A letter from a reader

At 67, my sister stopped asking me to stay the night, and the reason was sitting on top of my wardrobe

This is the first thing of its kind I have ever written, and I expect it shows. I am not a writer, and telling other women what to wear, or in this case what to carry, has never been my habit.

But three different women asked me about a bag on a station platform on Saturday morning, and by the time the train came I had told the story so many times that it seemed simpler to write it down once, properly.

The story is not really about the bag, not at first. It starts with my sister June, who lives an hour and a bit away by train, and who for years ended every phone call the same way. Come and stay, she would say. There is no need to rush back. And for years I gave her the same answer, in the voice of a woman being terribly sensible about something.

Oh, I would love to. But I would have to pack.

I want to be honest about what that sentence actually meant, because June heard through it long before I did. My old holdall lived on top of the wardrobe. Getting it down involved the little chair, a shower of dust, and a bag that came out slumped and grey and smelling faintly of the loft. By the time it was on the bed I was already tired of the whole idea. So I would visit for the afternoon, look at my watch around four, and drive home to an evening of nothing in particular. Somewhere along the way, June stopped asking. I do not blame her.

How it happens

Nobody decides to become the woman who always goes home the same day. It happens quietly.

A chore attaches itself to a pleasure, and the two get filed together. Packing meant the chair and the dust and the slumped grey bag, so staying the night meant packing, and staying the night became, in some quiet ledger I did not know I was keeping, more trouble than it was worth. Once a sentence like I would have to pack has been said enough times, it stops being an excuse and starts sounding like a fact about you.

And the shops do not help. Go and look at the luggage in any department store. Rail after rail of serious dark bags, built for airports and sales conferences, every one of them designed on the assumption that the journey is something to be endured. There is nothing on that shelf that makes an ordinary woman think of a night away as a treat.

What I had wrong

Here is the bit I got most wrong, and it took me an embarrassingly long time to see it.

I thought I had simply become a homebody. My age, my habits, a woman who likes her own bed. That was the story I told, and it had the advantage of sounding like self-knowledge.

It was never the night away I minded. I sleep perfectly well at June’s. It was not even the packing, really, which takes ten minutes when everything is where you can see it. It was that every single object involved in going was ugly, awkward and out of reach, so the going itself borrowed the feeling. Change the objects and you change the feeling. I did not believe that either, until I did it.

The bag is called the Aquavana

It is from Manchester Boutique, a small British boutique that has been quietly making lovely things for women our age for a few years now. I went looking on the theory that if the excuse was a bag, then the excuse deserved one honest attempt at fixing.

The Aquavana is a quilted weekend bag in the shape of a little camper van. I do mean that. The front of it is the van’s face, cream with a stitched green peace sign, and along the sides the quilted windows show pine trees and blue mountains, with a meadow of embroidered-look daisies and flowers running through the grass underneath. There are two soft handles on top, a blue flowered strap for your shoulder, and a zip that opens the whole top of it wide. Every bit of it is stitched and quilted, right down to the headlights.

I had it in my basket twice and took it out twice, on the grounds that a woman of 67 has no business with a peace sign. Then I thought about the slumped grey thing on top of the wardrobe, and about which of the two bags belonged to somebody who was planning on going somewhere, and I paid for it.

It holds more than it has any right to. A change of clothes, a wash bag, a cardigan and a book go in without any clever folding, the quilting keeps the shape of it so it stands there looking ready instead of collapsing, and because the zip opens right up, nothing disappears into a dark corner at the bottom. Packing it takes ten minutes. I keep mentioning the ten minutes because that chore was the whole argument, all those years, and it turned out to be ten minutes.

What happened on the platform

The first proper outing was the overnight at June’s, three Saturdays ago now. I put the bag down on the platform bench beside me, and I had not been stood there five minutes before it started.

A woman about my age with a wheeled black case asked where it was from, and then looked down at her own luggage and said, mine looks like it is going to a meeting. A younger woman said her mum would love it, and took a photograph of it on her phone. And the third, a lady in a very good raincoat, did not ask anything at all at first. She simply smiled at it, the way you smile at a dog going past, and then came over and said, that is the happiest looking bag I have ever seen.

June met me at the other end. She looked at the bag, then at me, and said, well, you took your time. Which in our family is practically an embrace.

We had the full evening for once, and breakfast the next morning, and I caught the afternoon train home feeling like a woman who had been somewhere. The bag went back by the front door, not on top of the wardrobe. It has stayed there since.

Three things I have learned since

One. Get the size for the trips you want, not the trips you have been taking. The 40 centimetre one does a night away, the gym or a cabin bag. The 46 centimetre one takes a couple of outfits and shoes for a proper weekend. The boutique say most women are happier with the bigger one. Mine is the bigger one, and they are right.

Two. A bag you can see gets used. By the door, packed, it is not luggage any more, it is a standing invitation. I have said yes to two overnights and a day out since it arrived, and I am aware the bag did not say yes to any of them. But it removed the sentence I used to hide behind, and that turned out to be all I needed removing.

Three. Cheerful is not the same as childish. I worried the peace sign made it a young woman’s bag. It does not. On a grey platform, in a grey month, it reads as friendly, and strangers of every age smile at it. I have stopped apologising for liking things that are nice to look at, and it took a bag to get me there.

About the price

I want to be straightforward about this, because it was the thing that made me hesitate.

The Aquavana is £32.95 in the 40 centimetre size, and £35.95 for the bigger 46. Both were £66.00.

My first thought was that there had to be a catch, because anything with this much stitching in it usually costs a great deal more. There is no catch that I have found. They are a small boutique selling directly, so there is no department store taking a cut in the middle, and they run the sale to move the season’s stock along.

I did what I imagine you are doing now and went and read the reviews before I ordered. Just over three hundred of them, sitting at 4.2 stars. Not the suspiciously perfect five you see on some websites, which if I am honest made me trust it rather more. One woman had written, “Bought it for weekends at my daughter’s and complete strangers stop me to ask about it. It holds far more than it looks.” That was the one that decided it for me.

June has already asked whether they do other designs, with a view to not being outdone on her own doorstep. They do, is the answer. A whole collection of them.

What I would tell you if we were friends

If you and I were sat with a pot of tea and you asked me, this is what I would say.

Think about the last few invitations you turned down, and be honest about the reason you gave. If any version of I would have to pack was in it, then it is worth ten minutes of your evening to go and look at this funny little bag. Not because a bag will change your life. It will not. But there is something in having the going-away things ready and pleasant and by the door that makes yes the easy answer instead of the effortful one, and I had done without that for longer than I care to add up.

Two practical things. The sale is on now and the first autumn stock is already going, so if a particular design catches you, that is the one to have. And listen to the boutique about the bigger size. They were right about mine.

I have stopped saying I would have to pack.

Maggie