Y'know that carrier bag in your house that is full of other carrier bags? Yes, that one. Well, on a whim I decided to have a "sort through" last night, my original plan was to throw the vast majority of it's contents away, but it didn't quite work out that way.......
Firstly, I can report that, somehow, I have already amassed enough "bags for life" to suffocate every man, woman and child in China. If you're reading this China, that's not a threat, just a statement of fact. It's a bit like when you state the fact that you could all jump at the same time triggering a killer tsunami that would wipe out the western world. Let me tell you China that we in the western world feel a bit threatened by that. We also wonder why you'd need an expensive nuclear programme when you apparently have this option? Anyway, all I'm saying China is stop threatening to jump in unison - don't make me come to China with my bags. In fairness though I could never afford to get to China with this many bags - especially not on RyanAir.
I have lost my thread slightly but all you need to know is that there were A LOT of bags. I have more bags than a hungover Andrew Lloyd Webber.
Bags inside bags inside bags inside bags. Surely an impossible number of bags to be contained within the outer bag - perhaps some sort of Timelord technology had been employed, maybe this outer bag was a TARDIS? Probably not - as you know it is notoriously difficult to get a handle on Gallifreyan technology, let alone two. Anyway, as I got further in, beneath the outer layers of the recent past, it was a bit like travelling back in time, quite emotional from a retail stand point: HMV bags, Comet bags, Clinton's, Woolworths, BOOKS etc, Joules, Old Tesco carrier bags - the ones where you could actually put potatoes in and they wouldn't just snap (quite unlike the "modern" ones which are made out of corporate greed and the customer's sheer willpower).
On and on I burrowed through the various strata of dead high street favourites, a Russian Doll of memories. And although these bags looked empty, each one, in fact, contained a recollection, evoked a tiny story, a forgotten feeling.
And then, hours later, up to my neck in this scrap book, my kitchen floor looking so much like a landfill site I felt like a seagull, I reached the end.
The core of planet BAG
An inseparable clump of nostalgia, a dense nucleus littered with forgotten purchases. I held it in my hand and it was heavy, far far heavier than it weighed. I dared not attempt to split this bag-atom. Who knew what memories it might unleash: Ourprice?, Safeways? Fosters? Rumbelows? Maybe even John Menzies?
I looked at the big black hole that I'd planned on putting all these other bags into: a rubbish sack, dark and sombre, no logos, no memories - purely functional in the face of it's funereal duty. Then, very carefully, I put that one (and only that one) in the bin.