Tom Brown’s Schooldays
Today, the strap on my favourite polka-dotted laptop bag ripped off as I was walking to my office. Admittedly, I have put it under tremendous strain – I’m continually shoving far more than just my laptop into it (papers, the odd paperback, keys, wallet, etc.) Last night, I think was the breaking point. I could feel my bag banging against my back as I made a last-minute, no holds barred dash for the train at London Bridge (Total Urban Chick Moment, as my friend MB and I are fond of saying …) and this morning, as I hiked it up on my shoulder, I noticed the tab that affixes the strap to the bag was holding on by only a few stitches. I’ve had a good run with it, as it wasn’t an expensive bag to begin with – one of those £14 jobs from Paperchase – so I shouldn’t be too sad.
And this afternoon, between bouts of marking, I found a replacement.
After a bit of browsing around, I found a brilliant kelly green leather school satchel on eBay, of the same design as the ones pictured above. It was a bit more expensive than I was originally looking to pay (£55), but as it’s leather, I think it will hold up better than another £14 job, and should the strap break, I can take it to my local shoe maker and have it repaired.
I’ve wanted a satchel like this for a long time, mostly because for the past two years, I’ve taught a course on “The Schoolboy Novel” that starts with Tom Brown’s Schooldays and works its way forward to the Harry Potter phenomenon and I’ve always (anachronistically) pictured the characters in these novels hauling their books around in bags such as these. I have fantastic nerdy fantasies of carting around my laptop and a few papers, wearing my Oxford brogues, on my way to the British Library. *sigh. It should be here in a few days and I’ll be able to give it a test run when I head to the BL on Friday.
What Would a Nerd Wear said,
March 1, 2010 at 2:06 am
that bag is rad! completely perfect combination of professional and personality.