A letter from a reader

At 67, I finally told the physio about my shoulder. She asked to have a look at the bag I carry on it.

You should picture me writing this at the kitchen table with a cup of tea going cold beside me, because that is exactly how slowly it has come. I am not a writer, and what another woman carries on her shoulder has never been any of my business.

But four women have asked me about this bag in the last fortnight, two of them standing behind me in the queue at the chemist, and I have now explained it enough times that it seemed easier to write it all down properly.

It started in a physio room in Subiaco. I had been putting it off for about a year, the ache along the top of my left shoulder and up into my neck, the one I had decided was simply what sixty-seven feels like. She listened, she had a feel of it, and then she looked past me at the chair where I had put my things down, and she asked if that was the bag I carried every day. I said it was. She picked it up, turned the strap over in her fingers, and said it.

It is not your shoulder, Maggie. It is a centimetre of strap holding a kilo in one spot, six days a week.

I laughed, and then I went out to the car and sat there for a minute, and she was right. Not the same bag, mind. There had been plenty of bags. But every single one of them had the same strap on it. A thin one. A strap the width of a shoelace, carrying everything I own, in exactly the same place on exactly the same shoulder, for about forty years.

I did not choose to spend forty years carrying everything on a shoelace. That is the part I want to be clear about. Nobody decides that. It happens quietly, one sensible purchase at a time, until one day a physio is holding your handbag up to the light.

How it happens

When I actually went looking for a bag that did not hurt, I understood how I had ended up with the ones I had.

The shops give you two choices. There are the pretty ones, where the strap is thin because thin looks delicate on the hanger, and nobody is thinking about the woman who will have it on for four hours. And there are the sensible ones with a wide strap, which are rucksacks, or they are something you would take to a building site.

Delicate or practical. That was the whole shopping centre. Nobody seemed to think a woman might want a strap that spreads the weight and still looks like something she chose.

And once that is all there is, you stop expecting anything else. You buy the pretty one because it is pretty. You carry it. You rub your shoulder at the end of the day without noticing you are doing it, and you assume that is simply what getting older feels like.

What I had wrong

Here is the bit I got most wrong, and I suspect I am not alone.

I thought my problem was what I was carrying. Every time my shoulder ached I took something out of the bag, and the bag was lighter and the ache stayed exactly where it was.

It turns out it was never about the weight.

It is about how far across your shoulder that weight is spread. A wide strap takes the same kilo and lays it across a hand span instead of standing it on one point, and your shoulder stops being asked to do something it was never built to do. The moment the strap is right, the bag can be as full as it likes.

It took me until 67, and a physio in Subiaco, to work that out.

The bag is called the Ruby

It is from Perth Boutique, a small Australian boutique that has been quietly dressing women our age for a few years now. My sister Carol found them, which she reminds me of regularly.

The bag is called the Ruby. A soft tan bucket bag in a lovely warm leather look, with two rolled handles for the crook of your arm and, over the top of them, a wide woven strap in deep green and teal with a pattern running right through it. That strap is the whole reason I bought it.

The strap is the part that matters. It is wide, properly wide, so when you put it over your shoulder the weight goes across rather than down into one spot, and after a full day out I have come home without once reaching up to rub my neck. The body of the bag is soft and slouchy, so it sits in against you rather than swinging about, and the two handles are still there underneath for when you only want to carry it in your hand.

That is really all there is to it. It is not complicated. It is just a strap somebody thought about for longer than ten seconds.

What happened at the shops

The first proper outing was the Thursday shop, of all the glamorous places.

Three women asked me about it before I got back to the car. The lady behind me at the checkout started it, because she wanted to know whether the strap came off or whether it was part of the bag.

The third was Lorraine, who I have known for twenty years and who has never once commented on anything I carry. She looked at the strap and said she would wear that as a belt. I have decided to take that as a compliment.

What I noticed more than the questions, though, was the drive home. I did not do the thing I always do, which is take the bag off the shoulder at the lights and put it on the passenger seat because it had started to pull. It stayed where it was the whole way, and I did not think about it once, which I had not realised I had been thinking about every single day until I stopped.

The next morning I put it straight back on to walk down for the paper. Same bag, same shoulder, nothing aching. Completely myself.

Three things I have learned since

One. Width beats weight, every time. It is not about carrying less. It is about where the same load sits. I have not taken a single thing out of my bag and my shoulder has stopped complaining, which rather proves the point.

Two. The strap is the outfit. The bag itself is plain tan, which goes with everything, and the pattern on the strap does all the work. It means a plain bag looks like a decision without my having to think about it in the morning.

Three. The handles still earn their keep. Across the shoulder for the shops, in the crook of the arm for lunch. One bag, two ways to carry it, and neither of them is the shoelace.

About the price

I want to be straightforward about this, because it was the thing that made me suspicious.

The Ruby is $88.99. It was $199.00.

My first thought, honestly, was that there had to be a catch, because you can walk into any department store and pay double that for a bag with a strap half the width.

There is no catch that I have found. They are a small boutique selling directly, so there is no middleman taking a cut, and they have their spring and anniversary sale on at the moment, with free shipping Australia wide, and a little more off again if you take two or more.

I did what I imagine you are doing now and had a proper look before I ordered. Thirty-seven bags in the collection, starting at $46.99, and they put a bracelet in with every leather bag, which I was not expecting and which my granddaughter now owns.

Then I had a proper look through the rest of them, which I would not recommend doing at eleven at night, and there is a black one I have not stopped thinking about.

What I would tell you if we were friends

If you and I were sat in the kitchen with the teapot between us and you asked me, this is what I would say.

If you have spent years rubbing your shoulder at the end of the day and putting it down to your age, not because anybody told you to but because that seemed to be all there was, then it is worth ten minutes of your evening to go and look at what is holding your bag up.

Not because a handbag will change your life. It will not. But there is something in getting to the end of a day out without once reaching up to your neck that I had quietly given up on, and I would rather you did not give up on it too.

Two practical things. The sale is on at the moment, and the free shipping goes with it. And it is the patterned straps that go first, which I found out because Carol had to wait a week for hers.

I have not rubbed my shoulder at the kitchen bench since.

Maggie