OK Paul, get on with it

Right, so I have gone walkabout for a bit. No rhyme nor reason, just the way of things. So I will get on with it.

I don't know if Mel has covered this off yet, but my sister, MS, has moved in with us over the last couple of weeks. During this time she would have picked up on some of my quirks. Certainly, that I do not throw anything away. And more recently that, as effeminate as it sounds, I am really into bags.

Not girly bags. Not man bags. But my thought is that there is a perfect bag out there somewhere. Buggered if I can find it, though. My criteria are thus:

• One that can hold your laptop in case you need it. But this laptop holder should not take up too much space in the bag
• It should hold all your gym stuff. I like to go to gym in morning (not that you could tell at the moment) and that includes showering and heading off to the office. So the bag needs to hold a lot of stuff. I have found that 35 litres is about the right size.
  
• It should hold a magazine in a separate compartment to the main compartment - which is where the gym stuff would go - because I like to read magazines on the way home from work
• It must be small enough to take a carry-on luggage onto a plane
• The jury is out, but I think it has to be a backpack. And if it is a backpack it has to have those seat-belty things across the straps to secure it properly to ones self
• It has to aesthetically pleasing (read, conservative) enough to take to work
  

And it is this point I have had a problem with. Some of you would know that I picked up an-almost perfect Quiksilver bag. Does everything. But she's bright. Oh so bright. White camouflage. Can't use it in the office (well, not when seeing clients anyway).

So the search continues. Yesterday, I spent a good 2 hours opening and closing bags at Selfridges. I think I found my looking-like-business-laptop-come-overnight-carry-on-bag roller by a mob called Travelpro, but I resisted buying it just yet.

But resistance was futile as I moved from the luggage section into the Selfridges Technology section. Massive. Just massive. I managed to walk past the walkie talkies, the PDAs, the B&O, Bose and Tivoli sections, the camera and telescope sections. But I did buy one very small thing, the telephone you see in the picture. Actually, it is a Skype phone which plugs via USB into the PC. What for, you ask. For me, making or receiving a skype call meant running around the house and finding a mike and a pair of headphones. I had to reject a few phone calls because of this. The Tosh in the picture is rugged(-ish), portable and (almost) always on.

All we need are a few more takers at the other end ...

Hope all is well with you an yours.