August 2011
Some years ago I assisted a young friend at Craft Fairs. Her husband designed and made small teddy bears from a resin which he then hand painted.
Boys loved teddies in football shirts, colours of the teams they supported. Girls liked their names on brightly coloured skirts. There were loads of shapes and designs, whatever anyone wanted it was theirs to be had.
I went to the fairs to help Jill, the friend, sell them on a stall. The part I loved most was the small boxes that accompanied each sale to protect it on the journey home.
Have you ever looked at the intricacy of design in making a flat piece of cardboard with ends that folded together to ensure safety of the article. It's not rocket science to assemble them but tricky until you know the combination of which folds into what.
I became intrigued and started to examine other boxes by taking them apart. Tea bag boxes are simple because they carry little weight but the box my wardrobe arrived in was a tribute to its maker. It held eleven panels of wood, four metal runners, three coat rails, cup holders for the rails knobs for the doors, sixty screws in different sizes, tricky brackets that enabled one to screw one piece to another without it showing and ten pages of instructions.
The poor guy from B & Q had a huge trolley and carried it with extreme difficulty into my hall leaving with a grin and a good luck comment as he left.
I sort of revised my opinion that I could knock up a wardrobe easily. After all after moving in I had already constructed a dining table, coffee table, two bookcases, two single beds and a tele-table.
I thought, why had I eight strapping grandchildren around but unfortunately not one of eight years old, the required recommended age for construction of kits that come in cardboard boxes.
Taking my life in my hands I lowered the box to the floor. It took a knife, scissors and a lino knife, a tool left to me by my dad - he had always wanted a boy - just to get the box open, then a call of help to my son to actually sort it all out. Point is though the box was still so well made that trying to fold the extremely thick cardboard, to fold or even bend to be acceptable to my bin collector, was another feat of strength.
I eventually put it in the loft with all the other boxes I just cannot throw away and when I move on, one way or another I don't want any of this oak coffin with brass handles. I want eco-friendly and when they take me from the house to the transporter, the two neighbours standing chatting along the road will enquire, 'What's all that then?' and they will turn aside and say . . .
'Oh, it's only a cardboard box.'