Day 165 - Suitcase

 SUITCASE

Prompt - Suitcase : Write about packing for a trip or unpacking from when you arrive home

I'd only gone in to get out of the rain.  And ended up getting away from it all.  

One night in Aberdeen.  I enjoyed the gig I'd booked for the evening, even if the meal before hadn't been up to much.  Went back to my hotel, and an early night with my book.  In the morning I woke to the Granite City, but it didn't sparkle.  Dark clouds, constant showers.  Dreich city.  So much for the morning's sightseeing until my train left.  Instead I found myself dodging the drench, from shop to shop, a more-interesting-than-expected hour in the Maritime Museum, to be finally driven into the shelter of a shopping mall.  Not exactly my favourite sort of place, but short sprint distance from the station.

Wandered aimlessly.  I had no desire to buy anything, my backpack already had enough weight with books and laptop stowed.  It was TK maxx that changed everything.  I'm still not sure why.

Suitcases.  Rows of multicoloured bags.  Soft sided, hard shelled, zipped, padlocked, big, small, pricey, cheap, very cheap.  It was the colour that drew my eyes at first.  It was the promise that held me there.  

It wasn't that I didn't want to go back home.  More that I wanted to be somewhere else for a while.  To hide from all the pressures I'd be dropped back into.  To take off where nobody knew who or what I was.  And to pretend - no, not pretend, but work at being a writer.  I'd promised it to myself for years and years, the promise meaningless, broken, easily defeated by distractions and lethargy and self loathing and procrastination and any and every excuse that people always use.  So here it was.  The chance.

Which is how I found myself in the baby changing room of the station.  Because where else would I find a big enough flat surface and a bit of privacy?  Time to sort out the purchases I'd emerged with.  To cut away price tags and daft labels.

Number one, a small blue suitcase.  Half a dozen tee shirts, the same for pants and socks, a pair each of jeans and waterproof overtrousers.  A better, warmer, more rain proof hooded jacket than the one I had brought along.  And a half decent pair of walking boots I hoped would prove as comfy in the real world as they had in the shop.  My haul from TK.  

My other wee spree had been in Waterstones.  A few more paperbacks for the trains.  And what I hoped would be the tools of the craft I hoped, no, intended, to develop in my solitude.  Three A4 notebooks, an assortment of pens.  

Labels and packaging all gone, my new life packed neatly into the case, I closed the lid, slid the zip round, put it on the floor and raised the handle.  On the concourse I looked up at the Departures board.  There was a train to Forres leaving in sixteen minutes.  That would do for a start.

The suitcase wheels hummed as we made our way to the ticket office.