by Maria C Collins

Created on: September 19, 2008   Last Updated: March 22, 2010

An interview with a psychologist on the BBC's television "Breakfast" programme set me to thinking. The psychologist claimed that a woman's choice of handbag and what she chose to carry in it could reveal her character. I dread to think what my handbag and its contents reveal about me.

Designer handbags are not for me; I am a cheapskate and buy the very cheapest possible. I am not above searching in charity shops to find an appropriate bag. I can remember being horrified at two work colleagues who admitted paying over four hundred pounds for designer handbags. At the wages that we all earned at the time, four hundred pound represented well over half their month's salary. When they proudly showed me what they had got for this investment, I was under whelmed to say the least, they looked no different to me from a bag that you might pay seven pounds for in an ordinary shop.

I favour a large and roomy, preferably leather, handbag, I joke that it must be large enough to carry a change of underwear and a spare pair of shoes, but the jest is actually nearer the truth than I care to admit.

The preferred generously sized handbag must have plenty of pockets so that I can lose things more easily. I stuff the pockets with all sorts of necessities, which might, or might not, be useful, a pocket pack of Kleenex, a tape measure, assorted crochet hooks, a tiny sewing kit and a packet of sewing needles, useless since my inaptitude at sewing is legendary. I am a terrible disappointment to my poor mother, who tried fruitlessly for twenty-five years to teach me to sew. Also in these pockets there are; a card from a seaside fortune telling machine, a comb, various pieces of paper with telephone numbers without names written on them because I thought I would remember who the people were and lastly, a little drawing done by my niece when she was two. My niece is now a young lady of fifteen and would be mortified to know that I still have it.

I carry an enormous amount of stuff around with me in my handbag. In the body of the bag are a pocket sized French dictionary, vocabulary book and the lonely planet guide to French which have served me well since I came to live in France. With these three and, by judiciously employing the use of Franglais, I have managed in all sorts of situations. I always carry a calculator because I am dysnumeric, like dyslexia but numbers are my difficulty.

A very large purse resides inside the body of handbag; it has a wallet part for notes, numerous

• 1
• 2
• Next Page >>