“Oh, they are little things …tiny things, like drawing pins, midges wings, and dew drops, wasp plops, a grass leaf, babies’ handkerchiefs, and these little walking sticks” -Mulligan and O’Hare

We are very good light packers. Honestly, we are! We travel for three weeks at a time with only a little rucksack (rather than a “proper” backpack) that we can take on planes as hand-luggage, yet we do seem to always bring some weird and wonderful things with us that may seem to be neither use nor ornament to most sane and practically minded people.

1.A USB Stick With an Emergency Copy of Xanadu

Susan loves Xanadu. I mean she LOVES Xanadu. Jill has never seen Xanadu. Therefore there is always an emergency Xanadu for that one golden night in a hotel where we have nothing better to do than order room service and watch Xanadu. This hasn’t happened yet, as strangely enough we always find good craic and interesting things to do, but Susan lives in hope! This has also lead to hilarity when crossing the Turkmenistan – Uzbekistan border and they insisted on looking through all the files on our laptop and phones, and were very interested in what covert espionage we had on the USB. “It’s just XANADU MAN!”.

2. An Emergency Beard

You never know when you might need a beard. Like when you want to dress up as a medieval Georgian man and the photography shop doesn’t have an in-house selection of beards.

3. Mandible

Susan’s rock-hard fighting luchador alter-ego, we first met Mandible in Mexico over several street Margaritas and he’s been tagging along for our adventures ever since, stepping in whenever there is any rock-hard fighting, downing shots of dubious local speciality boozes or having wees behind piles of rubble to be done and saving Susan from the ordeal.

4. A Kindle Copy of “Abducted and Forced to Give Milk” and Other Hilarious Crap Erotica Only Available on E-book.

It breaks up a long bus journey, is a good ice-breaker and will usually result in parents whose children are kicking the back of your chair on a flight reeling in their child when you start reading it aloud.

5. At Least One Cup

Because everyone needs  a nice sturdy plastic cup to have their breakfast lager bottom in!