By the time you read this, little heaps of things will have sprung up like fungi around my flat and I'll be trying very hard to think myself into a 'happy place'. I have to accomplish something that in all my life I have never succeeded at except once, and that was by accident: I have to pack my suitcase with everything I need for a week's holiday - and no more.
Even thinking about it reduces me to hand-wringing levels of anxiety normally reserved for serious stuff, like root canal. I have an irrational fear of suitcases and what goes in them, or rather suitcases and what I forget to put in them. You see a suitcase and I see the Black Gate of Mordor. If I were a cat you'd be buttering my paws. I long to be one of those people who can chuck six things into a rucksack and live in Greece for three weeks without buying so much as a t-shirt. I wish I were one of those people who say: "It's easy. Passport, money, toothbrush and knickers – everything else is optional." Nope, this is ME - the woman who bought an extra large suitcase just to accommodate the perfect sun hat, hauled it all the way to Dubai and then never wore it. Me – whose one-time boyfriend got a hernia trying to carry my version of a three-day capsule wardrobe for Venice. Me – who fetched up in the Atlas Mountains with a pair of Fendi courts and no walking boots. I'm hopeless. I admit it.
I can't do last minute packing so I start with the Little Heaps Plan: three T-shirts here, a jumper there, a pile of undies, jeans and so on. Over the course of three or four days I add and subtract according to my own packing "logic" and then, the night before I ram it all into the suitcase because by then I'm sick of the sight of it. Inevitably I reach the other end and discover I've left my socks and plug adaptor behind. The only time I got it right was when I finished up with two extra days away because of a mix-up with the booking. Everything got worn and I even had case space to bring extra things back with me.
I'm told layers are the thing and I'm sure that's right, but which layers? A great deal depends on what the weather's likely to be doing, I suppose, but one of the things that does work well for me is items that roll up and shake out. A lightweight parka, for example. Instead of painstakingly folding everything I'd much rather pack my suitcase with little T-shirt, jumper and jean sausages. A rolled-up silk dress takes no room at all. The kind of holiday that needs a strictly planned wardrobe is not, to me, a holiday. I do stuff my shoes with socks to keep the shape and pack them in plastic bags. A couple of extra large scarves are brilliant both as an extra layer, a beach cover-up or an improvised dress. The best wash bag I ever bought has a kind of coat-hanger arrangement in the top so you can hang it on a door handle (there are never enough shelves). And I buy small sizes of my usual toiletries or decant into smaller bottles.
You see? I know how to do it but I just can't practise what I preach. Perhaps it would be better if, instead of making my usual stately progress through France on the TGV, I had to fly somewhere for a change. Perhaps the threat of excess baggage charges would focus my mind, but I doubt it. I'm just one of those people who can't travel light.
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