What's in the bag?

There used to be a standing joke about "what exactly do women carry in their handbags?"

This was in the days when a man had nothing more to carry than his wallet, car keys and occasionally a well pressed handkerchief.

How the world changes...

Most mornings I sling a small rucksack over my shoulder to carry a few basics to work. I like to think I'm reasonably efficient and don't take more than I need. In much the same way as women used to defend their need for a handbag with "it's just a few essentials" I find myself explaining away my rucksack with "it's got a few things I'm going to need during the day"

So this morning I thought I'd iterate through my handbag, oops, rucksack and see how many of the things I've got into the habit of carrying to and from work each day that I don't really "need"

Let's start with the antibiotics. They've been in there a couple of weeks now, the throat infection long gone and yet because, like most men, I was too manly to actually do as I was told and complete the course, I now have half a packet of unused penicillin tablets (take one four times daily half an hour before food) with which I am reluctant to part "just in case"

Next, there's the PSP - not more drugs, rather a Playstation Personal/portable (depends who you speak to, or whether, like me, you don't care). This is the device of choice for all descerning 37ish year old men doing the daily commute. It offers not only an excellent widescreen gaming experience, but also doubles as an mp3/wma player, triples as a photostore (great for keeping photos of...erm...the children on) and quadruples as a video player -mp4 if you care - finally
I can catch up with seasons 2, 3 and 4 of 24 as well as about 100 films I've not seen.

Moving on to the house keys. Why do I cart those to and from work everyday? - I could leave them in the car - except my overactive paranoid imagination paints a picture of some sophisticated crime supremo walking around with a handheld gadget with which he is able to obtain the registered keeper information for my car, somehow know there are house keys hidden away inside, and remove said keys from my car leaving no sign of entry before taking a removal van to my home and emptying it of it's contents right under the noses of my wife and two children ("mummy, where did the telly go?") - so the keys come with me.

Then there's the umbrella. An earlier post about new shoes referred to the infrequency with which I find myself walking to/from the train in the rain (ooh, brain just served up McArthur Park by Richard Harris, weird I wasn't thinking about cakes much less a drunken actor) - so why do I carry a brolly every day? - I even watch the weather forecast in the morning so why? - turns out I'm just carrying a "few essentials"

The remainder of the stuff is things like lipsil (my body struggles to hold onto moisture what with me being dead and all) and technical books and articles that for some reason I feel obligated to read on the train rather than at my desk, even though its all work related.

I've excluded from the list my blackberry (in my hands right now) and my mobile phone, old by modern standards, it doesn't play mp3s even... I've excluded them because they live one in each trouser pocket, providing a well defined radiation field either side of my man regions - I've got two kids, and that's enough - probably a good thing as I reckon I'll be sterile inside six months.

But it's not a handbag, ok?