New Jobs and Get Rich Quick Schemes

New Jobs and Get Rich Quick Schemes

Times was hard as I was scrabbling about in my purse for the cash to buy a potato for my lunch. It seemed like fate when I caught sight of a notice asking for a Leaflet Deliverer. All I had to do was post a leaflet through every door in the village and I would earn myself enough money to buy as many potatoes as I wanted for my lunch for a whole week! I put my name down…

I made encouraging noises to the kids to get them and their boundless energy involved; it was all looking good.

But then I remembered the thing that I discovered when I had a stint as a paperboy (it was in the days before equality) – every house has a unique and complicated way of receiving their post / leaflets / newspapers.

There were the houses with rabid dogs, the houses with letter-boxes so highly insulated that it was like trying to push a sheet of paper through a carpet, and the houses with their gates zip-tied up when I know that people live there. There were also houses that didn’t seem to have a door and I had to run around and around them trying to find somewhere to wedge a leaflet, and that was after battling with the ones that had no gate.

The kids were worse than useless as they were unable to push things through carpets, had no ingenuity when it came to stuffing things in places and gave up pretty soon when they found that the only way into the house seemed to be via a tunnel from next door’s sitting room. 

We walked for miles, trudging up and down paths, fighting with dogs and arguing about shares of the profits.  I reckon we’ve done about half the village and have so far earned about 38p per hour, and worn out one pushchair and three pairs of shoes.

As I lay on the carpet that night, unable to reach the sofa, I felt bad about cursing the one postman on the round who hasn’t realised where our letters are supposed to go. I mumbled about loosening the spring on the letterbox that took a Conservative candidate’s finger-tip off, and forgave the Saturday paper boy who chucks the paper in a puddle next to the wellies. I also felt overwhelmed with smugness that we have obvious doors, no wild dog and plenty of places to stuff a leaflet…

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Kicking pies and Licking the Sherbert off Cola Bottles

Kicking Pies and Licking the Sherbert off Cola Bottles

Apparently just as we are to get a new recycling system in our village, it is all set to change again – packaging that can be eaten…

For years we’ve been diligently separating our rubbish: cans and plastics in one bag, paper and cardboard in another, only to see the bin men sling them into the truck alongside the black bags full of my cottage pie and dirty nappies. Apparently someone separates them again at the point of discharge, after they’ve trundled along being churned up and squashed together. I cannot imagine how much those poor souls have to get paid as they ease a plastic cup from inside a chicken carcass.

I’m quite interested in waste, being a crusty kind of person. I would like to think I don’t generate as much as everyone else, but of course I do: piles and piles of it and I know that to reach my moral high-ground, I need to reduce the amounts.

Therefore I’m quite looking forward to the food waste bin, after the Mouse Man knew my voice on the phone before I said my name. After many visits and explanations of how I could try and keep the bastard mice off our work-surfaces, he lost it and told me to just STOP BLOODY COMPOSTING! I quoted the council targets of waste reduction, but his withering look put paid to that.

So the new industry of edible packaging seeks to end all of these problems – tomato membranes around soup, chocolate membranes around hot chocolate and grape around wine. The trouble is, I’ve worked in shops. I know that people sit on stacks of boxes before they are put on the shelves. I also know that they kick pies along the ground before piling them into the fridge and (if I’m honest) know that they lick the sherbert off the Cola Bottles before they go in the pick’n’mix. Can’t you just imagine the young shelf-stacker juggling these wobbly balls? Banging them on the inside of his elbow before catching them again – putting them in a microwave…

I therefore cannot understand who is going to pop to their local shop and sling a tomato filled with soup into their basket and not expect something terrible to have already happened to it.

Saying all this, I bought a sandwich the other day that was so bad, I chucked it in the bin and ate the box…

http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/wordofmouth/2012/apr/16/edible-packaging-fancy-a-wrap?INTCMP=SRCH

If you liked this blog, why not buy the books!
Visit http://www.amazon.co.uk/Lorraine-Jenkin/e/B0034PL5LG/ref=ntt_athr_dp_pel_1
Available on e-book !