Finding the end of sellotape is as easy as finding a man who uses a condom

I decided to say a Christmas thank-you to my son the only way I knew how—with chocolate. He lives in China, and apparently, it’s not that great there. 

My husband, a man with more vouchers than Amazon, bought so much cheap chocolate I had to send it in batches.

Or eat it myself …

Every day he came in from work, looked at the pile of chocolate, and asked… 

“Have you sent that chocolate yet?”

Sometimes I looked at him like he was stupid, other times I just said “Yes.”

Finally, my inertia got the better of him. 

He waltzed in brandishing a chewed-up roll of Christmas paper which needed a little “drying out”, a roll of Sellotape so old it took half an hour to find the end, and an empty box mysteriously marked “adult’s only.”

Where he got the boxes from I haven’t a clue, but I suspect, like most things, in some dark corner at work where no one dares to linger…

Three broken fingernails later I looked up from the Sellotape, the end still stuck like super glue. My ability to breathe life into a has-been, Sellotape is legendary, but this thing had been glued together since the Thatcher years.

“Shall I just buy a new one?” I said.

He peered from his precision paper cutting with a “hardly” look.

Recycling is his middle name, in fact, if there was a recycling superhero he’d be it. He could recycle a used postage stamp if he put his mind to it. His cupboards are full of ancient underpants, mismatched socks, and jackets that don’t fit, usually from his twice-size brother or even worse, his sister. 

When I first discovered such talent I was mesmerized and amused. His talent for recycling was on a par with his packing. I’ve seen him pack an eighty-inch flat-screen TV into the back of a Mini as precisely as a surgeon puts back organs. Hell, I’ve seen him parcel up a running machine to send home to his family in Bangladesh and still have change from a tenner. And how he does it is as much a mystery to me as getting a soufflé to rise.

I stared at my hubby folding paper around the mysterious adults-only box like he was making an origami H bomb. It was going to be an all-night job. My hubby likes to make a meal of things. What is a mundane task for me is truly saving the world for him.

The next morning, after an argument about my “flamboyant use of sellotape,” we headed for the post office. 

A voluptuous elderly woman behind the counter admired hubby’s handwork.

“Get a load of this,” she gestured to her colleague.

Her colleague polishing her glasses, peered at the address while the voluptuous one praised my hubby for the excellent “taping of the corners”.

“That’s precision, that is,” she said, “impenetrable”.

Hubby beamed with pride. 

“I have wrapped up more presents than Santa himself,” she said, “but never anything as, well…perfect.” She eyed Hubby. “You can wrap my parcel any day.” 

She winked.

He gave her his best shy face.

“Pity,” said the Colleague.

“What?” I said.

“Well it's way too heavy for China,” said the colleague.

“Even by ship?” said the voluptuous one.

The colleague jiggled the box in her hands and blew through her lips.

Chocolate to China, it seems, is a lot harder to send than a running machine to Bangladesh. 

 She placed it on the counter like it was about to explode. 

“It’ll never make it on a ship, way too suspicious.”

She threw me a look. “They’ll have the SWAT team after it in Peking.” 

“SWAT team, in Peking?” Snapped the voluptuous one 

“You need to make it into two .”

“Two?” Snapped the voluptuous one.

“Make that three.”

“Three?” Shrieked the voluptuous one.

“Well if you want to get it there before Christmas.” 

I looked at my Hubby, silent but thoughtful. You can learn a lot from a decade of bed-sharing; one being when to say nothing and the other being when not to gloat. 

His eyes scanned the back of the office stopping at the recycle bin…

The voluptuous one followed his gaze.

“Are those for recycling?” he said.

The voluptuous one, with a larger-than-life smile, picked a selection of scruffy padded envelopes out of the recycling bin that had, by looks of things, been around the world at least twice.

“I do like a man that recycles”, she said.

The colleague tutted.

My hubby, with his arms full of used envelopes, headed out the door, looked at the rain lashing down, and turned to me.

“There's still plenty of that Sellotape isn’t there?”

I said nothing. 

True love is knowing when to feign deafness.