Let's cut down on recycling and bring back the humble flask

We could do with a few more flasks, writes Colm O’Regan

WHAT happened to it? How come the nostalgia merchants haven’t brought it back along with all the rest of the stuff from the 1980s, like leg-warmers and the threat of nuclear war.

I’m talking about the flask. They used to be everywhere: in offices, building sites, or leaking slightly in a schoolbag so that a Busy at Maths smelled of Cup-a-Soup for the Winter. Of course they were grim times — when the workplace canteen was a chair next to the mop and most shops were barren, a bit Soviet. You half expected Elton John, singing Nikita, to come and rescue you.