Progress? It’s still bags of chaos

AT check-in, a member of airline staff snapped a tag around my bag and said cheerily: ‘you won’t see this again until you arrive.’

As it turned out, only the first half of that sentence was true.

My top tip from this week’s bitter experience is to photograph your s ui t c ase in advance, especially if you are en route to France where the attention to lost luggage detail is frankly insane.

In Paris my AWOL bag became a philosophical symposium on whether a suitcase with a zip like Fig 1, but with an outside pocket like Fig 2 should become an exciting new super-hybrid for inclusion in future editions of Suitcase Illustrated, possibly bearing my name in Latin italics, as author of an exciting new zipper and pocket combo.

In the last half century we have managed to put chimps, dogs and squads of people into space. We can even dock a probe on a speeding comet.

yet airlines still can’t get checkedin baggage to arrive at the same place and the same time as 200 tired and dehydrated people, dressed in clothes that look like deflated barrage balloons.

FOR the past few days I’ve been enjoying Captain Kirk on social media, where he has been boldly courted by legions of indefatigable Outlander fans.

Star Trek’s William Shatner has been criticising the time-travelling Highland saga for its ‘pushy’ feisty heroine, and ‘gratuitous’ nudity. The Outlandish have decided to win him over to their side by lovebombing him, and their cunning ploy has been to suggest that Captain Kirk and Outlander’s Jamie have much in common.

Shatner remains unpersuaded. ‘He works in Scotland in the 1700s; I work in Space in the 2400s,’ he tweeted to them. ‘It’d be hard to be besties’.

ALTHOUGH I didn’t hold with some of its c hanges, it is heartening that six million people watched the BBC’s s martly timed adaptation of An Inspector Calls.

Meanwhile, the X Factor on ITv continues to r e mind me of holly hunter’s line in Broadcast News: ‘Why can’t needy be attractive? Why can’t desperate be a turn-on?’