Tales of handbags and stolen phones

I confess to being one of those crazy women who love gigantic handbags.

You know, one of those you see on the train. Her phone rings with an irritating tone just as you’re getting stuck into your book, savouring those last moments of peace before you get into work in the morning. She fumbles around in this massive bag looking for it, to no avail. It rings again and again…

 …and it’s all you can do to stop yourself from throttling her. Yeah, I’ve got one of those bags.

Plus, I’m not sure I can explain why it’s always so heavy. It wouldn’t surprise me one bit if I am asked to check it in at an airport one day, having surpassed the weight allowed for hand luggage! As someone once said to me, I could easily fit a human head into it. A gory qualification, I know, but I thought it would help give you an inkling of just how big my handbag is!

In addition to its size, it’s one of those which doesn’t have the facility to lock or even close, and tends to gape permanently as part of its design. And that hasn’t posed me any particular problems. At least it didn’t…

…up until yesterday.

My mobile phone was stolen! My first brush with crime in the capital. Well, technically it’s my second, the first being when my identity was stolen some years ago…

…but I digress. Looking back, it was my fault. Now that I think about it, I’m fairly careless with my handbag. Even at work it’s wide open on my desk with all its contents on display while I’m away in meetings, on lunch, doing whatever. I guess there’s a part of me that refuses to face the reality of the daily threat of theft.

Apart from the fact that it means I can continue to believe that it’s okay to trust most people, there’s something that restores my faith in human nature everytime I go about my business, not paying a great deal of attention to what I’m carrying on my person and get home at the end of the day safe and untouched.

My romantic ideals aside, I was livid. I’d actually been alerted by a kind lady behind me (thank you, whoever-you-are!), and I confronted one of the two boys who’d done the deed.

But it was too late. He’d already passed my phone to his partner-in-crime but was vehemently denying it all, turning the air blue with his colourful language as he cursed me to high heavens for daring to accuse him.

These two…these two…yoof had pushed right in front of me as I waited alongside a handful of others for passengers to alight from a train. They had pushed right to the front of a whole load of us, and I remember trying to work out what exactly they were up to. Do they think the rest of us have nowhere to go…how rude!, I thought to myself. But it soon became clear what their game was.

As I say, I was livid. But I quickly decided not to let the episode ruin my evening. True, I’d effectively batted my eyelids and lost a 350-odd contact list which would take considerable efforts to rebuild. But I reasoned that it was an inconvenience and nothing more; not worth the aggro.

Life’s just too frigging short!

So, as I approached home the perpetrators were no longer Chuckie’s older siblings; they were just a couple of misguided street kids who didn’t know any better. I decided I couldn’t be bothered to be consumed with anger, and instead became occupied with the quickest and least painful way to get all my numbers back. Of course, there was also the issue of stopping the young entrepreneurs from making calls to the Outer Hebrides at my expense.

Gone were any elaborate plans of revenge (isn’t it funny how you can always plan what you should have said or done in retrospect, only that all brilliant ideas escape you in the heat of the moment?!); instead, they were replaced by a growing appreciation that my train had been on that platform, and that I’d got on it.

Because if it hadn’t, I may have decided to go after the miserable punks, and God knows what may have happened then! The mind boggles…it really doesn’t bear thinking about.

Anyway, it brought two things to my attention yesterday.

One, life really is too short. Seriously.

I always thought I’d be at such a loss if my phone ever went missing – but hey, it’s just a gadget. Get a grip! There are so many things like that in life that we hold dear, which aren’t really half as valuable as we think. It’s taken the loss of my phone for me to realise that losing my phone is one of those things that doesn’t mean anything.

Two, I really must make more of an effort to be my brother’s keeper! There was the wonderful woman who made me aware of what was going on. If it hadn’t been for her, I would have remained none the wiser until later that night. By then, I really would have been paying for calls made to the Outer Hebrides!

But apart from her, no one else moved a muscle. I really do despair of Londoners sometimes, and yesterday was one of those days. Everyone buried their faces in a newspaper or book. I could have sworn that those who weren’t pretending to read were only hearing the English language spoken for the first time, for all the recognition that flashed across their faces!

Sometimes, I admit I’m so engrossed in my own issues that I fail abysmally at being there for others. I’m guilty too…and I really must stop doing that.

Can’t be all bad if I had this epiphany, eh?

Nah! Such depth of thought is far too intense to start the day with. I’ll just buy myself another huge handbag. Perhaps one that closes properly this time…