.  Because I Have Hands.  People in shops are endlessly, needlessly trying to force carrier bags on me.  But I don’t want one most of the time.  Often, I’m just buying one or two items.  And I don’t need a carrier bag in that circumstance.  How many hands does it take to carry a single item?  One.  How many hands does it take to carry a bag containing a single item?  One.  So I don’t need a bloody bag, do I?  It’s not difficult.  And I already have a bag; it’s that thing I’m wearing over my shoulder that looks like a bag.  But despite having both hands and bags, I am continually pestered to take the things.  And I don’t know why.

    2.  Because They’re Everywhere. I always try not to take carrier bags, but despite this, my kitchen is full of the things.  And every time I go in there, there are more of them.  I don’t know how – or when – the rise of the bags began, but they are inexorably usurping our cooking space.  We started off, like everyone does, with a bag of bags, and now we have at least a bag of bag of bag of bag of bags.  Well, more than one, actually.

    3.  Because I Don’t Know What To Do With The Things.  You might think this is the point where I’m going to make a few humorous and bizarre speculations on what one might do with a glut of carrier bags, but no, I’m not going to do that.  This is because I’m totally bewildered and overwhelmed by my surfeit of them.  I have no more idea of what to do with all the bags in the kitchen than I would have of what to do with a large, glittery, singing horse called Jemima in my dining room.  Less, in fact.  Or fewer?

    4.  Because Of Chavs. It seems that the only people that have any idea of what to do with used carrier bags are chavs.  They put them over the seats of their rusty mountain bikes and tie them down to the seat-post.  All of them do this.  But I have no idea why.  It’s not to keep their bottoms dry because they never remove the bag; even after rain.  It’s a further level of bafflement.

    5. Because They’re Not In The Same Condition I Left Them In. Occasionally, a rare and wondrous event occurs:  I realise that I’m going to have to carry some presents to a friend’s house, or I’m going for a walk in the countryside and there might be blackberries to pick, and I find that I will actually need a carrier bag.  And then I excitedly perform a brief, joyous dance – a bit like a jig – while singing repeatedly “I’m going to get rid of a bag, I’m going to get rid of a bag…” to the tune of A Life on the Ocean Wave.  But when I come to use them, I discover that at least 50% of the bags are torn.  But they weren’t torn when I put them into the bag of bag of bag of bag of bag of bags.  So what the hell has happened to them in the meantime?  Do they fight?

    6.  Because People Lie About Them. It’s not just that they’re all over my kitchen, mocking and taunting me, and confounding my every attempt to get rid of them that I find them baffling.  It’s that people actively lie to us about the things.  Don’t use carrier bags, environmentalists tell us; it’s wasteful; a lot of resources are used up in their manufacture; they don’t grow on trees.  But this just isn’t true.  Carrier bags do grow on trees.  I’ve seen them.  Just go outside and look at any urban tree and you’ll see the carrier bags growing on it.  And we’re obviously using far fewer carrier bags than the trees are producing, because we’re not harvesting them with any regularity.  That’s why there’s still a Woolworths bag growing in a tree near my house.  Even though they went bust bloody ages ago.

    7.  Because Of The Holes. We all know why there’s a hole at the top of the bag.  It’s to punish people that are stupid enough to try to put baguettes into them.  But no one knows why there are holes at the bottom.  Are they drainage holes?  Is it a government conspiracy to prevent us from moving water about easily?  Is it to prevent suffocation of animals, small children and Members of Parliament?  Is it to stop me from inflating the things and then bursting them (with hilarious consequences)?  Is it just to confuse us?  Well, if it is, it’s working.