Do I really need a Pacsafe Anti-theft Crossover Bag for a sketchbook and a few pens?
Well it saved the day on a quiet cobbled back street in Avignon when three nimble-fingered young women padded along behind us and got as far as unzipping both my bag and Barbara’s. I think that I might have felt the slightest of tugs but what made me turn around was that I happened to tread on a piece of plastic.
The young women smiled and hurried on ahead, but luckily our passports were still in Barbara’s bag. I’m not sure that they would have been so very pleased to have fished my travel sketchbook from the bag but I would have been upset to lose it.
There’s space for twelve half pans of Winsor & Newton Professional Watercolours in their Bijou box if you slot extras into the space where you could keep a little brush.
Along with two Lamy pens filled with De Atramentis Sepia Brown ink – my favourite colour for drawing natural history subjects – I’ve got a TWSBI Eco T fountain pen, also filled with sepia and with a fine nib that gives a line that reminds me of when I used to work with a fine-nibbed dip pen with a Gillot 1950 nib.
As this bag is for natural history, rather than swanning around town, I’ve got a Silva key-fob compass and thermometer attached and a Buff and a pair of clip on sunglasses (Chemistrie ‘eyewear that clicks’, thanks to tiny magnets in my regular varifocal glasses) stowed away in one of the pockets inside.