the brave little satchel
To the best damn satchel that ever existed.
On a Saturday in May of 2007, I went over to María's house to have lunch and pick up a couple of books I needed for a paper I had to write; upon leaving, en route to go to the movie's with Claire -who was celebrating my birthday by taking me to see Paris Je T'aime (how amazing is my memory)- I immediately realized that, 1. I was running terribly late, and 2. I would be even later if I didn't find some sort of thing in which to carry the books and jacket across Madrid. Seeing a C&A, I jumped in, found this satchel...
And so began my long relationship with this excellent bag.
The mighty satchel not only saw me through the rest of the day, and the later night of partying on the Vistillas; it later saw me through Miami, my 3rd through 5th years of college, all around the Complutense, to countless trips to Matalascañas, to the San Fermines (tho not the encierros), to my initiation at EL MUNDO; it accompanied me to Stuttgart, Brussels, London, Boston, Philadelphia, Washington, Baltimore, Atlanta, Savannah, the Keys, Vienna, Munich, Sarajevo, New York, and up and down and up and down and up and down Madrid.
It kept my most important things safe and accessible during the great trek across Castilla-La Mancha and across Navarra in the summer of '08; altogether too many times it held cheese, chorizo and wine during picnics in parks on both sides of the ocean, and it kept my camera and other gear collected during the climb up the Monte de San Cristobal in Pamplona; it held Ms. Esco's birthday brownies during the big fêtes and fireworks that accompanied San Isidro on the shores of the Manzanares some years ago, and carried my papers and reporter's notebooks to countless interviews; I used its rope to climb a tree and stuffed the bag full of flowers more than once; it held a large lead pipe (for defense) during both excursions within the (since vanished) Cárcel de Carabanchel; it was there in the Age of Clemens and was practically my official standard during the Age of Justin; it stuck around through my return to being María's tennant, and through my tenure at Hortaleza 27, and it served as my pillow in the countryside too many times to be counted.
Despite being a constant in such uncertain times, like all things, age and experience gradually took its toll on the brave little satchel. The inside of the bag was already ripped two summers ago, and the first serious tears on the rear was clear last Autumn. Over the course of the past year things only went downhill; the tears grew larger, and eventually a complicated web of safety pins became necessary to hold the thing together; even then, it is nothing short of miraculous that I didn't lose more things, given the back was more or less nonexistent in the end. Despite the fact that our Madrid desk proposed taking up a collection to replace my bag -upon seeing it´s totally taterred state last May-, I trudged on and dragged it about until, finally, last week the saftey pins gave out and I realized, from the dissapproving stare of the EU High Representative upon seeing me carrying it, that it was time to let it go.
We've had a good and mighty run, satchel, and you've been one for the ages. You'll be retired, now, to a place of honour in the closet and, eventually, some cupboard in Matalascañas or Miami, but your memory lives on. And so here's a toast to the best fucking bag around...
...And to its identical successor (for the original satchel was much darker when I first got it), freshly acquired at the Rastro, incredibly enough.
May you serve me just as well.