A Lot of Carry-On
Even as I’m reading the latest articles about “one bag travel” and the current fashion for taking only carry-on luggage even on international flights, I’ve been cheerfully leaning into my penchant for chucking everything I fancy into my suitcase.
Call it rebellion if you like - whatever the cool kids are doing, my default position is to have none of it. I never got into Game of Thrones, bitcoin or lash extensions and it feels too late now even if I were to change my mind, which I won’t.
Or call it the habit of a lifetime - I adored packing for family trips as a kid. Even a day down by the river was an opportunity to put together a little bag of treasures - a hairbrush, a doll, a hairbrush for the doll - with the sense I was keeping these things “safe” by bringing them with me.
When my uncle had his DNA done and reported evidence of Romani genes, it made sense. I feel ancestral travellers over my shoulder, itching to move on and equally keen to take their treasures with them into the next place.
Or call it “lived experience” because, as someone who travels a lot, I know the gut-wrenching disappointment of forgetting a thing.
I keep a list of what to pack to take some of the thinking out of it - imagining what Future You will need every time is exhausting, which is why I also have go-bags for toiletries and makeup so there’s no need to ponder the multitude of specific items involved.
My “Packing” list is 42 lines long and includes things like, “comedy notebook, EpiPen, onstage watch”. Then beside items I have found myself without at some point - socks, pyjamas, onstage shoes - there is a notation with an exclamation mark: “FFS!” Meaning, fool for forgetting such a thing, and don’t ever do that to me again.
Writer Joan Didion famously had a “To Pack and Wear” list taped inside her wardrobe door during the years she was regularly reporting from the road. It is remarkably spare, beginning “2 skirts, 2 jerseys or leotards, 2 pairs shoes, stockings, bra” and relied on Didion being able to rinse a thing out and hang it up to dry overnight - unreliable in air conditioned hotels or New Zealand motels in winter, I’ve found.
Didion’s aim was to pack without having to think, and present herself when she was working as an anonymous Everywoman. I’d get bored wearing two tops on rotate and would inevitably find myself down the local shops looking for something fresh and fun, which would defeat this current era’s minimalist ethos.
Though, granted, I’d have space for more tops than Didion because, unlike her, I’m not packing “bourbon and cigarettes”.
I was inspired, though, to add from Didion’s list a mohair throw which, like her, I use as a blanket in frigid hotel rooms and on planes, and as a wrap on chilly evenings.
My “bring it” attitude explains why on my current journey - Auckland to New Caledonia and onto a cruise ship - the airline tucked an orange “HEAVY” tag into my baggage label. The suitcase was within weight restrictions but still worth a warning to whoever had to lift it.
“It’s heavy,” I said to my driver in Noumea yesterday, a tall, chic woman with red nails. “Pfft,” she said, doing that French shrug which simultaneously says you’re ok and also it’s annoying you are talking about it, and pronounced, “All suitcases are heavy,” as she tossed it elegantly into the boot.