Lost In Space

Did you read about the female astronaut who lost her handbag in space and which can be spotted if you have a powerful telescope? This really proves that women’s handbags are way too large. I mean this thing is whizzing around at 15,000 miles per hour, 250 miles above us and yet is still visible from earth.

Now it takes a special type of woman to lose her handbag in space and sets a whole new standard of incompetence. Leaving it on the roof of the car as you speed out of the supermarket car park just does not seem laughable any more.

Why do they need to be so big anyway? They make mobile phone companies millions every year. I phone the missus all the time and I know that as it’s ringing, she’s frantically rummaging through last year’s supermarket till receipts, sticky sweets which have come out of their wrappers and a mountain of lipsticks which have long since gone out of fashion because nobody wears bright pink anymore and then I get her answering service. She then phones me back, breathless from the effort of pulling half a ton of rubbish out of her bag and so two calls are made rather than one. It’s ridiculous.

I sat in the doctor’s surgery today and watched this young woman with a handbag so big you could have gone food shopping with it. Some people could even have gone camping for the weekend with it, but as she fumbled around inside its cavernous space, I just knew it was her mobile she was after and sure enough I was correct. As she retrieved it from the very bottom of the bag (it was soft leather so I could see movements inside the bag which made it look like a couple of ferrets fighting inside a sack) I had to say I almost applauded the effort she put into it. She was obviously really chuffed at finding her phone so quickly (2 minutes and 25 seconds – I know I’m anal) and looked around for any other admiring female but there was only J and she’s still blind, so not being able to see which arm her handbag might be on, she’s stopped carrying one – albeit temporarily I’m sure. Anyway, as this girl’s glance stopped at me I simply tapped my small gentleman’s purse which is all of about 4 inches square and smirked. I was able to do this without any fear of her blaming my behaviour on English arrogance as most ex-pat males don’t carry ‘purses’ and so she just sat there thinking French males are so, well – up themselves.

Years ago when I was much more immature than I am now, and as a pretty pathetic and infantile joke when there was mixed company in a pub, one of the guys (we used to take it in turns) would simply upturn one of the females in our crowd’s handbag, emptying its contents on the bar for all to see. I have to say there were some really weird things which ended on the bar’s surface and some embarrassing ones too. Red faces all round sometimes.

But for females reading this, our hatred of those ‘fashion accessories’ really comes from the fact that every new dress seems to deserve a new, matching handbag. Every new pair of shoes – ditto. And each one more expensive and expansive than the previous incumbent. They fill up our bits of the wardrobe and they fall out when you open the doors. I dread to think how many dead cows, goats, ponies etc were sacrificed to make something as meaningless as a handbag.

So back to the female astronaut who lost her handbag (sorry toolkit) in space. Don’t be too surprised to hear of a special Space Shuttle mission to retrieve it. If it’s big enough to see from dear old earth, it must present a hazard to passing space ships and needs to be returned to its rightful owner before it does any lasting damage.

Picture is handbag (sorry toolkit) floating off into space.