MAGAN'S WORLD: Manchán Magan'stales of a travel addict
When The Irish Timestold me my first ever press trip would be with journalists from such distinguished publications as Harper's Bazaar, Tatlerand Condé Nast, I knew there was no longer any place in my life for the trusty old Sporthouse. It had been with me on every trip I made over 20 years, to the North Pole, the Amazon, the Andes, equatorial Africa and the Himalayas, but now I knew I had to smarten up.
I went out and bought a smart black cabin case with a dinky telescopic handle. I admit I felt a sense of betrayal as I brought it into my house, into the very same room as my trusty Sporthouse, but when I eventually arrived at Heathrow's T5 and saw the other journalists in their devastatingly stylish Samsonite and Louis Vuitton I knew I had done the right thing. (These were journalists more in the style of Joanna Lumley's Absolutely Fabulouscharacter than any hack I'd ever met.)
I assured myself that my Sporthouse bag had earned a rest now. It had been through so much: vomited on by children and chickens in rickety buses in Mexico and Nepal; its seams chewed by friendly pigs and puppies everywhere from Greenland to Taiwan; mauled by porters, baggage handlers, bus conductors and customs officers.
There was a tar smear on the cover from when I fell on a new road approaching the Iraqi border. (It probably saved me from serious concussion.) As a chair and pillow it had cosseted me on long bus and train rides on four continents. I had had to defend its honour on numerous occasions in the face of pompous Australian and Israeli backpackers, who insisted I should invest in a Lowe Alpine or Jack Wolfskin. They could never see the beauty of my little Waterford-made bag. It mightn't have had all the latest vari-quick, dual-density, low-friction harness systems, or reinforced suspension straps, but in its own simple way it was perfect.
After its first 10 years I had sent it back to the factory in Waterford for some minor restitching. The owner, Liam Power, returned it to me with a letter insisting there was no charge and wishing me another successful decade of travel. That was before I had ever written a travel article or made a television programme.
Power just liked the idea that his bag was out there doing what it was supposed to do. He didn't believe in spending vast sums on sexy photo shoots of his bags scaling the Dolomites or rafting down the Hudson - instead, he and his team in Waterford put their time into re-enforcing every seam and honing every buckle. Sporthouse make bags for the Defence Forces and the postal service. They know that the people who use them day in and day out depend on them in a way no weekend snowboarder who needs somewhere to store his hoodie and iPod could comprehend.