Sir, - Humankind has been obsessed with many things over the millennia, such as the Holy Grail or immortality, on the grander side of things, and the search for a better mousetrap, on the lesser side. But when are we to arrive at the ideal milk carton? How long do we have to endure continual experimentation and failure in this field? Maybe future generations of archaeologists will be able to classify traces of settlements by the type of carton.
The glass bottle was replaced with the square carton with the pitched roof. Failure left you with a sort of open-topped square with dirty torn edges that poured milk everywhere but where. A plastic milk bottle was tried out, but this was more like an open balloon full of water which eluded most efforts to hold it. Then we were presented with what looked like, when tweaked, an Artane Band boy's hat. Once opened, it also usually delivered the mild beyond the runway, so to speak. I recall coming across a version of the house shape, but with a flat roof, which first had to be erected and then pulled apart; the less said the better. More plastic containers appeared with handles like watering cans; the ones with the secondary foil seal are still full of milk when you arrive home from the shops, but some designs have tops that defy most efforts to disable the screwlock.
One of the most amazing creations to date is the house shape with a screw-cap device on one of the roof pitches. You have to screw the top off, then push the spout down twice (past some sort of pegs and a series of holes) to break an internal seal. If you don't get a perfect fit on the last push, you get milk over all the kitchen and not on the target.
In the past few weeks another, more fiendish device has appeared which involves a plastic arrangement situated in a corner of a rectangular carton. In trying to remove its lock, the whole arrangement comes away. Even if you are successful in performing this variant of open-brain surgery, one needs the skills of a digger driver to get the milk on to target.
I spotted an operative from the offending dairy stacking cartons the other day and I raised the subject. She admitted that there were too many complaints about the screw top. When I mentioned its successor, she then said they were also being reviewed and showed me the latest: our old friend: the flat roof that has first to be pulled up, and the rest we already know.
How long is this nonsense going to continue? - Yours, etc.,
Vincent Flannery, Tinahely, Co Wicklow.