When all is lost, what really matters?

Six days in New York was an adventure of the tallest order and one I will never forget. We went to see Michael Franks, the jazz musician, and boy oh boy he did not disappoint. More about that another time.

With the taste of fresh bagels still lingering, I waited at Heathrow for my bag to arrive so that I could go home and get some much needed sleep.

I waited.

And I waited.

Hope is a funny thing, because it still stayed with me long after that carousel was filled with bags from a Dubai flight, and then more from Air India. I had to accept that my bag wasn't coming, but I wasn't ready to give in to that sinking feeling in the pit of my stomach.

For whilst my summer clothes and vintage purchases from the East Village extended their holiday in the bowels of the airport, so did my diary.

Not my 'Dear Diary'; I've never been that type of scribbler, but my appointment diary. My this-is-when-the-car-insurances-expires kind of diary. The kind of diary that tells me where I am supposed to be, at what time, and with whom.

At this point some of you will be mourning the loss of such a wonderful book, and the rest of you might be thinking 'why on earth wasn't this backed up to the cloud?' The man-who-likes-to-hold-my-hand got short shrift when he uttered those words at 6am that day. Or was it 1am? Jet-leg is a mysterious creature. 

Yes, I know digital diaries exist. But the allure of ink on parchment is, to me, a far greater attraction. 

How was I meant to organise anything without this book? Why had I thrown it into my case with such reckless abandon, when usually it is never far from my side? The irritation grew, even when BA staff informed me that my case had made it onto the carousel, it just wasn't there now. Which could only mean one thing. Someone else had taken it, and it was no coincidence that an identical case had been circling for hours, unclaimed. The dreaded suitcase switcheroo.

Oh how we had laughed at the lengths that people had gone to in personalising their suitcases: ribbons, plastic flowers, coloured tape. Now the joke was on me. All I could do was wait, and hope that the person who opened my case cared enough about his missing case (yes, I had a peek inside) to want to return mine to me. 

The gods of travel did answer my prayers, and happily the bag was delivered back to me via courier the next day.

What I realised as I waited was that whilst the belongings inside my case did matter to me, they paled into insignificance compared to my business, social life, and the general tidiness of life admin that my diary represented. Even my beloved red sunglasses were not as important as letting a client down because I couldn't remember we had made the appointment. (Thank you to everyone who generously told me when we are next due to meet!)

I also learned to never, ever, take a best-selling John Lewis suitcase on holiday without adorning it with at least 27 stickers, a roll of red ribbon, and a good old fashioned name tag.