more grief

QE II carries a handbag. What’s in it, do you think? The keys to all those castles and palaces? Carrots in case she meets a horse? Corgi treats?

QE II also wears hats. If she wears and carries I’ll forgive her because she has to dress to impress, but personally I find the idea that a handbag can be a fashion statement ludicrous.

There are some exceptions but for the most part women’s handbags are just hideous. What is feminine about a bag with studs, chains and whips all over them? How can a Louis Vitton handbag make someone look like they have both taste and money, when we will just assume it is a knock-off anyway?

A few weeks ago, The Other’s niece bought a new handbag. Her mother laughed at it and said it looked like a granny’s bag. Her 5 year old daughter told her it was ugly. The niece is not a girly girl but, like me, she just tries to be practical.

Archaeologists have discovered that women started carrying handbags with a 3 cubic metre capacity about 682 BCE because men expect them to lug all their crap around. TO is not a man, but for the purposes of this discussion she is a partner who refuses to carry her own bag, and expects she can keep giving me her stuff to put in mine.

I don’t carry a huge bag, because I neither need nor want one. All I need is space for a very small note-wallet, power of attorney copies, 2 stacks of plastic /business cards [secured with rubber bands], a phone, a pen and small note pad, tissues, keys and spare keys, and a pair of sunnies.

There is also just enough room for a standard [smaller format] paperback if I expect to do some waiting.

At regular intervals TO asks me for her keys. Or her cards. This infuriates me because I can’t do a damned thing on demand, and I can never find them. She gives me stuff without saying “Fruitcake… please make a conscious note that I am giving you my keys. I will make a note of which compartment of your bag you place them in.”

I’m such an accommodating idiot that I just automatically take them and bag them without even registering that I do it.

No. I refuse to carry chocolates “won” from those crane machines, or leftovers for dogs. No. Carry your own bottle of water. Better yet, carry a bag of your own.

The most ridiculous thing of all is that TO carries her phone in her pocket, but refuses to get any kind of case for it. I just went to pay a phone bill which should be for a capped amount and according to Optus she has made $136.67 worth of mobile phone calls – to non-Optus numbers – in one month.

Naturally I tried very hard to access an itemised account via the Optus web page and kept getting error messages. Can’t wait for her to ring Optus – from a land line – and organise an itemised statement of all these calls. 
She wouldn’t be the first person who has accidentally dialled a number using the floating-around-with-other-crap-in-the-pocket method.

With that much money she could buy a phone case and a bag of her own. 
I wish.