Londoners have fallen in love with a new pet. These special travelling companions go everywhere with their mistresses and masters, always following very close behind. They come in all shapes and sizes, they stand alert by one's side when not required and they have to be carried on escalators. Some haven't been trained as well as others and so get under the feet of passers by. They're distinctly territorial, and some owners couldn't imagine life without them. I am of course talking about wheelie suitcases.
These instruments of the devil are everywhere across the capital, usually directly in front of you. I'm sure they weren't around in any great numbers a year ago, but now all of a sudden it appears that everybody has to have one. Stand in any tube station or on any street corner, particularly on a Friday or a Monday, and one of these beasts will come lumbering into view within seconds. I blame the new Argos catalogue, or whatever posh department store it is that travelling people visit in order to buy trendy new luggage. Many of those people manoeuvring wheelie suitcases around town have clearly never passed a driving test in their lives. They cut you up, they decelerate without warning, they fail to signal before swerving out in front of you, they block the path of oncoming traffic and they collide with your nearside without ever stopping to give you the address of their insurance company. I suppose we should be grateful that a wheelie suitcase over the toes is better than a rucksack in the teeth, but in my view this invasion must be stopped, and stopped soon.
London is full of people trying to get somewhere else. Locals love to escape the capital for a weekend break, having seemingly packed the entire contents of their house in their suitcase. Tourists stumble out of airports laden with heavy baggage, then head off on an epic cross-country expedition to find their hotel. Everybody then struggles onto public transport, heaving bags across the entire width of an escalator, dumping a pile of suitcases just inside the door of a train, or forming a wall of canvas across a busy street. London was not designed with oversized baggage in mind.
On first glance the wheelie suitcase appears the perfect solution to a difficult problem. Heavy weights can be transported with ease, so it is possible to pack the kitchen sink after all. Unfortunately some people appear to have decided to do exactly that, carrying twice as much as they might otherwise have done, purely because they now have wheels. At the other end of the spectrum a disturbing number of people seem to have bought what I can only describe as mobile-handbags, tiny containers on long handles which quite frankly could and should be carried instead. Wimps, the lot of you.
And there's worse. Imagine if you will a typical traveller carrying a suitcase. The traditional suitcase is carried by the side, adding only width. The new wheelie suitcase trails behind, adding depth instead. The surface area of ground covered is therefore noticeably greater with a wheelie suitcase than it is with the traditional handheld model. Even worse, this surface area increases the shorter the traveller pulling the suitcase along. If you're six-foot-something then the handle of the wheelie suitcase points pretty much straight up, which isn't too bad. However if you're four-foot-nothing then the handle is much closer to the ground, so the wheels lag a lot further behind. It's a simple matter of trigonometry. Put bluntly, a group of tiny tourists can clog up a tube station in seconds. And often do.
I fear that the battle against the advance of the wheelie suitcase may already be lost. There's certainly no sign yet of the government organising a special terror attack simulation to rid the Underground of these weapons of mass discourtesy. It appears that many people just want their own travelling to be easy, and they don't give a damn that their actions might have negative implications for others. The wheelie suitcase is just a physical manifestation of an inner malaise, obviously. So look, if you really have to have one, please just hold it upright won't you? Or get a taxi.
