This’ll tickle you… red?

Ok, so before I embark on the marathon effort of whacking a few Miami & Turks & Caicos pix onto here, thought you might enjoy this little conundrum.

One of my many rather lovely shopping purchases from the Miami leg of the trip (thanks again, Sawgrass Mills, the best outlet mall ever) was a rather lovely Kate Spade bag.

Black and white small check, small handles plus a shoulder strap, lots of pockets both on the inside and outside – perfect to finally replace my ratty old rucksack and become the new posher version of the Scotty Travel Bag. Passport here, foreign currency there, Diet Coke bottle on the outside – tick, tick, tick. A very important position, and one which is called into action on a frequent basis as you know.

Small negotiation made on price – man, that mall gets every better value – and one lovely new travel bag went into the convertible's trunk along with a myriad of Gap bags, Banana Republic mega bags and 2 pairs of ridiculously cheap sunglasses. Never again will I be blinded by the light..

But imagine my quizzical look when I got back to the hotel and started removing all the tags from stuff, as every good tax-avoiding traveller does prior to returning to the UK. What was the strange free gift in my Kate Spade bag? Usually, like with pish-pash-posh shoes, its a nice large felt sack, into which the overpriced item can be once placed, before you throw the useless sack away realising you're never really going to use it again.

But this free gift didn't seem to be a large felt coverall. In fact, it didn't open out like a bag at all. It was bright red, fine – in keeping with the interior of the travel bag. It had the Kate Spade logo on it, so wasn't a strange infiltrator from Saks Off 5th Avenue next door.  It had a velcro fastener at one end, suggesting it needed to be rolled up – but what for? It was about A3 size – still no clue. It looked sort of waterproof – was it a flat umbrella? And the only thing it looked like to me was the wrapping cloth that surrounded Hawksey's new set of shiny knives when he came back from his Billingsgate fish course. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

So I tried Googling it. 'Kate Spade Travel Bag' didn't get any results of use.

So then I tried 'Kate Spade free gift with bag' – and good old Ebay came up trumps. There was a picture of my red thingy… with the most terrifying of descriptions.

'Free travel changing mat with Kate Spade BABY CHANGING BAG'

Oh my god, oh my god, oh my god – if I didn't like that handily milti-pocketed bag so much it would've been back in the store before you could say 'front bottom or back bottom'?

Oh the ignominy. I bought a baby changing bag by mistake. No matter how many times I tell myself its a travel bag, I can almost hear the 'wrrrrpp' of baby wipes being opened, on the wind..

Mortified of Miami x