This is my bag. There are many like it, but this one is mine.

My bag is an Animal, canvas and khaki. It was a present from my daughter nearly three years ago, a happy gift during a sad time.

Since then my bag and I have been inseparable. It has felt my nervous hands shake in doctor’s waiting rooms and seen me bounce around stages and dance floors. It has transported red wine into dry venues, sweets into cinemas and home comforts into hospital wards.

My bag has carried birthday presents and bottles of pills, iPads and injections, capos and co-codamol, hairbrushes and hand sanitisers, wine and wigs. It’s been to museums and to meetings, to parks and parties, to solicitors and salons. The badges it has worn so brightly, the rainbows and unicorns and statements and slogans, have brought me many Subway smiles, knowing nods and sour stares.

Like me, my bag has seen better days. Its back is threadbare from years against my hip, its khaki green dyed blue from a parade of new blue jeans. Its straps are worn and twisted, the little love hearts that hide underneath the fabric faded by friction. And like me, it has started to take shapes its creator surely never imagined.

I have another bag ready, another Animal. It’s like my bag, but it isn’t my bag. Not yet. But I know that it’ll soon be time for me and this bag, my bag, to say goodbye.

If my bag could talk, if it asked me, “was I a good bag?”, how would I answer?

I’d answer:

Yes, you were a good bag.

You were my bag.