Bag To The Future
How many of you have a “work bag”? For 26 years of my life now, I have had a bag that I use every day.
As you can see below, I still have the faithful school briefcase, bought in a Portsmouth in early September 1979.
These days, it contains all the website paperwork - Yorkists, Calendars and anything else I can steal from the Nye Hall at Old Boys weekend. Opening it up you are met with the same smell that greeted me that first school day a quarter of a century ago. Very strange. Me that is, not the briefcase. You can’t quite make it out in the photo but 1o is crossed out, as is 2i. Obviously by the time I got to my 3rd year, I gave up labeling it. N R ARGUE seemed enough to prevent Lincoln unloading a 12 Bore into it in the middle of the parade square.
I probably gave up using it after my 5th form. During my lower 6th, it did contain a significant amount of “Rhythm Pamphlets”, most of which were confiscated from the lower forms of Wolseley or stolen from Kev Wheelan. I think when I reached the point that I needed one of the lower orders to sit on the case before I could close it signified that perhaps I had a little too much Jazz literature and I threw most of it in the bin outside the fifth form dorm one quite Monday morning during a PS. I was perhaps a little too naive to expect it to stay there and a few weeks later found out that it had been liberated later the same day by a crowd of sweaty fruits eager for a fumble fix. A belated “you are welcome…” guys.
Anyhoo, these days I leave for the day’s toil with a little blue rucksack slung over my shoulder. They last about a year now but only cost about a £5. A significant indication of our throwaway culture no doubt. No porn these days, unless “Heat” magazine counts (which some days it does), only my mp3 player, my sandwiches and apparantly a lot of crap.
Tomorrow, I go back to work after 17 days leave and I thought it reasonable to clear out the bag ready for a New Year. Where does all the crap come from? I emptied it onto the kitchen floor and stared in wonder at the last three months of my working life compressed into a pile of litter. Half-written memos, 3 coke bottles, a very old packet of crisps, some loose polos, some crumpled photos from Children In Need day, a lot of unlucky raffle tickets, several useless floppy disks and 53p in change.
A treasure trove tribute to procrastination.
I’ll give it a month and I’ll probably have to do it again.
yeeeey, I read “heat”, well Jen’s cast off. Are you like me, having to ask who some of the people are?