The suitcase

Write about packing a suitcase……


Harry could hardly contain his glee as he pulled the ancient suitcase down from its resting place on top of the wardrobe. The suitcase was old fashioned and rather worn, "a lot like me", Harry chuckled to himself.

Not a tall man, maybe five feet five, Harry was nonetheless slightly stooped, as if apologetic for his own existence. A meagre sprinkling of thin grey hair was combed carefully over a shiny bald pate, but within a face wrinkled like a baby Pug, his eyes - normally a watery grey - danced with merriment like a child being caught doing something Mummy wouldn't like.

He swept a thick layer of dust, grey and fluffy and fully half an inch thick, reverently from the top of the brown pigskin lid, pulled back the heavy brass clasps and unfastened the buckle on the thick leather belt which cinched the case's portly middle.

Harry threw back the lid and surveyed the capacious interior, lined with thin, crackly, brown papery silk and smelling faintly of mothballs. Plenty big enough, he decided happily.

Setting to work with his old iron tailor's scissors, he cut a piece of thick clear polythene to line the base of the case. The pigskin was old and cracked and he did not want there to be any leaks that might spoil things. Satisfied, he began to pack, making one neat layer in the bottom, covering it with paper (all the best packers said to layer with paper) before starting the next layer.

He whistled softly and tunelessly as he worked tidily, methodically, using the space wisely, taking great joy in the task and contemplating his upcoming great adventure.

Harry had never been abroad. Violet had hated to travel almost as much as she'd hated the heat, the bugs, and the foreigners.

"We don't want to go abroad with the nasty plumbing and the dirty foreigns and eat their greasy foreign food," she said, her voice ringing with the exact same high pitched whine as the band saw Harry kept in his garden shed cum workshop.

And so they would go to Blackpool or Cleethorpes or Skeggie and eat a nice shepherd's pie or fish and chips and Harry would cram his Kiss Me Quick hat on his head and dream of Flamenco girls and sangria and paella as Vi dozed in the next door deckchair and turned a soft peeled prawn pink.

What would the old bat think if she knew he was running off alone to the Costa Del Sol, he chortled to himself?

His last layer was almost complete. There was just enough room to fit everything in, with a bit of rearranging and a squeeze, he thought with satisfaction. He finished off with another layer of plastic, for protection, and pulled the weighty old lid closed. It didn't quite shut and he had to sit on the lid and bounce up and down a time or two, giggling like a kid on a trampoline, before he was able to snap the brass locks closed and buckle the heavy leather strap.

Hefting the weight with difficulty, Harry pulled the suitcase upright and lovingly polished it over with a soft cloth, enjoying the soft patina of age on the old, cracked leather and removing the last of the dust and smudgy finger marks.

Harry dragged the suitcase over to the big old Victorian wardrobe, pushing it inside and locking the door before pulling off his rubber gloves with a snap.

"Cheerio Vi!" he called jovially to the dismembered remains of his wife, now tucked neatly inside layers of paper and plastic, as he left the house, wheeling his snazzy new Aluminium suitcase (and its contents of shorts and garish Hawaiian shirts and sandals) down the garden path. He just had time to check the band saw for bloodstains before the taxi arrived to take him to the airport.