Sideswipe: April 30: Single-item packaging atrocity

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"Perhaps others have suffered the atrocity of single-item packages from The Warehouse during lockdown? Yes folks, they individually wrapped and couriered me all my low-value grocery items — a tin of beans, some pasta and even a single instant soup sachet! It's enough to make a part-time Greenie like me cry," declares Lucy.

On the umpteenth day of lockdown my dear son bought for me ...

A reader of the over 70s persuasion took up his son's kind offer of doing his shopping. What could possibly go wrong? "So I gave him my list — bagged lettuce, yoghurt, eggs, bread, milk — there were only eight items on my list, and off he went. He arrived back an hour or so later, walked in with my bag and plonked it in the kitchen, and said, 'I'll get the other boxes.' ... I began unpacking. First out, a lettuce, one of those already in a bag as I had asked for ... next came two six-packs of yoghurt — I had only asked for one, so I assumed the other was his, and temporarily in my bag. Then came three plastic flagons of milk, all of the 2-litre variety. I don't use much milk and one flagon lasts me about two weeks, so I was surprised that he was getting so much. What really surprised me though was that the bottom of the bag was taken up with four cartons of eggs — all the same Farmer Brown size 8, as on my list." The penny dropped when he received five loaves of Vogels Original Toast bread. "I realised I had numbered my list — one through eight — and he had read it as quantity, and assumed his aged parent was intent on hoarding ... Don't assume your helping of common sense applies to your children. And if you need a jar of marmalade (Craig's Breakfast) let me know. I have seven spare ones."

Did you know ...

Hold the phone - men's nipples may have a use after all ...

• The average desktop printer does five and a half hours of actual printing in its lifetime.

• Norman Greenbaum wrote the song Spirit in the Sky in only 15 minutes and has been living on the royalties for the last 50 years.

• In 2017, a Palestinian judge banned divorce during Ramadan because "people make hasty decisions when they're hungry".

• Toes, nipples and cat paws can all be used instead of fingerprints to unlock your phone.