I have an awful lot of handbags. It's no surprise really, given the current cultural stereotype of the typical 22 year old female graduate, I suppose I feed such characterisations. Anyway, yeah, the point is...handbags...I have lots of them. I don't suppose I really need them ALL, but necessity isn't really on my mind when choosing and purchasing bags. It's really not the point. And since I met my best friend and discovered the art of co-ordinating my bags with outfits, well....you can guess the result.
My main problem with the quantity of bags I own (other than storage; my current system can be summed up as chaotic) is the faff of changing bags around. You see it's not just a case of take out the purse, phone and keys and shove them in another bag...no, it always seems to be much more complicated that. As I have a tendency to be lazy when it comes to cleaning out my bags, things accumulate in there, and so I end up with bags here, there and everywhere, with bits and bobs still stuck in them. Over the summer, when I tend to take lighter or smaller bags out with me, it's noteable how much of my life can be pieced together through old receipts, bus tickets, train tickets and such like in pockets and pouches, I neither think to, nor feel compelled to remove.
I came to consider this whole situation because I have just been swapping a bag over and I decided it was time to clean out my good old reliable black bag. Said handbag is trendy and sufficiently big enough for all my work things, as well as passing 'the handbag test' (i.e does it look good hooked over your arm?) Anyway I was changing it over because I have a new one I got for Christmas which I think will cheer me up with its bright colour. As I tipped the contents out onto my bed to appraise what was there I was shocked, not only at how much rubbish was stuffed inside, but also the length of time it must have been stuck in there. Of course there was the usual Tesco receipts, bus tickets, and train ticket (goodness knows which train journey that was from...I seem to take trains quite a lot!) there was also an empty tube of handcream, a lipgloss I thought I'd lost and a folded up piece of lined paper.
I decided to open up the folded paper to see what it was. There's no good throwing out something that was important. I actually thought it might be a mock-up register that I needed to dispose of (i.e the computer wasn't working at work so I get all the kids to write their name down on a bit of paper) Anyway I opened it up and the handwriting wasn't my own.
At this point I should probably say that I was playing music and the song had just changed over to 'Movielike' by Jimmy Eat World, a song which takes me straight back to 7am on the bus in early November, heading to work. As soon as that point in my life was flooding back to me, the paper in my head more forcefully brought that point in time to the forefont of my mind. What I was holding was directions to 2 Costa Coffee shops in Norfolk.
Now, don't laugh! These kinda things are important to the caffeine hooked Costa fans on the go. The writing was my sister's and it was from the 13th Novemeber, when we had road-tripped down to Norfolk to see Jimmy Eat World tour their new album. I was back there, in a flash! And it made me smile when I saw it. I remembered that she gave it to me 'for safe keeping'. She knew there was no way I was letting anything so important out of my sight for even a second!
When I surveyed the contents sprawled on my bed, what I was actually viewing was memories. Good, bad, the mundane, the ordinary, the extra-ordinary. Sometimes I think the odd bits of paper like that could tell stories. I think if they could speak, they would speak volumes, and they wouldn't waffle, they'd be precise and funny, maybe even sad.
I haven't kept all the tickets and receipts and rubbish and things from all the events in my life I consider important. Some memories were painful, thus train tickets were discarded with in a theraputic manner, tears streaming down my face. Other bits were hastily disposed of in a rush to get a bag clean and tidy again, not considering what fun it could be to look through old memories. But I think, if I did, it could be thought of as some sort of record of my life, not just a boring account of where I went when, but a point for reflection on different moments in my life and what they mean to me.
I really love that black handbag. I can't help but wonder what junk will be in it this time, next year.
