As I was squeezing the toothpaste onto my brush this morning I suddenly caught up with the relentless pace of technology. For the very first time I realised that toothpaste no longer comes in a thick metal foil tube.

I’m sure it’s been fairly obvious to the vast majority of people since whenever the changeover took place but I only realised this morning that it’s some weird metallic plastic that forms the tube. Now I know I’m not observant but you have to say that for a plastic it behaves in some funny ways does this toothpaste dispensing marvel of materials science. Don’t get me wrong – I knew that toothpaste can come in normal plasticky plastic and I think it did for a while but this stuff is different – if you press a dent into it, it stays dented. Just like metal foil it has some sort of memory and it’s silvery too! … spooky and damned clever if you ask me.

But in the end it’s just plastic because when you try to role up the tube of paste from the bottom up in order to get at that last bit of toothpaste because you’re a tightwad – it just doesn’t.