What’s inside the Fat Sisters?
An update about packing, and about stuff
As you may know from listening to the podcast, I’m travelling at the moment. More specifically, I’m interrailing around Italy, Slovenia and Croatia with my friend Jen Cownie.
I wish I could say that our decision to do this was born from a mutual love of travel but the reality is that it has come from a mutual love of packing. I mean. Of course, we both love travelling, and we both do a lot of it, for work and for pleasure. But this specific set of decisions – interrailing, for a month, with just one backpack each, in our mid-30s – came after Jen introduced me to this North Face backpack.
A little about Jen, first, who you will probably recognise from the various podcasts about Taylor Swift we’ve done together. Jen and I have been friends for ten years. She is three years older than me, which means that she was 27 when I was 24. This was a perfect age gap for me to believe that she was the only person alive doing both womanhood and adulthood correctly. I still believe this to be the case, and it is especially true vis-a-vis the finding and buying of stuff.
Jen is great at stuff. She is a true conscientious consumer in that she buys things once, and well, and uses it until it breaks, which will be approximately five years after she’s bought it. So when Jen says “this is the best backpack I have ever owned”, I listen. I buy.
So we both fell in love with the backpack, and every time we saw each other, we would brag about how long we could go on a trip with just our North Face backpack. First a long weekend in Austria. Then a week in Ireland. Then ten days in France. We reasoned that we could probably, if we were really smart about it, live a month out of this one North Face backpack. Then we decided we would do it. And now we’re here. Doing it!
We’ve taken to calling the backpacks The Fat Sisters. I will spare you the individual personalities, whims and dreams we’ve invented for The Fat Sisters but suffice to say they’ve been very good little girls so far. “I cannot get the fat sister to shut her whore mouth,” is a frequent and disturbing phrase of our travels, but nevertheless, every time we change location we manage to get the fat sisters in line.
JEN: I’ve been living the Fat Sister life for about 18 months, I travel a lot, so this is not an empty promise. Everything about her is correct for travel. Firstly, and most importantly, the Sister is not a wheeled suitcase (wheeled suitcases are only for the kind of trips where you get a taxi to the airport, and then a taxi from the airport to your destination, and also your destination is a smooth-floored luxury hotel). This bag does not need to be dragged over cobblestones, or bumped down the aisles of trains. You just wear her like a backpack, and you shove her in overhead luggage racks, or at your feet in a taxi, and when she’s not being used you squash her down and shove her into a drawer instead. She is very light, almost indestructible, waterproof enough for all weather, and designed so that when you’re wearing her nobody else can access the contents. Your secrets are safe with the Sister!
She doesn’t have lots of little pockets - in fact, she has only two, one of which is within - but she has a gaping and cavernous mouth which allows you to see everything you’ve packed when you open the zip. And you can pack so much, because somehow she is bigger on the inside than the outside. Crucially, though, you cannot put too much in her. Maybe if you are very tall or very strong you’d want to size up to the Small (this bag comes in about six sizes), but if you are an average height woman, a full Sister is the heaviest bag you can comfortably carry for the sort of short transits you make on holiday, and her size will naturally discourage you from bringing or buying loads of random little things. She is not a hiking pack and she will make your shoulders sore after about an hour if she’s full, but you will not hold this against her.
WHAT IS INSIDE THE FAT SISTERS?
Almost everything below Jen has bought and I have copied, so I just let her write the rest of the newsletter from here. - C
If you are travelling for almost a lunar month with only a Fat Sister as luggage, then realistically you can only take two pairs of shoes. One of those pairs must be Saltwater sandals for when it’s sunny and you’re in or near a body or water, because they are small and light and easy and amphibious without being ugly. The other is the pair of shoes that you will wear literally the entire rest of the time. You will be walking many many many miles in these shoes. They must not make your feet too hot, or let them get too cold. They must be hard wearing. They must look, if not good, then at least inoffensive, regardless of whether you are wearing a dress or a legging or a trouser with them. Most of all: they must be comfortable. There is no resentment like the resentment you feel towards a painful travel shoe, and there is no quicker way to ruin your own fun than to have sore feet (except perhaps to have wheeled luggage). This is why both Caroline and I have the same pair of shoes, and that pair of shoes is the Allbirds Courier.
I have no idea what these shoes are actually made of but it feels like clouds. They have big squishy, cushiony soles that you can bounce around in for hours and hours and hours. If you’re running to catch a train, the jogfeel is gorgeous. If they get wet, they dry out really fast. Your feet don’t get sweaty in them, even when it’s 24 degrees in the ruins of Pompeii (famously, a place lacking in roofs and therefore shade). They have a rubber sole which doesn’t get slippy in rain. They look fine. And when the trip is over you can just put them in the washing machine and make them clean again. Allbirds makes many shoes, and I have worn several of them, but I think for the versatility and comfort needed when you are wearing the same shoe for 26 consecutive days, this is the guy you want to talk to.
Do you like sitting places? Do you ever feel the need to sit in a place - maybe on some grass, maybe on a dusty step, maybe on a cold or slightly damp stone - and think “this would be so much better if there was a thin layer of waterproof and lightly insulated fabric between my arse and this surface?” Of course you do. And the solution is a PacMat. It’s a mat, it packs, it’s tiny - like, the size of an apple when folded up - it weighs next to nothing, and with it, the whole world becomes your seat. I have the smallest square one, Caroline has one which is oblong, so the whole world is in fact her fainting couch. Bonus use: if you have a small and fussy dog who won’t settle on cold floors when out and about, the PacMat makes any place into a dog bed.
I’m not going to talk about reusable water bottles because it is the year of our lord 2024 and surely nobody is going on a trip and not taking one with them (though, if you’d like to know, I favour a 330ml insulated 24 Bottles one). Instead, I am going to tell you about another drinking vessel. I am going to tell you about a CUP.
The cup in question is made by Kinto, it’s super small, super lightweight, and it’s double walled so it keeps hot things hot and cold things cold. I technically have two, but one is currently on sabbatical as a plant pot at Caroline’s house because she took it home from a party and had no idea what it was when she woke up. You might hear “insulated cup” and think: tea and coffee. And you’d be right, because it’s definitely a really good way of having hot drinks on the go without disposable coffee cups. But you know what else you can put in it? Any other liquid you like. You can put a fancy soda in here. You can put water in here. You can - and this is important - put wine in here. This means you can buy a bottle of wine from a charming shop and you can take that wine wherever you like, sit down on your PacMat, and enjoy the view from a cup which keeps your wine cold, doesn’t taste of plastic, and doesn’t make a crinkly noise when you hold it. You just want one glass of wine? That’s fine, you can buy one and decant it into here and wander off to look at a cathedral by twilight. Caroline did not bring one of these cups with her and she doesn’t know it yet but soon she is going to be so jealous.
One of the aural experiences I loathe more than anything in the world is the sound of music being played out of a tinny little phone speaker. I hate it, I hate it, it makes my skin crawl. I can just about deal with phone-in-a-cup if it’s an emergency, but generally I would choose listening to screaming babies, heavy construction work, or the endless boring swirl of my own thoughts over rawdogging a Spotify playlist on speakerphone. It was therefore important for this trip - where we are obviously going to be listening to The Tortured Poets Department on repeat - that we had a portable speaker. This is the one that we have. I’m not a music person, I’m sure an audiophile would not be impressed by the JBL Clip 4, but I am and that’s what counts. It is so easy to use. It Bluetooth connects to anything without any faffing; there’s no lag if you’re connecting it to an iPad to watch films; it plays a jaunty little tune when waking up and going to sleep; it weighs almost nothing; and it’s also got a built in carabiner clip so you can hang it from a Sister if you so desire. 11/10 from me.
A Lovely Little Notebook
Listen, I know what you’re thinking. You’re thinking that only absolute wankers take a lovely little notebook with them on their holiday. It looks so affected and silly. I know this, you know this, we all know this. Nevertheless, I am so glad I did it. I brought my notebook, a pen, and several coloured pencils (I know) and I am writing down things I want to remember, and drawing many quite bad pictures of things. It is absolutely delightful. I love drawing my little pictures and writing my little things every day. Caroline even bought herself a lovely little notebook on the second day of the trip because she could see how fun it was, and now we spend time sitting in places and filling our notebooks together. We are cringe, sure, but we are free. For those who are interested, my notebook came from Choosing Keeping (the most beautiful shop in the world!), it’s one of these small hardback ones and it cost me £20, which is a lot for a notebook, but very little for many hours of joy, and frankly it also pales in comparison to the amount of money I am spending on cheese (which brings me much less joy, and also many farts because I’m in denial about my lactose intolerance) during this trip.
The Baggu Medium Crescent
You’ve probably got one of those Uniqlo sling bags, haven’t you. Everyone has one now. I have one. But what if I told you that there is a different way? A better way? There is and it’s the Baggu Medium Crescent.
This bag first came to my attention when Baggu posted a series of things that satisfied customers have said about it, specifically that it can fit a hardback book and a pigeon. But it still just looks a lot the Uniqlo bag, I thought. It’s obviously bigger but surely it can’t be that much bigger?? Well: it is. It can fit so much stuff in it, but somehow magically without ever looking or feeling cumbersome. On transit days on this trip, I pack all my usual daily bits in it PLUS the PacMat, the portable speaker, the cup and water bottle, the lovely notebook, pencil case, hat, sunglasses and - more often than I care to admit - a stray boiled egg. You can easily stick a waterproof coat or an extra layer in here when you’re out for the day. It has a nice, wide, strong strap that doesn’t dig into you. And because it’s a sling bag, it’s secure. I’m not saying nobody could pickpocket you with this bag, but I’m saying they’d have to work for your treasures. It has two sizeable (like big enough for a Kindle) internal zip pockets where you can keep the things that need to stay safe. Uniqlo could never. And while it’s not “waterproof,” it’s also not not waterproof: there are two layers of sturdy nylon between your stuff and the world. Honestly, The Crescent + The Sister is a flawless travel bag combination, and that is a hill I will die on.
DO YOU WANT TO KNOW WHAT ELSE IS IN THE FAT SISTERS? ARE YOU RELAXED BY PACKING CONTENT AND THE FINDING OF GOOD, GOOD THINGS? LET US KNOW BELOW!
We are touring the podcast in June! Come see! Tickets via Fane.co.uk
More content on the fat sisters' contents plz!
Another vote for more content content! Never before has a niche brought this kind of happiness!!