Handbag revelation

I am the tomboy of my family. While my eldest sister was debating between purple stilettos and white ones, I was ripping my third pair of tartan trousers shimmying up trees with my bezzie mate Russell from next door. Although I did catch up with my sister at some point in my mid teens, I never really made a complete transformation into girliedom, and friends and family would exhibit ritual horror at my periodic appearance in some fashion aberration. A penchant for shapeless black clothes resembling old binliners took hold of me at 18; I wore Doc Martens, defiantly, with my best frocks, well before it became fashionable to do so; but the main bit of my ensemble that remained resistant to the pink and fluffy, was my choice of bag. I didn't get it. What was the point in a clutch bag you couldn't fit anything useful in? All you need, my sister explained patiently to me, is your keys and your lipstick. And your Walkman, a good book and a sandwich, I would say back to her, while she tutted and shook her head with justifiable derision. I remained obstinately in the tomboy world of bags well beyond university, going to jobs clad in neat suits and sporting an uncompromising black backpack. To be fair, my Summer holidays comprised being a counsellor on American camps, trekking through Middle Eastern deserts, playing my guitar at campfires amid a large group of rowdy peace activists, and swinging through trees in European forests. No point in adding to my luggage with frippery shoulder bags when you have a bootcamp to crawl through. No hand space for a bag if you have to lug your guitar on and off trains. By the time I met my husband my favourite outfit was a shapeless black playsuit with weird multicoloured swirls on it, which I bought from a shop thick with incense, from a bloke slumped on the counter who had partaken of one too many downers, and a beaten up bumbag with a CND keyring dangling from the end. The playsuit was eventually discarded for more feminine Frenchified frocks but the bumbag, and the black back pack remained. Increasingly I worked on my "look", which evolved into what I hoped was classic-with-a-quirky-twist, and once or twice I even managed to pull it off, but I remained obdurate about The Bag. You needed your bag to do two things - carry all your stuff; and enable you to go about your business hands free. I have no idea what freak of hormones suddenly and inexplicably changed this, only a year or two ago. Something happened. One day I was looking idly through a magazine while two hours into a three hour wait to see my orthopaedic surgeon, and a picture of a yellow bag catches my eye. I sit up, pore over it, and then register my reaction to it. I really like that bag! It would look great with all my work clothes! It could go from day to night! A week or two later, I owned a yellow bag. And oh Lordie, that was it. A can of worms had been opened. Now let us keep this in proportion. I was at a party earlier this year, sporting my latest addition - a Kate Spade black leather number with fabulous gold zips up each side, chic but noticeable, my classic-with-a-twist bag, recounting my conversion to another woman, who asked me what I spent, on average, on a bag. Umm, about fifty quid, I tell her. She opens her eyes wide and says, honey, you are a long way from Bag City. It transpires that she owns well over a hundred of them and has spent close to a thousand on each one. Nope, I won't be going that far. That is not a healthy bag obsession, that is a shopping addiction. But I continue to marvel at the girlie enzyme that makes me squeak at my uncomprehending family, all of whom are male, oh do LOOK at this fabulous red bowling bag! You don't bowl, they chorus. I sigh. It's the SHAPE, not the purpose, I explain patiently to them. It is the same enzyme that led me to a Lulu Guinness purple perspex clutch in the shape of a pair of lips for my sister's birthday, something I would not have bought for anyone in a million years or touched with several bargepoles, yet I find myself taking it out of its tissue a few times a day and stroking it lovingly. Ah well. At least I still have the 16 eyehole, beaten up, black Doc Martens.