Call me a pedant, but I have always believed in the importance of the little things. Small can sometimes not only be beautiful (pace EF Schumacher) but also significant, proud and even groundbreaking.
Occasionally, however, small everyday objects do let us down: sticky tape doesn’t stick, seal or peal; plastic packets do not open; and tin openers simply refuse to work!
In the 36 years of my second life (in the west), I have spent hundreds of pounds on tin openers. I have tried “heavy-duty”, “automatic”, “voice-activated”, “cordless”, “tin-touch”, “electric”, “smart” and other “cutting edge” variants. I have so far discovered only one that actually opens tins with ease, and without inflicting life-changing injuries on myself or the family members who have had the misfortune to be around during the process.
That magical tin opener (made in China, no doubt) was purchased in a Morrisons supermarket more than 10 years ago and cost me... 38 pence. Technologically, it is very simple, even primitive: a cog-wheel-shaped blade and a handle, resembling a small bow-tie, or a butterfly (its other brand name was “Butterfly Can-Opener”). It opens tins quickly and smoothly—almost without effort. I’ve been using it successfully nearly every day since then. Yet, whenever I cannot find it in the kitchen drawer and am forced to try out one of its more expensive and sophisticated counterparts—“Magic Cut”, “Perfect Grip” or “Smooth Edge”, received as gifts from some unimaginative friends and distant relatives—the result is always the same. The tin, unlike my fingers and thumb, remains stubbornly uncut!
But occasionally, we get the small things right. Here’s some British-made proof: a new-look nine-gram tomato ketchup packet, ingeniously monikered “Ketchup!” (with an exclamation mark!). To me, it was the biggest design and technology breakthrough of recent years. Why? Simply because I was able to open it with ease, without either breaking my fingernail or, worse, splashing all nine grams of the sticky red substance all over my shirt (it is amazing how much mess some miserable nine grams of red goo can create!)
Here’s the story.
My wife and I were sitting in a cafe overlooking the ever-so-beautiful Rutland Water. It was hot. I was hungry and—uncharacteristically—ordered myself a Lincolnshire sausage roll, intrigued more by the word “Lincolnshire” than by “sausage” or “roll”. My inquisitive writer’s mind simply could not rest until I found out what the difference between a Lincolnshire and, say, Bedfordshire sausage roll was, and how they both differed from, say, an Australian Four & Twenty-brand pie, which I often had for lunch while working for the Age newspaper in Melbourne. I was also reminded of a phrase I used during my first life in the Soviet Union, to express how much I valued the small things: “Freedom of sausage comes first, freedom of speech follows.” It was prompted by the permanent shortages of sausages (rhyme unintended) and most other basic meats in the USSR... On the surface of it, “sausages” and other processed “meats” sound like little nothings compared to all the joys of free expression. But try and remove the former from all the shops—and you will be amazed at how many hungry individuals would be prepared to shut up in exchange for a quick intake of some fatty protein.
To cut a long sausage short, at Rutland Water I was about to sink my teeth (or rather my Hungarian-made implants) into the roll, when I thought that it might be nice to balance that generally unwholesome product with something healthier, like ketchup. That, as I knew only too well, involved the challenge of either squeezing the red tomato sauce out of a stubbornly un-squeezable glass bottle (luckily, the cafe had none of those on display), or out of a no-less-stubbornly un-openable plastic packet.
You can easily visualise my unexpected delight when one of the mentioned packets gave in easily, with a soft submissive rustle, at the corner, and I was able to squeeze all nine grams of ketchup onto the uncomplaining to-be-devoured sausage roll. Not quite ready to believe in my extraordinary luck, I tried another packet and yet another, and each of them opened with the same beautiful ease. Soon, my poor sausage roll came to resemble a miniature bloody crime scene, left behind by some tiny and untidy fork-sized homicidal maniac.
That seemingly insignificant occurrence greatly improved my mood. I can even say that it made my day. And the (tasty) Lincolnshire sausage roll had little to do with it. I was relieved to realise that the country that produces the world’s best vacuum cleaners and nuclear submarines is capable, after all, of engineering a reliable and easy-to-open ketchup packet. For there’s nothing that stresses people out more than little everyday irritations. Glory to the anonymous, yet ingeniously inventive, ketchup-packet makers and breakers! Hooray!
