IN PRAISE OF BIG BAGS

You can look back on your working days and think ‘yes, they were the BEST days!’ Or, you can be realistic and think ‘Ah – retirement – how good is this!’ I’m in the latter camp these days. Oh, I loved working. There were so many interesting things to do each day, and so many interesting people to do them with.And there are so many excuses emanating from the fact that you’re a working woman. You can say ‘I just can’t clean the bathroom this week – I just haven’t got the time, or the energy. I’m just too busy!’ You can come home from work, dramatically fling yourself onto the lounge, and say ‘I need a drink of wine – oh, I’ve had such a day’. Then ten minutes later you can have another one! No one minds – you’re a working woman.

But, being free and easy is what retirement is all about. You do actually get to do the things you never had time for before. These things take up a great deal of time. You can say ‘I just can’t clean the bathroom this week – I’ve got to get to line dancing – quilting – book group – aerobics – or whatever’. And when you come home from one of these energy depleting activities you can fling yourself down onto the lounge and cry, ‘Bring me a drink. I’m just exhausted.’See? Both are great.

What got me thinking about the good old days was the dreadful occurrence of having a broken finger nail. I was rushing to Tai Chi classes, and broke a finger nail. As you do. When I looked for a nail file in my rather small bag I couldn’t at first find one. I knew I had one somewhere. I knew if I didn’t file that broken edge it would distract me all during the class. And we can’t have that.So in the end, after delving deep – well, as deep as you can delve in a small bag – I found the wanted nail file. It was old. It was bent. It was almost worn down to the nub. However, it did the job, and Tai Chi went like a dream.

But, it did make me think. When I was working I had a LARGE bag. A very large bag. I carried that bag for years. It held my ‘work shoes’, which were high heeled. You can’t walk to work in high heels – you have to have flat shoes – so the shoes alternated places in my bag. I had a fold up umbrella – in case of rain – of course, if I were working these days I wouldn’t even have to carry such an optimistic item. I had my make up. Well, you never know when you’ll need to put on more make up. I had perfume, I had hand lotion, I had two or three lipsticks (well, you don’t know what colour you’ll need). I had lip gloss, and a spare lip gloss. God forbid you’d ever run out of lip gloss. I had a compact of powder. I had a mirror. And wearing contact lenses, I had all the extra stuff you need to carry for contact lenses emergencies. Wetting solution, cleaning solution, special tissues, a contact lens carrying case, and then extra eye make up, because when a contact lens emergency happens – as all wearers will know – somehow all the eye make up vanishes, and you have to start again. And I will not – WILL NOT – be seen without at least some mascara. Oh, and I carried two mascaras. One, the almost dried out one that I was determined to use up, and one nice moist new one – which always got used first.And a comb, and a brush. Oh, and toothpaste and a tooth brush in a cunning little container. A spare pair of panti-hose, and a packet of instant noodles for the days when there was no spare cash to buy lunch. Usually these days occurred as were as we were approaching pay day – you’re always broke a few days before pay day. Buying lunch is another perk of working – it works two ways – you don’t have to prepare anything, and then when you get home you can say ‘I just can’t cook any dinner tonight – I had such a BIG lunch’. Then there was a ‘little cardigan’ – folded up and all fluffy and horrible, after residing in the bottom of this very large bag, so it probably never would have been worn in the case of a sudden chill in the air. And an address book – a very fat address book. A notebook, to remind me to clean the bathroom or buy more wine, and for all sorts of lists.

If you want to know more about people who live their lives by lists you need to read my short story ‘Things To Do Today’, which appears in my collection ‘Essences’ – available at a reasonable price, plus postage, if you contact me at nelmaray@hotmail.com. Enough of the blatant self promotion – back to the story at hand.

And I always had a copious supply of bandaids, peppermints, stamps and a teeny weeny sewing kit, which in itself is a bit of a laugh – me? Sew? Never! And of course there were sunglasses – two pairs – and cough lollies. And the current library book.And of course there was my wallet, a business card holder and lots of other stuff which you just throw into your bag as it accumulates. Not to mention the things that fall inadvertently into your bag – crumbs, ring pulls from cans and the odd moth.

Now, when I finished work and retired – retirement which could have been bought on by carrying all this weight on one shoulder for years and years! – I decided on the night of my last day at work to ‘unpack my work bag’. That sounded like a very symbolic thing to do. It meant that I was finished with corporate life. I no longer needed to be burdened by this necessities that I felt had to be taken with me everywhere. I was going to be free and easy and unencumbered.I did unpack my bag. I found things I thought had been lost for ever. Things I hadn’t seen for years.

But the most interesting and noteworthy thing that I did find were seventeen nail files! Seventeen!Which is why when the other day I couldn’t find one for some considerable time, and then found it in a lamentable condition, I did for a short while pine for the good old days. The days of being prepared for every occasion. Anyway, when I came home from Tai Chi – and threw myself exhausted onto the lounge and begged for a glass of wine ‘quickly’ – I resolved to put a few more nail files in my bag, and perhaps a few other little things too, just in case, just like the good old days. You just never know what you’ll need and when you’ll need it.

© Nelma Ward