Big bag blues

I phoned my mother today and she took an awfully long time to answer. Not that it wasn't close to hand. It was in her handbag, and she couldn't find it with her hand, so had to turn everything out onto the table to locate the phone! I can totally identify with this.

The first problem is that women somehow need to carry their entire lives with them wherever we go. I am sure it would be perfectly possible to leave the country at a moment's notice and start a new life somewhere else at the drop of a hat, as long as my bag is on my arm. I didn't realise quite how much stuff I carried around with me until the day I left the bag on the kitchen counter, as I usually do. At the time, we still had a number of cats in various stages of decrepitude. A while later, I noticed an unsavoury aroma and could tell that a cat had relieved itself somewhere close by and on investigation, found to my horror that it was on my beautiful, soft, ostrich skin drawstring handbag, forming a neat little pool in its folds!

I have heard that you shouldn't wet ostrich skin. Well, without hesitation, I mopped up the excess with kitchen towel, tipped everything out of the bag and rushed off to the bathroom, where I held the bag under the hot tap on full pressure for about 10 minutes, then rubbed it with soap and rinsed it under the tap again for 10 minutes. I then put it outside in the sun. Amazingly, the bag suffered no ill effects whatsoever and not a trace of cat smell remained.

The debris on the kitchen counter was another story! I took a picture of it for posterity and vowed at the time that I would never have so much rubbish in my bag again, but I fear that things are starting to get out of hand again and some serious sorting seems to be in the offing.