Suitcases and Stickiness

There are some things which just don't seem to go together. Chalk and cheese, to be terribly obvious. Branston pickle and mango sorbet. Spots and stripes. Strappy sandals and a freak thunderstorm. And superglue and fingers. Or thumbs, to be precise. So as Ruth Jones might say, 'what's occurrin'?'

Wonderful Man is taking me away for a weekend of Northern Lighting. And by that I don't mean the lighting department of the Nottingham branch of Homebase. This is far more exciting! We are off to Iceland, to stay in a hotel in the middle of the glacier fields, and view (hopefully) the elusive and beautiful northern lights. It's my birthday present, and a damn fine one it is too. For weeks now I have been surreptitiously googling Iceland websites, devouring pages and pages of snowy landscapes and twinkling skies. Not to mention the hot tubs on the balcony of each room at the hotel. I feel absolutely spoilt rotten. And it's a nice feeling.

So, to prepare for such a momentous event I have been planning. Outfits have been tried on, tested, discarded, even photographed. Vast amounts of heattech clothing have been bought. Fluffy jumpers have been dragged out of my underbed storage boxes, and a utopia of scarves, gloves and hats has been unearthed.

But clearly, given a girl's need for clothes, there is a greater need to have something in which to carry them. Enter stage left, my faithful and trusty Marks and Spencer wheelie bag. Stronger than an ox, this has carried me round the world and back again, and has played host to many a strange item - from 8kg of cheese I took out to Sweden, to a long tribal wooden pillow I brought back from Zambia. It's never failed me. Until now. For on dragging it from its home in the back recesses of my office cupboard, I was dismayed to find that one of the wheel housings had broken, leaving the wheel flapping all over the place.

Cut to my return, late last night, with a few glasses of rather splendid merlot on board. Should I just have washed my face and curled up in bed with a good book? Probably. But instead I decided to DIY my suitcase. Out came the superglue, which was promptly squirted liberally all over the offending break point. But the wheel kept popping out of the suitcase casing. I know! I'll hold it in there with my thumbs, and press hard until it's set. Brilliant idea. Hence I was to be found kneeling on a suitcase at one o'clock in the morning, pressing bits of plastic with my thumbs.

It worked brilliantly. The suitcase was mended beautifully, never to break again. Unfortunately the superglue worked rather too brilliantly, wtih the net result being that on removing my hands from the suitcase, it came with them, dangling rather forlornly off my right thumb, having been well and truly glued there. I tried to shake it off. Nul points. I tried to peel it off. Ouch. In the end I dragged the suitcase through to the office and googled "stuck fingers".

Who knew that a liberal coating of vegetable oil and a twenty-five minute wait could be so effective?