Enter the Cardboard Box, Again...

 Having just embarked on thinning out my books, preparatory to moving house, I found myself in need of some cardboard boxes. Naturally this situation recalled to my mind that imperishable phrase 'Enter the cardboard box' and the wonderfully desperate BBC News piece in which it originated. So I ordered ten cardboard boxes online, and today they arrived – in a cardboard box, one that was practically big enough to set up camp in. I measured it from side to side, 'twas four feet long and three feet wide – well, not quite, but it was just about the largest cardboard box I have ever seen in a life not entirely innocent of cardboard box experience. It was certainly too large to get through the side gate to my garden. How, I asked myself, could ten flat-packed cardboard boxes require another box of this immense size? I soon found the answer, which was – spoiler alert – that they absolutely didn't. The immense box was almost entirely full of packing paper – so full that it took me some while to dig through it all, and even longer to stuff it all into a large, but barely large enough, black plastic sack. When I finally reached the bottom, there, taking up about a twentieth of the volume of the box that held them, lay my flat-packed cardboard boxes. After a brief pause to recover my energy, I set about demolishing the giant box, reducing it to a supersized flat-pack, and lugging it out of the house. Exit the cardboard box.