It comes in a neat box about eight inches high, bearing the catchy name “kitchen tool like bottle”. Eight implements in one handily small package. Just the thing for a teenager preparing for a self-catering life in student accommodation.

But what are these useful tools? Knife, spoon, tin-opener, peeler, grater? None of those. And while there is something described as a Bottle Opener, it’s actually a rubber ring to help you grasp a jar.

A thirsty student would struggle to open their beer bottle with that. With or without the guidance note: “Grasp bottle cap by covering it on bottle cap when using.” Or the further warning that if pulled or folded it “may not recover because of once deformation”.

There’s a Seasoning Grinder. And if you’re wondering what that is, “It is used for triturating seasoning such as ginger, horseradish and etc.” Useful.

There’s something that looks reassuringly like a standard lemon-squeezer. “Its shape is designed reasonably in order to squeeze better.”

The shape of the funnel is designed to “look like bottle”. But as it says on the box: “In that way it is relatively convenient to use powered substance and combine with weighing cup used as a little vase as an open mouth is relatively spacious”.

By this point in reading the instructions, my open mouth is certainly relatively spacious. And no powered substances required.

But about that Weighing Cup (no weighing machine provided): “It with degree scale is used for weighing a small amount of things. It is used by combining with each component and also used as a vessel.”

I can see it might combine usefully with the Cheese Grinder: “Please follow direction of arrow to triturate food material when using it.” I will, I will.

Frankly, I’ve never felt the need of an Egg Pulverizator. I’m not even sure what one is – but fortunately there’s an explanation: “It is used for triturating seasoning such as ginger, horseradish and etc.” So that’s clear, then. Or at least familiar.

Lastly – and the need for this is beyond me as well – there’s what can only be called Utensil for Taking Yolk. And that, apparently, is all the explanation you need.

You will, of course, have realised by now that this little bundle of plastic contrivances, like so many useful objects in our lives, especially the plastic sort, was Made in China. That wonderful far-off country where so much of our language too is pulverizated.

And I’m not mocking. Really, I’m not. My grasp of Chinese languages goes no further than being able to identify the winds and dragons on a set of mah-jong tiles. I mean only to express my disappointment at the decision by China’s rulers to clamp down (again) on one of the world’s most reliable sources of inadvertent surrealism.

The government in Beijing has decided that Chinglish is a national embarrassment. From December it aims to enforce new rules ensuring translations “do not contain content that damages the images of China or other countries”.

It will insist all translated signs and labels “prioritise correct grammar and a proper register, while rare expressions and vocabulary words should be avoided”. Good luck with that, then.

Actually, I find it remarkable that the Chinese even attempt English translations of their signage. How many signs in Cantonese do you see on the streets of Norwich?

But if Chinglish is to be cleaned up, we must cherish it while we can. And celebrate signs such as this one, in a public park: “Drug, druger, psychotic is out allowed to enter, miner, senior citizen and disabled man”.

This one by the side of a steep path: “Carefully slipping”.

Or this one, mysteriously in a record shop window: “No Panting!”

And finally, just remember: “Please don’t wipe forcibly words and lines printed each component. Because they may disappear.”

It was not the longest or  most difficult journey to America ever made. Not up there with Christopher Columbus’s original voyage of 1492. Nor the trip my grandmother made as a nine-year-old travelling alone on the lower deck from Russia to New York.

It involved nothing like the horrors endured by migrants desperate enough to risk crossing the Mediterranean in overcrowded, ramshackle boats, perhaps drowning in the attempt. 

Or the dangers faced by those fleeing the wars in Yemen or Syria or the lawlessness that has ensued from Western “involvement” in Libya.

Or the hardships of those who perish trying to cross the desert that makes Donald Trump’s promised wall between the US and Mexico a complete irrelevance for so much of that border.

The trip was not undertaken by a Muslim from any of those Arab states Trump has closed the door on. It was a journey home to Wisconsin by a British man who has lived there legally for years, running a small business with his American wife.

A white, middle-aged, middle-class man with no beard, tattoos or extreme political or religious views. A member, in short, (like me) of a privileged minority. Nevertheless, I think his Odyssey last week is worth recounting for what it says about the world we live in.

Airport-to-airport, it should have taken just under 14 hours. It took 66 – largely for reasons that speak volumes about Trump’s America.

The traveller had been summoned back to England at short notice when his 89-year-old mother was taken into hospital after a heart attack. Happily, against all apparent odds, she returned home and seems to have made a full recovery.

Meanwhile, however, back in Wisconsin Steve’s father-in-law died suddenly and he made a rapid flight booking in hope of being home for the funeral. Vain hope, as it turned out.

It was as he was changing planes in Dublin that the troubles began. US Homeland Security now begins a long way from the homeland – and there was a mix-up over the dates on his travel documents. By the time that was sorted, his booked flight had flown.

Waiting to get on another plane the next morning, he was denied a boarding pass and told he would have to go to the US Embassy to have his Green Card cleared. At the embassy, he was told to send an email. Which he did from an internet cafe around the corner, in a country he’d landed in with no local currency and an inoperative phone. Meanwhile, another flight to Chicago had left – and his father-in-law’s faraway funeral was just hours away.

At this point technical troubles enter the story. Given the all-clear by the immigration authorities, our hero boarded a flight for Chicago, only to sit on the Dublin tarmac for a couple of hours – and then back in the departure lounge for several more – while ground crew fixed an electrical fault on the plane. When eventually he landed in Chicago it was past midnight – the hour at which his clearance granted in Dublin expired.

There are a dozen flights a day from Chicago to Milwaukee. But once he was through another two hours with immigration officials, Steve decided that rather than wait for the day’s air service to begin he’d make the last 90 miles of his trek by taxi. And ran into a Midwest thunderstorm of the kind that brings flooding and road damage...

All first world problems, perhaps. But as his wife remarked: “It’s about immigration in this land that Trump is making so great again. You can see what a fine job he’s doing in making America first.”

Meanwhile Steve’s sister, one of my oldest and dearest friends, has her own related worries. Having lived for 30 years in France with a British passport, she’s now wondering anxiously where Brexit will leave her, her French husband and her French job.

As I sat in the garden enjoying the summer evening sun, my attention was caught by a movement in the bushes. Not this time one of the dunnocks which are our year-round companions, and not big or heavy enough to be just another pigeon or blackbird.

No, it was a blackcap foraging for berries, not in a black cap, but a smart russet brown one befitting her gender. Happily I had my camera to hand, so here she is. I’m very fond of her and her trim, dapper mate.

Most summers for the past decade we’ve had blackcaps for neighbours. They always nest in the same holly bush just beyond our back gate, and I’ve often wondered whether it’s the same pair returning year after year, or perhaps ensuing generations. And, if one was fledged here, whether it was the male or the female returning to its early home.

All of which raises the question: how long do small birds like blackcaps live? And the answer, it turns out, is not entirely straightforward.

Most sources give a typical blackcap lifespan of two years, which might suggest we’ve had several generations of visitors. But then the Animal Ageing and Longevity Database – a great resource to discover – gives a maximum age in the wild of nearly 14. So it seems at least possible that the pair busy in the garden hedge right now are the same two birds I first spotted 10 years ago. Statistically unlikely, perhaps, but certainly plausible.

Because this is the thing about life expectancy: not many creatures die of old age. Most succumb to accident, disease or being eaten by other creatures long before their bodies wear out. Which means those that survive those perils may live many times longer than the average for their kind.

The same statistical pattern used to apply to human beings – and in some parts of the world it still does. Some individuals can live to a ripe old age through wars and grinding poverty. Most won’t, so the average is relatively low.

Which brings me back to the question: what is a ripe old age for a bird?

Of course, it depends on the bird. One wild albatross was ringed on Midway Atoll in the North Pacific in 1956 while incubating an egg. Since the species doesn’t breed before the age of five, she must have been at least 62 when she was spotted again in 2013, rearing another chick.

Some pelicans and an occasional eagle make it into their 50s. Buzzards can reach their late 20s and those red kites now taking to our skies may go well into their 30s.

The oldest recorded dunnock, or hedge sparrow, was 20. The garden warbler – a close relative of my blackcaps – can live to 24 in captivity. And that familiar little charmer the chaffinch has been known to reach 29.

All of which I find fascinating in itself – and I hope you do too. But it should also give us pause to think.

As the most wasteful and destructive species on this planet – by far – we have a responsibility to all those other creatures we share it with. And if we make it uninhabitable for them, even the birds we take for granted are not necessarily easy-come, easy-go, short-lived beings that can quickly bounce back.

The fulmar, that brilliant navigator of the wind currents around our sea cliffs, can live in the wild to at least 51.
I shall write more another time about fulmars, which are truly marvellous birds. For now I’ll just note that scientists believe every grown fulmar in the world – every single one – and every albatross has some plastic in them. Which is just one reason to wonder how many will make it to old age.

Plastic is a magical material. Well, quite a lot of different magical materials, actually. One of the wonders of the modern age. And one of the horrors too.

I wrote here a few weeks ago about photographer and activist Tim Nunn and his campaign to draw attention to the mountains of plastic detritus washing up on distant shores around the world. A true East Anglian hero.
Since then, plastic has hit the headlines for a few different reasons. None of them good.

Perhaps most notably, and most immediately horrifying for humans, the plastic foam insulation in the building’s cladding has been implicated in making a towering inferno of Grenfell Tower. 

Equally shocking in its way was the tale of the whale that died on the Isle of Skye.

The Cuvier’s beaked whale was killed by the 4kg of carrier-bags, bin-liners and freezer bags which had filled its stomach, got twisted in its intestine and blocked its digestive system.

Dr Andrew Brownlow of the Scottish Marine Animal Stranding Scheme carried out the autopsy that revealed this sorry cause of death. And he said: “If you assume that what this whale has done is sample a small section of ocean, then this is astonishing. This was an animal that went to places that are very difficult for us to go and sample and sadly paid pretty much the ultimate price for that.”

It is estimated that between eight million and 12m tonnes of plastic are dumped in the sea every year. The gap between those figures reveals a gap in our knowledge of something we really should know – and care – a lot more about. 

But whatever the true total, it’s an awful lot of sea-borne plastic. And for all the global tide of flotsam so graphically recorded by Tim Nunn, most of it sinks below the surface. 

Out of sight of humanity, but straight into the food chain of the whales and countless other marine creatures.

Ultimately, a fair amount will end up in our own food chain. With consequences to our own health which scientists are still a long way from determining for sure. It’s unlikely to prove beneficial.

Meanwhile, the Greenpeace ship Beluga II has just finished a two-month scientific expedition around the coast of Scotland.

Working with various volunteer organisations, including local primary schools, the crew have taken more than 40 seawater samples and conducted 30 beach surveys and clean-ups. The samples are undergoing analysis at Exeter University, but every one appears to contain a great many tiny pieces of plastic.

You can find film taken by the Beluga crew on the Greenpeace UK Facebook page here. It includes footage of awe-inspiring coastal scenery and glorious wildlife – seals, basking sharks, dolphins, puffins, gannets – but also grotesque quantities of plastic.

Even on the remotest isles, the team cleared plastic bottles, bags and packaging from every beach they surveyed. One shot shows a puffin whose already brightly coloured beak is awkwardly augmented with a garish piece of bright green cord.

On spectacular Bass Rock, home to 150,000 gannets – the world’s largest colony of those majestic birds – nesting sites are strewn with discarded plastic of all sorts.

Other researchers report that one in three of the world’s turtles – and an astonishing 90 per cent of all seabirds – have eaten bits of plastic, sometimes with gruesome consequences.

The Beluga team visited the Scottish Parliament at Holyrood last week to present their early findings and hand in a 25,000-name petition calling for a deposit return scheme for bottles and cans. (Remember when it was normal to take empty bottles back rather than chucking them away? Readers of a certain age will.)

And here’s one small piece of good news against the depressing tide. Scotland’s environment secretary Roseanna Cunningham promptly announced a consultation and feasibility study on a national bottle deposit scheme.

It may not be much when the problem’s so huge, but it’s a step in the right direction. We could all take a few steps ourselves to reduce our plastic habit.