You’ll never get it all in!

“You are never going to get all that in there,” I said to Sylvester.

“I squeezed it in before,” he replied, reaching down and pressing harder.

“You should try to sit on it,” I suggested helpfully.

Sylvester is one of those people who try to pack too many things into his ancient suitcase, and then expects it to close as though it’s half empty. It’s always this way. And I have to say it’s never the way it is in the movies. I mean, James Bond doesn’t go through the sort of trials and tribulations at checkout time that Sylvester does. He’ll be trying to close an overstuffed suitcase, and finally when he does he finds he’s zippered his tie into the thing and is walking around the hotel room trying to disentangle himself from 20 kilos (45 lbs) of suitcase. It would be funny if it wasn’t so sad. Poor Sylvester.

“All you should do is gently tuck everything out of the way. Don’t over do it. It just doesn’t need to be so hard,” I told him.

“But I’m carrying the bare minimum,” he protested.

“I would hardly say that,” I replied.

I glanced down at the contents of the case.

“What are these,” I asked, holding up a large pair of oversized shorts. “Beagling shorts? Were you planning on going Beagling when in Brazil?”…