Ian McMillan: Lights, camera action: that’s a wrap

It’s a do-it-yourself delight kit, and I gaze at the paper and the other things and imagine my wife’s joy on Christmas morning when she opens the parcel. The expertly-wrapped parcel. The parcel that looks like it’s been wrapped by a lady in a shop, except it hasn’t, it’s be wrapped by old Scissorthumbs McMillan The Sellotape King himself, just to prove that he can.

Over the years I’ve acquired a reputation as a man who can’t wrap. I can’t rap either, so that would make me a non-rapping non-wrapper.

Children and adults would laugh at my terrible attempts to wrap a present; it would often look as though it had been wrapped in the dark by someone with boxing gloves on, or wrapped and unwrapped many times until the paper didn’t quite fit and the Sellotape had lost its sticky.

They would hold the present up as though it was evidence in a trial, or point at it like it was a piece of conceptual art they couldn’t quite grasp the meaning of. I always smiled and shrugged and said things like, “Well, you only take the wrapping off anyway,” and “It’s the thought that counts.”

I accepted my fate. I took on board the fact that I was no good at wrapping presents. I saw it as a little comedy role, like my role as non-driver or as man who doesn’t understand how calligraphic action works.

Well, no more. No more Mr No-wrap guy! I’m going to make a stand and I’m going to wrap the present for my lovely wife in a thoroughly professional way. After all, McMillan: how hard can it be? It’s not as though the gift is a candelabra or a stuffed octopus; it’s a regular shape because it’s in a box. Come on. Get a grip.

In the past I reckon my mistake has been to either cut too much paper or not enough, and that’s because I’m too eager to get wrapping. I don’t measure the gift so the paper either goes nowhere near like a tailored shirt on a fat bloke, or swamps the gift like a collapsed tent. I get the paper. I lay the gift on the paper and make sure there’s plenty (though not too much) paper around the gift.

Then I fold the paper around the present, trying to do it evenly, neatly. The paper refuses to be even and neat, in a spiteful way. How can paper be spiteful? It’s an inanimate object! Well, this paper’s spiteful. It just won’t do as it’s told. Fold here, please. Fold here, will you! I’m begging you to fold here…

Eventually I fold the paper round the gift in a way that’s not too sloppy. Then I reach for the Sellotape. Another mistake: in reaching for the Sellotape I take my finger off the present and the paper unfurls. It falls from the present. I decide to get the Sellotape ready first: I pull some from the roll and cut it off. Where can I keep the lengths? On my forehead. Obvious. Four of them, a bit like horns.

This is the point at which my wife comes home. Merry Christmas, love.