I wish I was better at packing. I want to be able to fold my whole life up into one piece of carry-on, like those neat little L.V. totes all the famous ladies take to the airport. Jennifer, Cate, Beyonce even, they never clear customs with anything more than one small handbag and a passport holder.
Every week the photos come out, and every week I look at them with the same interior monologue: Nice tan, Jennifer. Cabo suits her. How does she get all her luggage without having to queue up like the rest of us? Where is her luggage, come to think of it? Why do I never see her with stuff? Does she not have any?
I'm not talking about suitcases - I know there'll be flunkies to look after all that. But where's her carry-on? There she is, with the tiny tote or an itsy-bitsy Gucci handbag slung across the midriff, and not so much as a sunglasses case to encumber her.
Where, pray tell, is her iPad? Where's her travel pillow? Where's her makeup bag, her big bottle of water and her hardback copy of The Luminaries that she's had to lug on the plane with her because she still hasn't finished it?
I'm packing for a flight as I write this, and that's about as basic an inventory of carry-on luggage I can whittle it down to. Hollywood stars, I'm sure, need a damn sight more pampering than I do on transatlantic voyages and yet here they are, photographed constantly getting off planes without so much as a travel-sized tube of Eight Hour Cream in evidence.
