“Have You Got A Dead Body In There?”

This humdinger ties in pretty closely with the previous point. As sure as night follows day, someone will spot you heaving your bag across town, and take the time to air out this fusty turd of a non-joke.

They will make an effort to attract your attention with a raised voice, and maybe a finger pointed in triumph at your bag, but there’s no need for either; you knew what they were going to say before the thought had even eased itself out of its metaphorical wingback chair, and wheezed its way to the brain’s speech centre.

Then in the aftermath, as your polite chuckle hangs in the air surrounded by a fog of concentrated loathing, the offender will return to their copy of the Metro, convinced that, thanks to their contribution, the world is now a better, happier place to live.

Meanwhile you’re left to fantasise about how sweetly ironic it’d be to actually stick their lifeless corpse in your bag, before remembering that the guy who made the exact same joke on the previous leg of your journey is already taking up too much space.

Lost Luggage

An airline’s primary function is to keep its planes either in the right part of the air, or on the right part of the ground, depending on the time of day.

It doesn’t end there, of course, but Looking After Your Bags doesn’t often feel very high on the priority list. It’s most likely buried in the lower order, sandwiched between Inspire Some Lazy Material For A Second-Rate Stand-Up’s Next Corporate Gig, and Explore All Possible Meanings And Manifestations Of ‘Kafkaesque’.

If you’ve never had a bag go missing from a flight, then you’ve never known true pain. It delivers all the inconvenience of not having your stuff, combined with the hopelessness of trying to find someone – anyone – who knows where it might have gone or how it might be found, sprinkled with a liberal helping of knowing that this shit is all someone else’s fault.

Car Troubles

Not flying? Good for you. Still, road tripping with a board bag brings its own problems.

A long journey to the mountains feels a whole lot longer when your face is pressed against the window, with a board-bag handle making a cosy home for itself in between your ribs.

Then on the way back, it’s the same but with an added boot-stink element. The joys.