THAT'S A WRAP

There's currently a viral video of a 'hack' on how to wrap a box if you've accidentally cut the wrapping paper too short. Essentially, you rotate the box by 45 degrees and wrap it diagonally, corner to corner.

It hasn't gone viral because it's genius. It's gone viral because people are outraged at the fact that other people didn't already know how to do this, and they did!

That's an extraordinary thing to get enraged about, isn't it? I mean if you don't know, you don't know - but there's no shame in not knowing a thing that many other people know... is there?

If there is, I mean if there really is... we are all in trouble.

I don't know how to fold a t-shirt. I don't know how to grow rice in a paddy field. I don't know how to ride a unicycle, or whether there's a good way to make lasagna not sloppy. I don't know how to draw portraits. I don't know how to survive a tornado, or slice an egg, or put up a shelf, drive a minibus, play canasta, or use a chainsaw. Oh and I don't know how to swim either.

Shame on me?

Here's the bit of learning I'm taking from the wrapping video: never assume a thing is obvious;it definitely won't be to everyone. Also, never attach a label to someone who doesn't understand what you think is simple. That, my friends, brings shame on you, not on them.

I'm going to do my best to always be patient, especially as I have to explain things for my job.

"Nothing is taught," said Confucius once, "Everything is learned." And all of us have to start somewhere. If we forget that, the Internet will turn us all into that person who beeps a learner driver at the traffic lights, or laughs at overweight people on treadmills.

Don't be that person.

Oh, and wrap gifts up however you like! That's what I do, and I'm terrible at it. If the people you're wrapping for love you, they'll care a lot less about whether it was done in neat diagonals, or if it was pasted together with last year's manky sellotape ends. Be yourself.