What are suitcarriers for?

When I embarked, several years ago, on worsening my carbon footprint under the guise of ‘business travel’, I noticed that many of my travel companions in this category had large, square flat bags, called ‘suit carriers’. I naturally assumed that the boffs in Samsonite’s R&D department had spotted a niche opportunity, thought things out carefully, and crafted a product designed to keep one’s suits and shirts in pristine, ‘ready-to-wear-as-soon-as-you-got-off-the-plane’ condition.

Not a bit of it. Do not be fooled. The suitcarrier mangles your clothes as effectively as if you had handed them to a captive princess in a tower of your choice (the princess I mean. Not the tower) and asked her to assemble a rope ladder by tying them end to end for the benefit of any passing in-bred aristocrat. In other words they are RUBBISH. With mine, everything needs ironing afterwards. Even my socks.

It does, however, have one important feature. It is bullet proof, the salesman assured me, made from the same material that is used to make body armour. So that’ll come in handy if anyone decides to take pot shots at the carefully concealed dodgy linen suit I own.

And while I’m on the subject of travel, I have just come through Lima airport, and what a depressing experience it was. You can spot the tourists by the fact that are invariably in possession of some Peruvian woven artesan type garish ‘Inca’ bag. These did in fact used to be mostly genuine, made by handlooms by indigenes (and weren’t so garish). Now they look like they have been mass produced in some sweat-shop in downtown Lima. And the other thing is, most of these tourists are over 60. What on earth do they think they are doing?? When I first travelled in Peru at the age of 27, this was ground-breaking stuff (or so I pretended to myself - just so long as you could ignore the brigades of de-mobbed Israeli reservists).

Now every Tom, Dick and Harold seems to be schlepping up to Cuzco - and at the forefront seems to be the grey pound. In the past these sextagenarians were quite content to sit at home sipping sherry, bit of gardening, bingo, Corrie. But now? They are zooming round the planet like modern day Christopher Colombii (the plural of ‘Columbus’?) on speed, thus devaluing the whole travel experience by making it look easy, the swines.

People used to be impressed if you had done the Inca Trail – now it’s almost a ‘must-do, and if you stand still for two seconds, you are likely to get trampled underfoot by the hordes, about 25% of whom are doing it for ‘charidee’ – and what a scam that is – get everyone else to pay for something you want to do anyway.

I’ll tell you what – there is a good reason Jeeves carefully packed all Bertie Wooster’s elegant togs in trunks and leather suitcases, and it was because they were fit for purpose. Old Jeeves wouldn’t have been seen near a suit carrier - and if he was, I’m confident he would have raised an eyebrow at it.