I think it’s the bags fault.  It’s so big that it’s easy just to pop things in there.  If I had a teeny pretty bag I’d only be able to carry a few bits in it, but as I have quite a walk to the office, I was sensible and bought a hideous rucksack about a year ago.  It’s done me proud – it’s still going strong.  But because it’s big, I kind of fill it.  I’ve been doing my hour walk with a rucksack weighing 1 stone:

Yes, really.

I’m informed that this is really good training – people actually run with weights (both parts of that make no sense to me.  Why would anyone run out of choice?  Let alone with weights?!).  Anyway, after my first week back, I’m feeling a bit achy so thought I should do a spot of sorting and see if I could get the contents and therefore the weight down.

It turns out it’s not surprising it was so full.  This is what I took out last night:

In a kind of circular way, the items in the picture are

• a pile of (clean, I promise) tissues and receipts
• plastic bag
• 3 freezer bags of mints
• pile of random papers
• water bottle
• soup container
• 2 umbrellas
• 8 screen cleaners
• 2 train timetables (neither of which actually cover anything useful to me)
• webcam (which I’ve never used)
• i pod
• i pod that broke over a year ago
• train pass
• lead for charging something
• blackberry
• mobile
• laptop
• notebook
• post its (with train times as those two timetables don’t actually have the right details in them)
• clippy things
• thing for using clippy things
• 7 shoe liner thingys (even in a bag it seems you can lose one)
• gloves
• glasses case
• purse
• completely flat cereal bar that went off last month
• office passes
• 4 nail files
• dental floss
• inhaler (expired 2012)
• blister plasters
• half pack of polos
• 3 deodorants
• 1 hairspray
• cold and flu tablets
• throat sweets
• a total of 46 painkillers
• 3 pens
• 2 e cigarettes
• 8 lighters (6 empty)
• hair stuff
• lip salve

It’s amazing what you need to go to work…

I’ve removed some of the stuff, but most of it doesn’t weigh much at all.  All I can assume is that the actual bag is really heavy.  I’ll just have to look at it as training.  At least I’ll work off my post Christmas tummy :o)