Bags For Our Stuff...

I'm having a new handbag for Christmas. I've decided money is well spent on shoes and handbags. My new bag isn't the one in the picture; I just stuck that picture in because that bag looks glossy and Christmassy and it's the sort of bag that accompanies you to parties if you wear dresses with shoestring straps ( I don't) and if you have elbows you can reveal ( I haven't) and if you have gorgeous painted nails the colour of shot silver( what's " shot silver"? Have I made it up?) This is a lovely bag but not my new one.

My new bag is moss green and soft; it's squashy and roomy and it's my friend already, even though it's only just bought. It's smiling pleasantly as I write, awaiting a swathe of wrapping paper around its comfy dependable body.

I have several handbags. My sporty black Rohan works hard for its living; it's accompanied me all over Europe and to SE Asia. And it likes the Lakes and Cornwall, just as I do; it's also particularly partial to London.It's remained constantly faithful, despite being lost beneath a bed in Athens, forgotten in a Gothic Quarter cafe in Barcelona and left swinging (wildly) from a chair in a bar in Bangkok .

I bought another favourite bag at Manchester airport two years ago, en route to Croatia. It's a wonderful warmish pinkish colour; it's fuchsia crossed with salmon. It holds everything from a bottle of water, camera, to books and glasses ( both reading and sun) . Last week I found a picture of my grandson George in its lining. George was one day old and I'd just met him; he was new and perfect and calm and wise and finding this forgotten photo completed a very fine day...

My oldest bag is burgundy leather, small and neat with three compartments; it has tasteful glints of gold and a slender strap on which it can sway gracefully from my shoulder. I bought this bag one sultry afternoon thirty five years ago; since then, it has swayed from my shoulder at Weddings, Funerals, Christenings, Graduations and also Celebrations for Many Things.
I needed a classy bag for an elegant wedding so I visited a small expensive leather shop in Chester ( long since gone); the bag cost a fortune. Unfortunately, I can't remember the size of that fortune but I remember feeling breathless on my way home and thinking how we'd have to live on poached eggs for a week. However, this bag still smells and looks gorgeous after all these years, so that fortune was money well spent. And my mother was right, always stressing: "Quality not quantity". In other words, class outlives tat.
The bag still contains "stuff" from decades ago; concert tickets, a special address, a meaningful postcard, a picture of a longdead Lakeland terrier.It's a well-travelled bag although recently, it's rested at home while Rohan took it's place. But it's seen me through good times and bad and hopefully, my new green one, beaming from the sofa as I write, will be just as essential in my life before long..