The tin opener suddenly went on strike. One day it was working, the next it was not.
How does one get into tins without one? A hammer and nail? A chainsaw? Teeth?
I needed these baked beans quite desperately, because they are a compulsory element of wraps, which were on the menu for five, hungry, waiting children. They love baked beans.
But the beans were a world away, sitting inside the tin. When I applied the tin opener, it refused to open the can as steadfastly as a cat about to have a bath.
Irritated, and with what I considered to be superhuman strength and superior powers of manipulation, I engineered a jagged hole or two here and there. But I couldn’t shoehorn even one bean out.Was it my imagination, or was the opener, like an opponent in a duel, throwing hankies at me and laughing with arrogant disdain?
I tried it from every angle, becoming increasingly incandescent with culinary fury. It would not budge.
With every passing minute, small tempers were becoming frayed. Beans must be accessed at all cost. And I think red steam was coming out of my ears.
It was Maddie, my eleven-year-old daughter, who came to my rescue: she popped through the forest to borrow a tin opener from Granny. Three minutes either way, no Red Hood required.
She arrived back with two. Neither worked to perfection, but I hacked and sawed away with energy born of desperation.
We ate. When everyone was full and away playing, I threw the tin opener away with something close to a snarl.
There are a few happenings in life which are small and almost insignificant in the scheme of things. Yet they have the power to engender the strongest of reactions.
It’s just the same with sticky-backed plastic. This, to all who are not British and have never seen the iconic BBC children’s programme Blue Peter, is Fablon: the clear plastic which is saintly-smooth one side and wickedly sticky on the other.
Yesterday evening, Maddie came home with an edict from her brand new college.Please could all her exercise books be covered in sticky-backed plastic by tomorrow morning?
I felt just like the straw-into-gold peasant girl: the one whose father bragged that she could turn straw into gold, and who ended up shut by the king into a room of straw with strict instructions to commit alchemy.
I needed Rumplestiltskin. And fast.
I picked up the phone and dialled the next most ingenious person I could think of: my husband. London must have sticky-backed-plastic shops, mustn’t it?
He came home bearing three substantial rolls of the stuff.We cheered, and then I settled down to give Maddie a lesson in covering an exercise book.
A word of advice: never allow sticky back plastic work to become a spectator sport. The first lesson went disastrously wrong: the stick had a mind of its own and a mood for sin, and I would swear it creased and bubbled just to get me riled.
I was crimson. But I had a spectator, and she was a bit on edge, being at a new school and all, and so, like a boiler, I needed to keep a lid on it.
We took it all off. We started again. We worked out a system by which I removed the backing and Maddie slowly, painstakingly, a minute at a time, rubbed out every sign of dissention from the PVC revolution under our fingertips.
It took ages: but we completed the urgent book.
I am becoming quite an expert now. We wage war on bubbles and vanquish creases, and each book – so far- is behaving.
Meanwhile, I went to the shops this afternoon. Felix and I stood there, and I glared at the tin opener section. They all looked exactly like The One which had betrayed me. I wanted to rage right there, Five pounds? For another insipid tin-tickler? Are you insane?
And then I saw it. A Star-Wars-white Obi Wan Kenobi of a can opener. There could be, to hopelessly mix my mythological analogies, only one.
I took it home and with a sinking feeling, applied it to a bean tin. I turned it.
Nothing: no sign of a break whatsoever.
Until I finished, and the lid dropped cleanly off with the unsettling efficiency of a royal executioner.
Two issues which got under my skin in the same week. My logic circuits told me these small events were petty and insignificant, but somewhere along the line fury took the driving wheel.
But having battled the small demon jumping up and down on my shoulder, each has been put to bed. I have gained a skill, practice and a lord-high-executioner of tins.
Let us hope small irritating things do not come in threes.
Image source here
Kate Shrewsday 
An opener is akin to scissors, and you have also had paper. I get the feeling that a rock trial is about to come upon you … 🙂
I shall prepare the red steam with all speed, Col.
I’m glad my daughter just had to cover her books with stretchy cloth covers – though I did enjoy imagining you covering yours with sticky plastic. I also loved Maddie’s quick work coming up with two can openers.
She’s a clever girl: Little Red Riding Hood to a tee 🙂
well done oh queen of the sticky-backed-book-wrapping-plastic-and-recalcitrant-tin-openers!
I accept your homage with the graciousness that befits my patently elevated status…
you are too gracious
Enough of these trials and tribulations! Enough for one day, I say – several books, and a can of beans. Oh, how I remember those days of book covers and school supplies, which all needed to be hand and tended to those first full days of school. Hope all is settling down now, Kate.
Thanks, Penny 🙂 I feel sure Saturday will bring a different pace all together.
Kitchen gadgets are sent to try us, for sure 😦
Yes…and each one costs money. It’s a red steam generator.
PS – you’d think after all these years the books would come already covered
Quite! Why hasn’t someone thought of that? I think it’s a Rite Of Passage- not for the kids, but for the parents!
Oh! the joys of every day life. I remember when we used brown paper to cover our books, much easier to do. Hope number 3 is not lurking round the corner and that you all have a lovely trouble free weekend.
Thanks, Rosemary 🙂 Ah, brown paper: crisp and crackly and dependable. It would never dream of leading you a merry dance.
Just loved your Bath post, by the way. Your blog is just a treat to visit 🙂
Ohm . . . _/!\_
Thanks for you kind words today.
Nancy, words are never enough in the situation in which you find yourself: but Shakespeare comes closest. And, yes, definitely time to take my 30 miutes of ohm….:-D
Kate, I could so identify with your trials. I regularly get stuck with tools, or something or the other that doesn’t quite work the way it is supposed to, at least not in my hands, and I get all nervous and panicky, and even clumsier. I don’t like the idea of sticky-backed plastic at all. What a torture it must be to deal with it.
If you are ever asked to deal with it, Banno, I recommend a point-blank refusal 😀
Kate, first rule of kitchens the world over: always have a spare can opener. On the subject of the sticky plastic I can only give you good news: it gets easier with practice. I agree with Colonialist, steer clear of rocks for a while.
Spare can opener, practice, steer clear of rocks: got it 😀
LOL! Inspiration born of frustration, Kate 😀 I’m also a lover of baked beans and at first battled to figure out the newer tin openers that take the whole top off…not to mention book covering…you girls can keep that!
Gee, thanks, Naomi 😀 Things are looking up after a week of perseverance…and I love my new executioner-tin-opener…
Loved this post Kate! Tin openers can be very evil things.
It’s always the little things that cause the most frustration, such as having a sliver of cellophane stuck to your fingers, which, as much as you try to throw it away, has it’s own need to stay attached and merely moves to the next finger – or other hand. Oh yes, I know frustration well!
Tom, it s good to commiserate with someone else who is no stranger to frustration 😀
You should have brought the books to me: I am so good at stickyback plasticking that I decorated our bedroom in it. I’m not joking.
Re: the beans – you can’t afford Heinz? They’re 8 tins for £3 at Morrisons and Tescos at the moment – and come with a ring pull.
That is inspiring, Tilly, but Aldi does even better 😀 If my executioner carries out its job consistently I’ll penny pinch a little longer. If not: Morrison’s, here I come!
Until this very second I had always thought that when Blue Peter mentioned “sticky-back plastic” they were talking about Sellotape but couldn’t name it because it would have been advertising.
It explains so much about how I could never make any of their stuff.
Did anyone ever make any of their stuff? Other than Tracey Island? Seriously?
Yes, of course (she said quietly)
Doug and Florence from the Magic Roundabout… requiring a squeezy Fairy bottle and a lot of ginger wool, and a pipe-cleaners and a table tennis ball respectively. And of course the Christmas decorations requiring the metal coat-hangers.
Anyone else?
What a brave head-above-the parapet, friend 🙂 I should have realised you would have a working relationship with sticky back plastic. I think you need to post a tutorial on YouTube! And your crafty nature sets you apart at the perfect person to carry out Blue Peter’s blueprints. I am really, really impressed this time.
— never got a badge though 😦
Baked Bean tins that didn’t have a ring-pull? You didn’t happen to find a ration card in the box with them did you 😉 When the tin opener breaks – head for the bottle opener (helps to calm the anguish!
I avoid the exercise book covering – too dangerous. I usually go and find some plumbing that needs doing at book covering time 🙂
A fun Post – gave me a good laugh!
Hi Martin: plumbing. Excellent idea. Next time the sticky back plastic comes out I’ll delegate it to my other half and go spend some quality time with the toilet. Far preferable.
Actually I love covering books and have a fail-safe method… which entails corner cutting and bubble rolling. Sad or what? Tilly and I should get together?
Definitely time for a YouTube tutorial 🙂
Priceless, Kate, just a priceless story and your writing superb as always, humor abounding. About threes, they happen to be mentioned in a post today by Catherine Svehla on her blog:
Cultural Mythology: Myth, culture, and consciousness
http://www.catherinesvehla.com/my_weblog/
You might enjoy her!
warmly, Deborah
Thanks Deborah, and wonderful to “see” you again…..I’m off to see Catherine now 🙂
Lovely as always Kate.
Perhaps see you this weekend – without the frustrations.
Love Dad
Look forward to that, Dad 🙂
My own new tin opener caught me on the verge of I shudder to think what linguistic atrocities, when it unexpectedly dropped the fully detached lid before me. I could be wrong but I thought I heard it whisper, Oh ye of little faith… 😉
😀 It’s a magical moment when that lid clatters onto the working surface, isn’t it, Ruth? I’m not used to mentioning the words ‘trust’ and ‘tin opener’ in the same sentence!
Oh, but something deep inside tells me, my dear Kate, that should – God forbid – #3 or even #4, #5, or #6 ome along, you would be more than equal to the task of staring it/them down and winning the day!
I am currently in a battle with companies that pakage their products in impregnable plastic. So impregnable that it rquires a special tool to cut through it, but of course, the tool comes packaged in impregnable plastic. Add to that the fact that I only have one full hand to work with and that one arthritic, well, you get the picture. Many days, the air is quite blue around our house. . .
Packaging can preserve but in can also be a pain in the neck, Paula….lovely to hear from you, and all the best with your battle!
This post had me laughing aloud in unladylike snorts. I have been stymied by a tin opener (can opener here) on more than one occasion, the nasty things. I remember covering my school books with opened out, cleaned potato chip bags (for the foil glam look). The times they are a-changing…
I wish it had been cleaned potato chip bags! I have managed to mess up the back of several of Maddie’s books…
One of my children’s friends (now 26) told me recently that her strongest memory of me is me sitting by the fire beside three huge piles of books to be covered by morning. (Her parents always seemed to leave her with us for La Rentrée) French schools didn’t allow sticky paper. The challenge was to use non-sticky clear plastic and to make sure that at no point did the sellotape you used touch any part of the book…
I got quite fast at it by the time they left the lycée.
Good luck. (and I sympathise about the tin opener, mine died a couple of months ago without any warning too)
It is such a superhuman feat, and I’m no superhuman, Earlybird 😀 In its own way, your method of covering sounds even more evil than mine!
And at last, a comrade-in-tinopeners.
Several gadgets I swear are here to try our patience deliberately…tin openers, corkscrews, staplers, scissors….
All these things either lie in wait determined to break exactly when you need them most, or else they simply vanish into some cosy little black hole never to be found again untill the day you either don’t need their services, or the day you move house!
We have an identical gadget policy, Lynda 😀 Thanks again for the reblog!