A while back, I started using a rucksack instead of a handbag; there’s just not enough room in my handbag for all the baby stuff and holding the Youngest on my hip for hours at a time has resulted in advanced scoliosis. Well, it might not actually be that, medically speaking, but that’s what it feels like.
Apart from rocking a slightly more sporty style than normal (and from envying those mothers who manage with a dinky little number – how do they do that??), it is working fine.
Until Mr. Enemy of Art did the unimaginable – mixing up a Normal Rucksack and a Handbag Rucksack. I know! Unthinkable! In our rush to get out of our holiday let on time, he decided to bung all the extra milk into MY rucksack. Two pints of semi-skimmed and three baby bottles of milk.
As I locked up, I picked up my rucksack where Mr E had kindly left it for me sitting on top of a padded garden chair. Out whooshed a couple of pints of the white stuff.
I didn’t cry over the spilt milk but I did feel like it. Mobile phone, purse, notebook, digital camera, random lipsticks, a load of my favourite pens plus some weird shit I was carrying around for the boys (pine cones, gravel, fire engine etc).
I would like to think that after the second apology I could have said something gracious such as ‘There’s no use crying of spilt milk.’ Instead I explained, rather tersely (and perhaps in slightly more detail than absolutely necessary) the difference between a Rucksack-Which-Is-Actually-A-Handbag and a Normal Rucksack.
However, every cloud has a silver lining. Such as splurging on a new Tala purse in the John Lewis sale. Such as finding my notebook, with all it’s scribblings and scratchings, unharmed.
