Apparently, Billy Connolly once said:

“A woman’s mind is as complex as the contents of her handbag; even when you get to the bottom of it, there’s ALWAYS something at the bottom to surprise you!”

Well I don’t know about her mind but with regards to my mother’s handbag, it was a Fox’s Glacier Mint devoid of wrapper but with an itsy bitsy bit of fluff stuck to it. My look of revulsion was always met with the same remark used for everything from Dr Collis Browne’s to Milk of Magnesia and Kaolin and Morphine.

“Get it down you it wont hurt you.” So I sucked it anyway.

I’m surprised I never coughed up fur balls as a child.

Handbags are BIG business nowadays with more and more flooding the market every ‘season’. They are, we are told,  ‘must-haves’ the new ‘icons.’

So much so that the V&A is opening a museum featuring iconic handbags.

Now in my experience handbags are up there with scatter cushions and candles on the list of things that men cannot comprehend and for once I am not totally in disagreement. I’ve never been one of those women with a fetish for them. I have a few but frankly how many can you use? Besides it’s such a faff when it comes to changing them over and transferring all the tat that you’ve accumulated like tissues, receipts and pens and invariably you leave something vital behind! But I have friends who go mad for them. Frankly after a few holidays to Spain and Turkey seeing whole hen parties buying the knock off Dior, Hermes and Versaces I’m just not interested. I appreciate a well-made bag and would never turn down an original as a gift ..say at Christmas ….but nowadays I find I have much more use for a shopper. By the time I’ve got my bottle of water, mobile, tablet, hand sanitizer, maybe t-shirt and leggings for gym days, not forgetting the usual makeup, brush, tissues, purse, case for my glasses and ever hopeful sunglasses I’m pretty much fully loaded. Try getting that lot in a quilted Channel clutch. Its no wonder I put my shoulder out. I say men don’t understand handbags they do when they are accompanying you to a ‘do’ then its,

“Can you put my wallet and keys somewhere?”

Just as a matter of interest I looked up the world’s most expensive handbags.

Topping the chart and going right off it is something called a Mouawad 1001 Nights Diamond Purse. A handcrafted 18-karat gold heart-shaped handbag, created by artisans who dedicated 8,800 hours worth of labour of love. It comes adorned with a total of 4,517 diamonds, comprised of 105 yellow diamonds, 56 pink diamonds, and 4,356 colourless diamonds and it’s …wait for it $3.8 million! That’s not much change from £3 million! At the risk of sounding like Lady Bracknell … “For a HANDBAG?”

I wonder what the owner says when her husband asks if she can put his keys and wallet somewhere? I know where I’d tell him he could put them!

In the past few years I find if I need a bag to match a special outfit…..I knock one up. It all started a few years ago when I forgot an evening bag for an awards ceremony. I fashioned one out of a sponge bag, the bottom half of a black tracksuit and a pair of earrings. Here’s my latest using an old grey leather model, a scarf and a bow off a Christmas present. It has been much remarked upon is a one-off and what’s more…. cost me nothing.