Out of the Box

The box is not of the best quality wood, far from it, a sort of thin matchwood that would even be rejected as the back panel for a piece of Ikea furniture.

Excepting its cheap manufacture it was purpose made, possibly in Portugal because it came to be in my house as the packaging around 6 bottles of Port Wine and some Stilton cheese given to me by a client, perhaps now 15 years ago.

The contents were gratefully received and consumed in a phased assault between Boxing Day teatime amongst the cold cuts, pickles and pork pie and lasted until New Years Day supper.

The unveiling of the box had prior to this been a bit of an event and the children, the eldest being 7 at the time, watched with great interest as it was manoeuvred out from under the settee where I had hidden it from prying eyes a few days before Christmas.

As boxes go, it was quite large and rather than a conventionally expected square shape it was flat, long and wide in its three main planes and therefore rectangular. The flimsy wood was a bit scuffed and worn from transit across a continent from vineyard to quayside, ships hold to Vintners shelf although most of the damage originated from my own poor handling of it between my office, car and the selected hiding place.

As I slid the box out it caught, in its rough surfaces, bits of raised carpet tufting and had to be extricated with a small patch of wool mix fabric hanging from a splinter.

The white wood of the box was, after its tortuous journey, surprisingly clean and bright which captured the attention of the children. Their small hands enthusiastically tugged at the object as they helped to move it into the centre of the room. The dimensions of the box were sufficient for all three of them to get some purchase and sense of contributing to what was, by now, almost qualifying for an elaborate ceremony. A missing element was a fanfare or soundtrack, I thought Thus Spake Zarathustra, or Chariots of Fire at first and no doubt the children would be opting for more like Bob the Builder or the theme from Teletubbies.

I explained to the eager congregation a convincing back story for the box and they were quite enthralled although I could not help but thinking that they had probably seem similar in the Food Hall at the local supermarket when on a shopping trip with their Mother in the run up to Christmas.

A fire-branded crested or monogrammed  mark, smudged beyond recognition caught the imagination of the children. My long-winded history lesson on trade between the Iberian Peninsula and our country was just that. Long and windy. I had misinterpreted their fascination in the scorched logo as an opportunity to show an informed but altogether limited knowledge of the subject of Port Wine production, marketing and shipping before the big reveal of the contents of the box.

The children, however, were scaring themselves on their assumption that something was trying to burn its way out of the box. I knew then that they had been too young to watch Raiders of the Lost Ark which had been a pre-Christmas broadcast on the BBC. A near state of self generated hysteria had to be nipped in the bud as it was already distracting my wife, busy baking in the kitchen.

I slowly pulled the top panel toward me and in a smooth action it slid out along the groove. The utter disappointment in the actual contents of the box was clear to see on the faces and in the mannerisms of the children. "Bottles", those amongst them who could speak, uttered.

There, resting in a nest of straw-like material were the six skittle like dark brown glass vessels and a wax-paper wrapped wedge of strong, mould veined cheese.

At this point the actual box became the main focus of attention and I had to remove the items to enhance its play value. That Christmas we need not have bothered to undergo the process of buying toys and gifts for the children because the box was capable of being all things to them. Laid on its longest side the partitioned compartments could hold Barbie Dolls and accessories. Horizontally and flat it could hold multiple cars and building blocks. Vertically it was a series of display shelves for playing shops. Firmly closed it could support up to three small children as a temporary seat for watching television.

At the time of dismantling the seasonal decorations, taking down the Christmas Cards and wrestling a balding fir tree out of the living room in a rainstorm of pine needles there was considerable debate over the fate of the big box.

It was too good to be broken up for kindling for the open fire. It's allocation to one specific child was not an option as this intimated favouritism. My wife did not want it just lying around the house, cluttering up the rooms or serving as a trip hazard for small legs.

That post- Christmas dilemma of how to package up the tree baubles gave the perfect solution to the problem. The six slim compartments were ideal for the safe storage of the fragile glass decorations, the metallic globes, novelty figures, the special ones brought back by relatives from trips to German Markets or seen in High Street Emporiums and there was also a coveted, supervisory space for the Fairy extracted from the very top of the tree.

Destined for the dark recesses of the attic for the duration of the next year the children felt it best to differentiate the box from other stored items, in spite of it being completely unique in size and form. An afternoon of painting the lid with poster paints served to prolong Christmas a little bit longer. There appeared a layer of snow, two fur trimmed red felt stockings, large decorated trees in falling snow, piles of presents beneath and all under a large, Merry Christmas greeting of regular brush strokes achieved by that essential artistic skill of concentration with your tongue hanging out.

The box emerges every year with its precious contents. All of the family must be present at the time of the big reveal of the familiar, tactile and memory steeped baubles and the Fairy but this is becoming an increasingly difficult thing, what with the children all now young adults and making their own way in the world.