Show & Tell

Late as usual for Blackbird. This week the request was for a look at our purses. As Pea Soup explained, a purse in Australia is your wallet, while the vehicle in which we keep it is a handbag. And yes, that can occassionally mean your husband. Anyway, I have a bit of a hand bag fetish, similar to that for shoes, which has been cruelly curtailed due to the Breeding Program. The following are the ones normally in circulation, and as the end of maternity leave looms, will be once more. My current handbag. A backpack. An ugly, dirty backpack. I hate it. It's practical, has all these weird straps hanging off it as I'm meant to attach it to me incase a hurricane suddenly swirls up at ouir very own Fountain Lake, Warriewood Square, and works perfectly with a baby and two children who always want a drink, no matter where we are:

When I do manage to escape without children, generally for a legwax or to do the grocery shopping, this is the bag most called upon: It is from Quick Brown Fox, a divine little store with excellent cheap handbags, funky clothes and shoes and quirky accessories. There's one in Newtown, Surrry Hills and Sydney CBD. It looks very shiny in this picture, which it is not. Battered, loved, with perfect pocket sizes for my mobile in one side, the main section holding my wallet and keys, and the other a pen. Delightful I always feel a bit kicky when carrying this bag. Then there is this one, also from QBF, relatively new, as in bought about 6 months ago and something i really love. It has a perfect pocket solely for my mobile inside, near the top of the bag for easy access, a slot which is home to my office security pass, still and then a big bag section which carries all manner of crap from my wallet, about a hundred pens (pen of choice - green pentel with nib thickness 0.4), my uni readings, work, etc. I love this bag: I know it will get a significant workout this winter. As will these two favourites: My faux fur Roman Holiday Tote from Glamourpuss and

There are a few things you can garner from this: I love anything coloured ruby, and it has to be on the bigger side with lots of compartments, because even though I like to carry around lots of crap, it has to be lots of crap in order. As I mentioned, the Leopard faux-fur bag comes from another store I am obsessed with, Glamourpuss. The start of the obsession began with this bag: The Classic Ruby Red Everyday Bag. It was used every.single.day for about four years and never lost its sheen, never lost its kicky 1950s flavour and it always picked up my mood when I carried it with it. At one stage it even had one of the big oversized fake flowers attached to it, that SJP has a lot to answer for.

My wallet is the Miss Moneypenny wallet in ruby. My make-up case for work is the Cutiepie Purse in Adorable Alligator Black

and I dream of owning a range of Vintage Glamourpuss and purchasing a Busy Bettie Laptop bag for my soon to be purchased, only to be used by me (wow!), laptop. I can't decide if I'll get Cherry Red Alligator or Original Ruby Red.

Yes, these are the sorts of things that keep me awake at night. How people can vote for a government systematically creating a working poor, world peace, the plight of children and my next purchase from Glamourpuss.

It is now I should 'fess up, that when Bec and I were trying to thing of a jaunty name for this blog, I wanted something like Glamourpuss but that also conveyed the haggard, harridan way we often felt in striving for that illusive balance in our lives.