So I gave up on the delusion that I would ever be one of those women who need carry no more than a tiny little handbag, the sort that fit a purse and lipstick and perhaps a single, dainty housekey.
My keys alone wouldn't fit in one of those things. Where the hell would I put my laptop?
I've recently got somewhat fed up of the compromise too – having one slimish laptop bag that's not quite big enough to fit everything in, thus forcing me to also carry a handbag of the non-dainty sort for the overflow. Not good for the shoulders or sanity, that combination. Patricularly when said set of keys, recently grown to jailer's proportions, manages to get lost in both bags. Possibly at once. Hmm. Enanglement in a luggage-housekey array could be a fascinating new branch of quantum physics.
I am quite particular about my bags. Not that you'd believe it if you saw them, mind. I like to have lots of pockets so that I can segregate everything: there's the pocket for my keys, there's the pocket for my pens, there's the pocket the useless bit of paper I've been carrying round for three months without fully understanding why. Bags with no pockets, where purse sits upon phone upon notepad upon power supply just fill me with the night horrors. But bags with sufficient pockets are hard to come by.
So I started my search up again. The search that never truly ceases, and the unsuccessful results of which lie buried at the back of the wardrobe or hidden inside each other in a suitcase in the loft like particularly floppy Russian dolls.
I remember seeing what looked like a nice bag in an Apple shop in Holborn, so went to take a look. Nice bag. Pockets. Not too big. Designed to keep your laptop safe or, more importantly, my laptop safe. Decided after much tooing and froing and discussion with the sales assistant (who showed patience of saintlike magnitude) to buy it. Because it wasn't as big as the bigger one, or as enormous as the rucksack version, and it looked quite, dare I say it, dainty compared to some of the monstrosities I've seen over the years.
So I bought it. Took it proudly back to the office. Disembagulated all my posessions and then set about reembagulating them. (Note invention of two new words there. Three if you count the root 'embagulation' – the act of putting something into a bag with pockets.)
Paused.
Disembagulated.
Reembagulated.
Realised that if it ain't gonna all fit, it simply ain't gonna all fit, no matter how cunningly you try to pack it. See, that's the problem with nice padded bags. They are full of padding, thus making them an anti-TARDIS – smaller on the inside than they look. (Also not able to move through space and time except for in the usual manner.)
One slightly embarassed trip back to the shop later and I am now the proud owner of a large, well padded, moderately pocketed laptop backpack. The kind of bag that tells you that a girl means business. And that her laptop is worth more to her than mere dainty aesthetics.
I like to think that it gives me an air of mystery, as if I might be going away somewhere exciting and exotic and preferably tropical. I always seem to end up in Marble Arch instead, though.
Must work on that.
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