I spent the thick slice of thirty years in corporate life – mind, how life can be anything other than corporate escapes me. Has to be, doesn't it? Discorporate life is not a condition that I would recommend. Dead right there eh?
Anyway, I used to carry a briefcase around. Nice one – Samsonite, it was. Cost me loads.
I had always thought that Samsonite was a mineral only found in the lower layers of Earth's mantle.
Not a bit of it. You can get them in the High Street.
Every morning I would pick up my briefcase and toddle off to work. Every evening I would pick up my briefcase and toddle home.
Funny thing though – I rarely opened it. There was never anything in it that remotely interested me.
Oh, sure, a notepad and pen, an extra pen, small change – like twenty-seven pence but only because my briefcase had some wicked inside compartments that I should obviously put stuff into. Oh! And some business cards and those three photographs of me left over from a passport application or rail card. Why don't those photo booths know that we only need one photo?
Rarely opened my briefcase. It was more of a “badge”. It informed all around me that – if you are similarly employed in corporate life – I was not someone who you should be messing with.
I mean, Samsonite, for Christ's sake. Think long and hard before you put your briefcase up against mine.
Well. London Underground station platforms, during rush hour, are just full of briefcase displaying behaviour. No better place to study this most subtle form of claiming Alpha Male status.
Like, I could look at four other briefcases simultaneously whilst checking out who was looking at mine.
Yes, my briefcase did come in useful on occasion. If, for example, I had to attend a meeting in some other area of this planet I would take it along – and put an extra notepad in it and some other stuff just to “bulk it out”. Maybe a spare comb in case I had a comb accident and some of those mints that you always forget to eat before the meeting but really enjoy on the way home. Of course, that novel that you are never going to read. Yes, that one.
Best though, without a doubt, was that – being Samsonite – I could sit on it. On its edge, mind, not flat on the floor – that would be lunacy.
Yes, it supported my weight. So, on a station platform devoid of benches that you would want to introduce your trousers to or maybe at a cab rank waiting for that cabbie who will not take you south of the river at this time of night - I always had a seat.
I realised that I had been carrying a chair around all those years.
Not too shabby I think you will agree. What other chair have you seen that has a pack of six-month old mints and twenty-seven pence in it? Exactly.
What's it doing now you ask? Well, it met a very nice ochre handbag – they now have two little wallets and a rucksack.
