Arguably, as many as possible!

As a proud sufferer of ‘Imelda-complex’, I am a bit of a shoe-whore. There was that one holiday where we ended up in a Colorado town that had a discount shoe outlet. Shoes (and NICE shoes) were between 10 and 20 US dollars. I mean… why not?

I ended up purchasing 12 pairs of shoes and an incredibly fabulous pair of walking boots. A new suitcase had to be purchased, closet space had to be re-organised… and Roger dined out on this story for years (and still mentions it, sometime).

I did wear the shoes (and enjoyed most of them) for years – and when one of the walking boots got chewed up by a fox-cub, I wept (they were just that good).

It may seem like I digress, but this serves to illustrate my issues with packing. The shoe conundrum always figures large in my mind when considering any trip. To date, I have never managed to get away with fewer than three pairs – and if we are going to the beach, this invariably becomes four.

I don’t know why. Don’t bother asking. I have accepted it and am moving on with my life.

For the Italian Trip, we agreed to ‘pack light’ (even without the shoes this is an oxymoron in my experience). Given that we have to leap (preferably gracefully, but probably less ‘agile’ and more ‘ponderous heaving’) on and off trains, the requirement is to have easily controlled luggage. I tend to travel with a plethora of bags (if I’m flying, I always have an ‘extra’ bag tucked inside my carry on which I whip out as soon as we take off), so just having one suitcase and one back-pack is the first rung of the challenge ladder.

Having chosen the bag (advertised as 42 litres capacity when purchased in 2021) and the back-pack (yes, it will fit underneath the seat in front of me when we fly home – capacity unknown) I am horrified at the mismatch between bag(s) and clothing requirements for nearly four weeks away.

And that’s without even considering shoes.

When I looked at the weather last month, it was highly variable and clothing for cool/dry/wet/hot/warm weather all had to be thrown into the mix. My head almost exploded, but it did make it easy as there just wasn’t room for more than a few items of clothing per type, and they all had to be layerable (if that’s a word). Shoes took up most of the room as I needed to cover heavy rain, beach and everything in between.

Then the weather forecasts changed: it is now going to be warm verging on hot all the way through Germany, Switzerland AND Italy. And for some reason I am finding this incredibly difficult.

I now have a mountain (think European grain surplus) of clothing sitting on top of a largish carry-on bag – forty-two litres is utterly inadequate for my choices and despite going through it and culling as ruthlessly as I can, it won’t all fit in. The bag MUST have shrunk!

(I realise this is a good place for an amusing picture but it’s just TOO embarrassing…).

Even at the best of times, with all my clothes arrayed before me (all clean, all ironed and all looking vaguely decent) I find it almost impossible to make a choice about what to wear. (And yes, I am exactly the same when choosing what to eat in a restaurant – I have to be left until the very end.) So trying to predict what I may (or may not) want to wear two days down the line (never mind next week) is like asking a spaniel to choose between a bit of cheese or a bit of chicken (my lovely spaniel would have made valiant attempts to snaffle both at the same time).

I just don’t know! Roger keeps a list after every holiday, so his packing has been relatively easy and he looks faintly smug at his own preparedness.

At this point in time, to Roger’s disgust, the clothing mountain (or potential candidates for packing) has been moved to the floor. The case is partially full of underwear (unlike some, I am taking more than two pairs of pants), toiletries, sandals, socks (I will need ‘some’ – but these are ripe for culling) and electronics. It does close. I promise.

Tomorrow evening, just before we go to bed, I will enter my ‘Fuck it, whatever’ phase, and chuck random articles of clothing into the suitcase. When it fails to close, I will remove items on a ‘first grabbed, first out’ basis, and we will leave. ‘It’s packing Jim, but not as we know it.’

On return, I will carefully unpack half a suitcase full of clean, unworn clothing – as per usual.

But all three pairs of shoes (and probably all the socks) will have been worn.