Shock

Back in 1996 we had a holiday in Hong Kong.  Whilst there I happened to enter a luggage shop and spotted a medium size semi-hard plastic suitcase.  It was a revolting bright lime green colour and covered in grime.  Obviously it wasn’t a popular colour and as a consequence it was proving difficult to sell.  Just what I wanted!  A durable suitcase that no thief in their right mind would want to walk off with.  Moreover the colour made it stand out on the luggage carousel.

After some not so serious haggling I was able to become its owner at a very reasonable price.  During the intervening years this revolting coloured suitcase has been around the world on a number of occasions; including five canal boat holidays. 

Whilst watching TV one evening, I became quite smug when I noticed the Australian Foreign Minister had the same model suitcase.

Back on the 2nd of March I posted about the handheld luggage scales we were buying.  Well they have arrived and yesterday I decided to do a ‘test weigh’ of our luggage to check how much of our weight allocation had been used.  On impulse I decided to weigh the suitcase empty.  What a shock!  The damned thing weights 7.5kg empty or 33% of one person’s allocation of 23kg.  I then weighed the old vinyl suitcase we were given in 1980.  It weighs just under 4kg which is somewhat better.

Ah, I can hear you thinking “What’s with the orange dots?”  It’s the earlier version of the strategy for ensuring no one decides to steal the suitcase and it’s also very easy to see on the carousel.  As far as I’m concerned it’s a container to hold my possessions….. not a fashion statement!

Either our revolting green suitcase goes to ‘Weight Watchers’ or its name appears on the non-essential list of possessions!