I’m really looking forward to Monica’s wedding on Friday and in anticipation today made one of the most adult purchases of my juvenile life. It was a suit bag from John Lewis. A smart one made by Antler too – hardly the sort of object to excite the younger me (it’s not got breasts) but one that the 28 year old me took enormous satisfaction in unwrapping and investigating.
To fill it, I picked up a suit from the dry cleaners (my suit, not just a random one, don’t EVER do that, it’s stealing and quite likely won’t fit anyway) and once home carefully inserted it into it’s new travelling home. I then took a short walk around the flat holding my new bag, even stopping to look at myself in the full-length mirror and thinking / pretending how snazzy I looked.
I used my considerable acting skills to pretend I was a successful business man entering the foyer of a Geneva hotel. I imagine a successful businessman entering a hotel foyer in Geneva would carry a suit bag very similar to mine.
Luggage is important, after all. I am the proud owner of a set of weekend luggage, which is suited more to country hotels, as well as a handsome red suitcase that I use for international travel. You might be thinking ‘Red? That sounds a bit garish for a classy bit of international-style luggage’ but not a bit of it, it’s essential to have a bright or at least different colour to your suitcase as it makes finding it on the baggage carousel all the easier. ‘Ah,’ you say, ‘now we fully understand.’
The other advantage of having a red suitcase is people are far less likely to steal it in the airport. If you’re going to steal a piece of luggage in an airport, you’d go for one that blends in with other similar bags. That way, people are far less likely to spot you as you make off with it, and even if they do you can pretend it was an honest mistake as it looks like your pretend bag.
I’m not a criminal, but I have often wondered why more bags aren’t taken off baggage carousels. If you’re returning home from a trip with a rubbish bag that’s just full of dirty, nasty clothes and a few cigarettes, surely it must be tempting to pick up a nice big bag instead that’s probably got loads of great stuff it in.
Unless you were the world’s unluckiest criminal and stole a nice looking suitcase that was jammed to bursting with cocaine and bombs. Imagine being stopped with that lot. ‘But it’s not mine! I’ve just nicked it off the carousel!’
‘Then you’re a smuggler AND a thief in our Thai eyes and you’ll get double-life imprisonment instead, HA!’
I must mention the football tonight. Northern Ireland 1 England 0.
The full enormity of this result could, but probably wont, cost Sven-Goran Eriksson his job. The tabloids will be wanting blood, inevitably, but it the corridors of power at the FA that will be most uncomfortable with a result like this.
What will almost certainly save his ass is that if England win their remaining two group matches, against Austria and Poland, we’ll qualify for the World Cup. But the likelihood of that happening is more remote now that the spirit within the squad seems to be at a critical level – notable in Beckham and other senior members apparently getting Eriksson to change the teams formation for Saturday’s game against Wales. Having never been a professional footballer, a massive oversight on the part of the people who picked the teams at my school, I still think that when you get a situation where the players are challenging the bosses decisions you’ve got a massive problem.
I watched tonight’s game in The Lion with Seamus, Helene’s brother, who’s just come over from Northern Ireland to live in Liverpool. He was a gracious in victory as I hope I was in defeat.
The irony is that in the first half the ball was being played around okay by England but with little threat. We had something like 74% possession. Still, we could have got a couple of goals and if that were the case nerves would have been settled and we should have won comfortably. But the reality is we were bullied out of the game by Northern Ireland and their great, great manager Laurie Sanchez. All due respect to them.
With the final, deciding, test against Australia starting tomorrow, I wonder if cricket will – if only on a temporary basis – steal the sporting hearts of the English and relegate the silly and inflated world of football. With a World Cup coming up next summer, this seems impossible, but there’s certainly going to be a slight shift in power.
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