IN RESPONSE TO "TOM'S MAGIC BAG"

I too have a rucksack - quite a snazzy one now you mention it (see picture). It's got a moulded, mesh backing between you and the bag. In theory it increases breathability and prevents you from getting a sweaty back: it doesn't. It's also got a little pouch near the top for you to pop your mp3 into with a hole to thread the headphones through. The pocket is labelled with a musical note, which to my mind sets it up as a target for robbery - again, frustrating.

The relevance to the titularly-mentioned post is that my bag's main pouch has also broken. In my case the break is slightly different: the seam that runs alongside the main zip has broken free for about a foot in the middle and so it is permanently flapping open for all to see.

It's been like this for a while now - a month or so - and I have it in mind to buy a new one soon. It was only the other day that a particularly sour-faced kid (the sort I'd normally avoid eye-contact with as a matter of principle) called after me bullishly, "hey, mister!"

At first I ignored for all I was worth then, feeling his eyes boring into me, I turned and looked.

"Your bag's undone."

"Nah, it's fucked, thanks man," said with all the grace of a secondary school Mathematics teacher, was the best I could manage, as I slung it back into it's adopted position: strap on one shoulder and tucked under the arm belonging to that shoulder.

All that said, he has been the only person to let me know that my bag is open and yet I too have yet to lose anything from it. I sometimes wonder if its being open makes it less of a target as a) if I don't even close my bag, there can't be anything valuable in it - and b) the thrill of theft is in the challenge (or at least I guess it is): so take the challenge away and the thrill goes with it.

So, while my bag isn't magic - far from it - the experience of having it has been a similar one.