Dear LPG, 

I have a rather sad tale to tell, but there is a point to my story.

After the restrictions were relaxed I know many oldies who decided that a trip to see family was the first outing they wanted to make.  In my opinion, it has been good to be able to talk to my sister every day, but there is something special about not needing to use electronics when doing so.  She lives in Manchester and although I can drive, the 3 hours and 53 minutes that Google maps says it takes to drive that far has put me off taking on such lengths of motorway for some while now.  

I usually go by National Express or with the help of a similar coaching company these days. There is not that much to do when you are traveling alone for that long and if there is no one  to chat with, I always find a few 40 wink sessions come in handy.

I have taken to reading online books, but while all that movement is going on my eyes have serious problems managing to focus these days, so I just pack my tablet among my clothes in my suitcase where all that textile absorbs any possible impact it might encounter.

This was the first journey for some time as you can imagine but previous visits have  left me knowing exactly what to expect.  The bus arrives and your luggage is packed into the hold below the passenger’s area and then off we go, and often off I do too.  

There are various stops on the way  and that little jolt that is usually part of the breaking  process is  enough to wake me.  I remember waking up and looking out of the window on the odd occasion to see disembarking passengers  collecting their suitcases, and on one occasion there was one of those ‘The case that man is carrying off, looks rather like mine’ moments,  but it was not until we reached my destination that I realised it must have been because my case was not there to collect.

I used to do the trip quite often and have never had any problems before, so I phoned the coach company, but no suitcase was returned.

So somewhere between London and Manchester I am guessing that there is someone, who I remember being a man, who has either accidentally or deliberately acquired a lot of woman’s clothing and a tablet which now no longer works, and I would love to have it back,

It was not insured and, though I would need to finish paying off the contract my service provider told me that there was little more that they could do apart from blocking it.

I suppose that the moral of the story is even if you are staying in the country and will only be separated from your trussed up belongings for a relatively short distance, both geographically and chronologically, is that insurance is available and would have meant that someone would have been obliged to look for it.

There is something else that might have helped, especially when it comes to all the other items I lost on the day, and that is knowing what was packed. The sad thing is that I read an article about another of your reader’s luggage problems and her solution, and I always promised that I would follow her example and never did.  I suggest that any readers that are sometimes parted from their luggage while traveling, take another at that article. 

NC, Forest Hill. 

NC points out the other bit of useful and related information she mentioned…