I’ll set the scene: a blonde ten-year-old in her favourite purple, fluffy Mountain Warehouse jumper having just arrived in China with her family going to pick up their bags. The conveyor belt is spinning, everyone is tapping their foot impatiently after their twelve-hour flight, until everyone has their bags but me.
But – no. There it is! As grey and generic as it was when it was carted away from me over half a day ago. I grab it, but my mum utters words no kid wants to hear.
“That’s not your suitcase Addie, yours was smaller.”
I insist that it is, it looks the same after all, but dad agrees so we lay it down in the middle of the now nearly empty back pickup and unzip the case.
Now I see the last thing I ever wanted to see: tweed. So much tweed. Tweed shoes, a tweed jacket with elbow pads and tweed socks all neatly lined up in a row. Certainly not my florescent pink crocs or my dubiously yellow jeans.
The shock lasted a few seconds; the time until I got my bag back only a few hours later, but those few hours of separation from my books and clothes and, let’s not forget, my crocs, were not the best way to start off a holiday.
