Bite me

Metaphors are your basic life-management strategy for Xtin, but I'm having a lot of trouble right now with an intrusive one involving inanimate objects having teeth. Especially things which are benign or even welcoming. Like a sofa or a shrub in blossom or my favourite battered Gap hoodie. They're all ... fanged. Like the everyday comfort of my life wants to rip off my arm.

I'm an academic, right? One of those thinking types. Gotta have my writing implements handy. I like mechanical pencils, and black fine-tipped liners, and also a certain kind of liquid ink pen that WH Smith creatively calls a Handwriter. I keep these three in a bushed steel pen case which is one of those small objects that never ceases to give you a tiny, almost unnoticeable charge of delight and comfort whenever you handle it. It has rounded corners and is satisfyingly like a flattened, double-ended bullet, and inside my three scribble-enablers sit thoughtfully together like they know where they live and think it's a really good school district.

I love my handbag, too. I bought it for myself before I went to give a Big Serious Talk at A University North of Here, and some retail therapy was required to calm me the fuck down. It worked a dream. Great bag. Fabulous lining and squishy and waterproof and beautiful and containing just enough pockets but not the kind of ramified multi-multi-multi-slot/pocket/division system which means that everything essential always lives in some close possible universe rather than actually in your bag.

It closes by means of two leather-covered magnets. So lately, when I reach into my bag to get the pen case, my bag tries to stop me by grabbing my hand with its big toothy maw, like a dog tugging on a sneaker that it is Not Going To Let You Have Under Any Circumstances. I suddenly see its rows and rows of pointy little gnashers keen on digestion of my digits. Don't tell me that my pen case is just stuck to the magnets. My accessories are trying to get me.

Handbag dentata. Just what I needed.