Sunday, July 31, 2011

Packing Heat

I am supposed to be packing... the trouble with packing for a month is that it feels a lot like trying to take everything you own and put it into a suitcase that is not big enough for everything you own. In a month, I think it is entirely plausible that I will wear at least 9 pairs of trousers... but I have been conditioned to believe that I should pack light. Pack light! People will say, as though any refusal to pack light is merely your inability to be at one with the world. We laugh at people who bring everything... what were you worried might happen? We say to them.

Whatever happened to the old Scout motto? Be prepared! Being prepared surely means packing 9 pairs of trousers just in case. I am going to Edinburgh - packing 9 pairs of trousers just seems sensible. If I didn't truly  hope that going to this Edinburgh Fringe was going to:
a) Be lots of fun
b) Have an impact on some kind of career dream

then quite frankly I should not be going. How are you supposed to have a large effect on your future aspirations to be thought funny and brilliant in equal measures if you only have 8 pairs of trousers with you? Obviously this is ridiculous waffle. I'm actually very good at packing light. Too good in fact. Once when I went to Magaluf (not a holiday I'm proud of but it was an experience - 13 hours total sleep in 4 days is something every human being should experience) I packed so light that people started to wonder if I'd lost my luggage somewhere and was being forced to wear the same shorts every day. Other holiday makers started offering me clothes as though I was some sort of backwater moron who had never heard of Primark. "You can buy clothes so cheap nowadays!" they would tell me, "I know!!" says I... "Trust me, I have lots of clothes... but suddenly when packing it's like we're in reverso land all of a sudden it's not cool to have brought loads of stuff with you. Much better to be blase about the whole thing - whatever I haven't brought with me, I'll just buy when I get there!"

Ridiculous - I barely have the money to go there let alone buy a new kitchen sink when I arrive because I've purposely not packed the perfectly good one I have back at home.

Today has been wholly set aside to pack. It's now 2pm and my suitcase is still under my bed but I ahve made 3 pots of loose leaf tea and drunk them whilst reading Caitling Moran and glaring at the utter tedium of the Grand Prix. This is an awful start to the day and it's going to change right now... I am going to pack the living crap out of my room. It is going to be packed like nothing has ever been packed before. If you have a fear of packers you'd better get out of my way because I am a pack horse. A pack of wolves. A pack of cards... I am the Queen of Packing. I am packing up...

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