Legion of Super-Packers

Apparently I don't know as much about international removals as I thought I did. It seems that the way they do things now is to have one team come in, wrap all your worldly possessions in paper and bubblewrap and then put them all in boxes - the Packers. Then they leave and Team Movers comes in, does an inventory, puts all the stuff in the back of a truck and drives off leaving you with nothing more than a fistful of coloured papers. That is now all we have to account for a houseful of Roo and my stuff; 7 green pieces of paper.

So, the packers turned up and there was a guy in his 40s, a young, overweight kid and a dude who looked as if he earned extra cash at night, boxing shirt and shoeless in underground clubs. I showed them around the house and when I had finished they went about their work without so much as a word exchanged between them. The older guy started filling out paperwork, the larger dude headed to the kitchen to pack the glassware and the buff one strode off towards the sitting room.

I took this to be further customisation of roles. The big boned lad was Joey Safehands, not much power but the lightest touch in the removal game. He specialised in the packaging of delicates and was so good at his job that he'd only lost two tumblers and a chipped mug (that the owners didn’t really like) in the last 18 months. The one looking after the TV and chairs is referred to as The Hulk but never to his face. He can bench press more than four times his own bodyweight and once moved two pianos at the same time. The final member of the team was Tetris. Once a professor of mathematics, Tetris is the most gifted natural tessellatetorian in the southern hemisphere. He takes the boxes from the other two and designs a strategy for packing them into the van that uses dimensions beyond the reach of Newtonian physics. Some say that he goes down to the beach on his days off and rearranges grains of sand for fun.

After a couple of hours they took a break. After a coffee and a couple of pies, The Hulk headed into the kitchen, Tetris remained in the front of the house and Joey moved up to the bedroom. My vision of the greatest packing team ever assembled crumbled and I came to the conclusion that they must have decided who was going to pack what while they were out of earshot getting the paper, boxes and tape out of the van.