CBANDY

A WORD in your shell-like Santa. Loved the pressies - yes, honestly, give or take the anti-wrinkle cream - but is there really any need for all that packaging?

Must make it doubly difficult, ho, ho, ho, to get the goodies down the lum.

But think ... if you and your little helpers ditched most of it you could get around the houses in half the time and not only would you help save the planet but also - and far more importantly - my nails.

All gone, you see Santa. Every last one.

All gone on account of trying - and failing - to wrestle what I amsure is a perfectly lovely bottle of bubbly bath oil from a box which was better protected than most high-security prisons.

Ditto the WestWing DVDs.

I know I'll love them just as soon as I can find a chisel and hammer to get into the bloody things.

Then there is the sat nav. Looks lovely. Much appreciated as well as needed.

Can't wait to use it. Except I have no chance to, not until it navigates itself towards a pneumatic drill which is, I jalouse, the only way left to extract it from the plastic shell in which every last bit of it is currently tightly entombed.

They could build tanks with that stuff.

They probably do.

Anyway, my sat nav has already blunted two pairs of scissors, a saw and seen off an assortment of knives and screw drivers along with what remains of my sanity.

Not that that was the worst of it, not by a long shot, or even a short nail.

I could go on because even chocolates no longer come in a simple box. They, too, get the treatment ... double wrapping, separate little containers for each sweet and, of course, the stonking great obligatory ribbon.

They're sweeties, for gawd's sake. So why do they have to be done up like a tart's knickers?

But it's the kiddies toys which are, if anything, even more cunningly set up to maim all the mummies, daddies and we grannies. They aren't just encased in the hard core plastic. Oh no, no. That's not nearly sufficient to guarantee that the weans will be wailing with frustration well before breakfast.

They have an added refinement. Dolls ... cars ... EVERYTHING invariably comes with those twiddly but lethal bits of wire which have to be removed before the kiddywinks get at them. I am pretty sure they are deliberately attached by Santa's slave workers in China with the sole purpose of wounding us decadent Westerners.

"We'll show you a velly happy Christmas," they titter, as they twist the stuff round and round and in and out of every conceivable and inconceivable place.

"That'll teach you to pay the peasants peanut chop suey."

To add insult to the considerable injury - deep cuts on both hands and blood all over my pale cream carpet - they assure you on the lid that this toy is easy to open.

Aye, with a sledgehammer.

Then, of course, should you ever get it off, you have to get rid of it. Which inevitably leads to the bin wars.

You'll know to what I am referring - you go out and find yours already stuffed to the gunnels with someone's else's rubbish and no collection due for a week.

So you wait until it's dark, when you sneak out and bung yours into a neighbour's.

Except he's hiding behind his curtains with his torch and Rottweiler just waiting to pounce on the next fly-tipping swine trying to dump on him.

Yesterday, I watched a woman chase another woman along the road with the half turkey plus giblets the first had attempted to sneak into her blue bottle box.

Next year Santa baby, please just wrap everything in plain recyclable brown paper and nice cardboard.

See, the unfortunate thing about all that plastic packaging is that it isn't only for Christmas, it's for life.

In the meantime ... anyone got any false nails they don't want?

Rosemary

Well thought out and written from the heart. It seems to get worse every year.

Rosemary