Alexandra SHULMAN Seven suitcases, Coleen? That’s travelling light!
THE Rooney family arrived for their Barbados holiday with shedloads of luggage. Seven vast hardshell suitcases. Yes. I counted. But seven cases for eight people – Wayne, Coleen, their four sons and Coleen’s parents – makes them pretty lightweight packers in my book. I reckon that once you’re checking in a case, you might as well cram in absolutely everything you could possibly need or want.
For me, one of the unintended pluses of flying during the pandemic is that we’re encouraged to check in luggage rather than carry it on, to avoid that desperate crush trying to nab overhead space. This means I no longer have to feel the group pariah when I am the only one forcing everyone else to wait at the baggage carousel.
Even so, I like to think I actually use the things I haul around with me rather than have them simply sitting in a foreign cupboard unworn, needing to be unpacked and ironed when we get back.
Returning from our recent holiday in France, I was startled to see how much seemed to fall into this category and decided to make a list. It was a salutary read.
For starters, it turns out I pack two evening wardrobes: one for my fantasy world and one for what I know will be my real one. In the fantasy, I emerge radiant from the shower after a day of sun and sea to dress bare-armed and bare-legged in pretty dresses and skirts for the night ahead. In the real one, I am shrouded in fabric to ward off the mosquitoes that head, at sundown, for any exposed centimetre of skin.
You might have thought that by now I would have accepted that I need to dress as if in Saudi Arabia, but no. I still pack the clothes I would like to wear.
So this year, returned unworn yet creased were two floral midi dresses, one cotton maxi skirt, one knee-length silk skirt, one linen smock dress, three pairs of floaty trousers and a pair of khaki chinos, taken on holiday despite the fact that I never wear khaki chinos anywhere and don’t know why I ever bought them.
Five of the eight T-shirts remained unworn and two cashmere cardigans didn’t even make it out of the suitcase, along with the running kit which, frankly, was an exercise of hope over experience. Just like the watercolour paints.
The two swimming costumes I packed didn’t see the water, which was no surprise since I only ever wear bikinis. Yet I always bring along one-pieces in case I find myself in a place where a bikini would be inappropriate. No idea where I think that would be.
Many times I’ve been asked if I am aware that they do have shops in Naples, Ibiza, Athens, wherever. But I don’t want to waste precious holiday time searching for shampoo when I could be lolling in the sun with a glass of rosé.
So in goes every conceivable pharmaceutical and cosmetic option. I could give Boots a run for its money and I use hardly any of it. But isn’t it always when you haven’t packed the Pepto-Bismol that you need it?
When we got home this year I found three lipsticks, bath essence, turquoise eyeliner – why do I always think I will suddenly suit blue eyeliner on holiday? – and a foundation, all untouched.
All this along with a jade facial roller that demonstrates the true madness of my packing.
Who in their right mind would waste their precious holiday hours with a facial roller?