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  1. In a private email, Mrs Breakfast confess that she’d “love to start a big girlie fred abaht what us womyns keeps in us ‘andbags. But I lack the courage and am hafraid I’ll hencourage ‘urtful jokes at my hexpense. Would you start one on my behalf, Saucypoos? Seeing the Saucecraft© brand hattached to one of my posts would give it the hinternet cachet what I lack, innit.”

    Glad to oblige, Mrs B! So – ladies! What do you keep in your handbags?

  5. Does a man-bag count?

    Notebook, pencil, iPod, small tape measure, sunglasses in case, comb, Pantone colour fan-deck, empty packet of Walker’s Cheese and Onion crisps (rolled, tied in a knot).

  6. Bags are Portals, just like all attractive puddles/coastlines/anything you could jump into. Bags/Sacks/Tubas etc. A Goddess bag – Thin. Within. Glamour. Is it mind ? A skybound dragonshewolf ascends gloriously.

    I think that’s the egg timer ping.

  7. Rucksack:

    Keys
    Tissues
    ipod
    Headphones, phono lead, USB charging lead,in headphone drawstring bag
    Card wallet
    Work ID pass
    Severed human head
    Season ticket
    Oyster card
    Book
    Glasses
    Sunglasses
    Fruit/nuts/sandwich

    …. the usual.

  8. ‘Ow kind of you dearie, for startin’ this wunderful fred! I’ll just bore you with the contents of one of me ‘anbags, the little one with all the zippy compartments that accompanies me to car bootin’ on a Sunday with the lovely Mister Breakfast:

    Zippy compartment 1: Loose change, mostly 50ps and £1 ‘cos that how much most LPs I get cost.
    Zippy compartment 2: Emergency fiver or two, for those irresistible, slightly more costly records, or perhaps a suspicious but tasty hotdog at the end of the second boot sale.
    Zippy compartment 3: Canvas record bag, bought for me from Fopp by my baby bruv.
    Zippy compartment 4: Teeny notebook for recording purchases and prices, a couple of antibacterial handwipes in individual sachets for post-digging/pre-hotdog scoffing hygiene, phone, Blue Badge, bike multi-tool with allen keys, mini retractable feather duster for hurrying up slow diggers ahead of me/general ruffian-thrashing, and last but not least a printout of the Car Boot Vinyl Bingo card pictured below, plus biro for crossing off those albums spotted. Wot larks!

    http://i1350.photobucket.com/albums/p773/minibreakfast/New20perennials20mosaic_zpsvnv9qryn.jpg

  9. I keep the balls of the last man who asked me what the hell was in there, plus vital accessories for my secret identity as a superhero…probably shouldn’t have mentioned that last part, or the first part either now I come to think about it. As you were I was never here.

  10. In my Dunhill manbag (constant companion for many years) I keep:

    Keys (two)
    Clip-on sunglasses (not the flip-up style; titanium-framed Faconable, Japan-made)
    iPod Nano (the postage-stamp-size one with touch screen – a fabulous bit of kit) + Apple ear buds
    Kindle (kindly gift)
    Old leather wallet, usually nearly empty except for Thai driving license, and photograph of Buddha)
    Comb (useless souvenir)
    Ten year-old Nokia walkie-talkie

  11. I don’t do bags (except in the Woosterian sense of the word). In those bags I keep wallet, mouchoir, coins that go jingle-jangle, and a selection of old receipts. And myself, obvs.

  12. These are the absolute minimum requirements – I need to know it’s all there, like having a comfort blanket, to avoid a feeling of doom and impending crisis:

    Purse
    Card wallet
    Paying-in-book (hardly ever used)
    Phone
    Travel pack of Kleenex
    Wet wipes (natch)
    2 or 3 biros, different colours
    Pencils, eraser, sharpener
    Spare reading specs
    Kuhn rikon spectacularly sharp knife with plastic cover
    Teaspoon
    Small folding mirror
    Oyster card (yeh I know I live in Glos)
    Dental tape
    Lip salve (at least 3)
    AND NOW ALL THE DRUGS:
    Migraine pills
    Paracetamol
    Ibuprofen
    Antihistamines
    Anti-acids
    . . . . . it’s quite a big bag. I’ve just evicted a pair of pliers and a lump hammer which I’d forgotten I was lugging about. Like Mini’s impressive and splendid illustration of what goes where in her bag, everything has its own home, which makes shopping for a new bag a bloody nightmare. Which is why mine is 13 yrs old and – er – “distressed”.

      • Speaking as a parent, wet wipes are man’s greatest invention.

        When I hear reports of expert teams straining to clean up a massive spillage of nuclear waste in some far flung locale, my immediate thought is always: “a couple of packs of wet wipes and half an hour’s work would see them right.”

    • Nah – not just for those al fresco moments: include any loo which isn’t your own. Also for when your make-up has gone rogue; cleaning fingers after putting air in your tyres (or do the rest of you just go round for the rest of the day with the grease of a thousand roads in your knuckles?); restoring face after a (all-too-frequent) nosebleed (your speciality, by any chance, Retro?) so I don’t have to look as if I’ve been in the boxing ring; can be good for errant biro marks on skin or – if you’re lucky – clothes . . . beats me how anyone can set foot outside the house without these little beauties.

  14. Love the concept of a man bag – can’t quite pull it off however. Except when I travel by plane and then I feel totally at ease sporting my black Quicksilver number, slung insouciantly (and diagonally) acronym person like a new age Mexican bandit. Passports and boarding passes are then conveniently to hand.

    The rest of the time my pockets are bulging like Arnie’s codpiece with keys, coins, phone, wallet etc

  15. When I lived in Mocambique, everyone had to carry numerous items of identification at all times – passport, work permit, ID card etc. As a result, all the expat men possessed natty little handbags, worn on the (limp) wrist.
    I did have a rather disquieting moment when I first entered a restaurant in Joburg and, unhooking my bag from my wrist, casually placed it on the table. Being glared at by many Afrikaans hard nuts made for a very uncomfortable meal.

    • Bags on tables. Something of a bugbear of mine. ‘How many toilet floors has that bag been sat on before you plonked it on my place to eat’ … I am wont to say to my daughters.

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