Losing One's Baggage

The press is suddenly full of people who hate Marie Kondo. In the last few days alone, articles have appeared in my FB friends feed blaming her for encouraging mindless consumerism, being unnecessarily minimalist, and having a scunner against books. What's clear from the articles (especially ironically in the last case) is that the authors haven't actually read Kondo's book, The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying - certainly not with any attention. That would seem to be a minimum requirement for writing an article about her philosophy for a national periodical, surely? After all, it's easy to obtain and quick to read. It's also very good, in my opinion. My two penn'orth from 2016 are here.

On a related note, two days ago I bought the ugliest suitcase in the world, simply because I thought it would be easy to spot on the carousel, and easy to describe if lost. These, to my mind, are two important functions of luggage. My daughter is appalled, but in me it sparks a kind of joy, albeit perverse.



My cheese diet took a knock recently when I ordered a coronation chicken panini in a sandwich shop, only to find once I'd got some way through it that cheese was a major ingredient. Would you consider cheese a component of coronation chicken?