It’s day seven, it’s morning, and we’re rushing to open up door number seven on the Meery Christmas Advent Calendar! Will it be something we love?

Uh oh. It is time to perform a duty that is completely required, but also rather despised, at least by me. It is time to wrap the gifts!

I am not the best meerkat for wrapping presents. It has been said that I possess the ability to turn a bike into a football, such is my inability to neatly fold paper and tie bows. As with cards, I find wrapping gifts to be a labour-intensive chore, rather than a pleasurable activity, and whilst there is a measure of satisfaction from watching loved ones unwrap presents, can we be realistic here, and acknowledge how wasteful the whole procedure is?

Presents get wrapped. Presents get unwrapped, with the wrapping paper being rather savagely ripped apart. The paper winds up filling several rubbish sacks. A lot of it gets recycled these days, but there is still a lot of discarded waste from the whole exercise. I much prefer to use gift bags, which have the benefit of being reusable. That said, I will make the effort to wrap gifts. It won’t be even remotely close to perfect, but I will do it, and it is the thought that counts! It has to be the thought with me, because it won’t be the presentation!