I'm somewhat hampered by having to type with my index finger covered in a cumbersome plaster which at this moment is attempting to leak blood over the keyboard, which in turn should prove an interesting poser for the electronics expert who has to mend the thing when it grinds to a halt. I don't suppose they have 'blood on tiny terminals' written into their list of what might cause a computer to cease to work.

The plaster is covering a deep cut caused by my trusty Sabatier knife as I attempted to stab my way into a packet of liver. I usually buy liver from a proper butcher, who slices it in front of his or her customers (note the political correctness) into the size you want it, so that it doesn't arrive in tiny strips as it does in packets, which when cooked look and taste like braised leather shoe laces.

This time, however, I was too late for the butcher so bought one of those impenetrable packets in a supermarket, done up in several layers of very thick plastic which would probably withstand a nuclear explosion. It certainly withstood my Sabatier.

Now Bill Bryson, one of my favourite authors, wrote an article once on the amazing number of people in the United States who are injured by their clothing. I can match that with the amazing number of people who are injured, both physically and psychologically, by food packaging.

There was a time when the only food packaging which might cause a life threatening injury was a tin of sardines. Those nasty little keys and the metal strip you were supposed to unroll with them, could lacerate your fingers in the twinkling of an eye. I wonder how many people went through the whole of their lives wondering why sardine sandwiches always had a slightly pink tinge to them?

Most sardines nowadays, like most other tins, have the 'easy pull' opening method which is fine for all those who work out beforehand that while pulling with one hand it is best to remove the other hand out of the vicinity. If you don't the sudden opening of the lid can nip a large chunk of flesh from your hand like a guillotine worker on overtime during the French Revolution.

The majority of packaging has to be opened by nothing short of brute force, and never mind the cute little 'pull here', 'push tab down and ease open', 'gently remove strip and slide open' advice from the manufacturers.

Someone suggested to me the other day that it might be that I was losing my strength as age progressed, which was why I had difficulty forcing my way into a packet of soap powder. Having just dug up and removed by my own fair, admittedly getting older, hands, four elder trees, roots and all I think not.

Take milk. At one time it only came in lovely real glass bottles with a light foil top which couldn't keep out even the weakest little Tom Tit. Now an entire industry has gone into overdrive to invent new ways of getting into milk containers and cartons and none of them work. I found a colleague the other day puzzling over the latest opening on a carton of sterilised semi-skimmed milk. 'It's got two little things to lift' she said. 'I've got one up but the other won't budge'. Mrs Smarty Pants here (I'm not the Editor for nothing, they come to me with all kinds of mind bending problems) noted that the instructions said push the second one in which she did and it went in and the milk inside shot up in the air and covered her. The next one I opened, incidentally, came away completely leaving just a hole AND the milk shot in the air and covered me.

The containers with little plastic bits round the lid which you pull are no better because quite often the little plastic bit breaks off as you start to pull it. I won't go into further details but just say if you have a dental plate don't attempt to do this with your teeth because the little plastic bit can get stuck and you don't want to have to retrieve your means of eating your breakfast cornflakes from the fridge.

The other thing which amazes me is that a lot of this impenetrable food packaging seems to be custom made for each individual item. Do people go to factories with suitcases full of scotch eggs and Chicken Kiev and get them measured? Or do they, as I suspect, buy a load of plastic packaging in strange shapes and then manufacture food to fit it. "Look boys, we've got three million octagon shaped plastic packs to get rid of, let's invent another filling for a Kiev. How about lightly toasted kangaroo mince and avocado and covered with that disgusting butter mix?".

It's not just cooked food, it's everything. Six tomatoes, all nice and shiny, packed in a designer box with sharp edges that you could use to slice the tomatoes but which you do use to nip your fingerprints off. The tomatoes, of course, only look good, they neither taste nor smell anything like a tomato. But don't get me started on tomatoes.

My number one unfavourite pack is the prawn cocktail sold by several supermarkets in a container designed by a sadist. The tub itself is a nice firm plastic one, the top is a rim of corrugated plastic which cunningly looks as if you should pull it off in order to prise the lid open. Half an hour later, after several abrasions and number of unpleasant or certainly unladylike expressions, you realise that this is actually not the bit that comes off, there is an inner lid and all you have to do is snap the corrugated bit ever so slightly and then the lid can be gently eased off. Why, you want to scream, is the corrugated bit there in the first place, why, you do scream, does it look like a lid when it isn't? Because people who spend their lives making boring plastic pots want to torment the unknown and un-named people who use them is the only answer I can think of.

I dare say that food manufacturers will explain that packaging is all about hygiene and keeping food safe. Maybe it doesn't occur to them that by the time we, the poor customer, has manhandled the packet open with a series of increasingly sharp and almost certainly unsterilised implements, dropped the contents, breathed angry words over them and rescued them from the cat, they are likely to contain far more germs than if someone merely bunged them into a paper bag.

The thought also occurs to me that if Eve had had to wrestle five layers of sellotape and plastic packaging off her Golden Delicious then Adam would have given up and gone home long before she actually had the apple in her hand. Then where would we be?