Trust Me, I`ve Been There

Guardian newspaper columnist Zoe Williams on how to wield a wheeled suitcase. Illustration: Tom Percival / Advocate Art

I’VE READ MANY INTERVIEWS WITH CABIN crew (particularly female ones), in which they say the revolution of their life was the wheeled suitcase. Actually, that’s an overstatement. I’ve read one interview, and had it corroborated by my sister-in-law: the trolley suitcase is magic. Some years ago (can’t remember how many, I’m afraid… 10, 20 maybe), suitcases were really heavy, and people who had to carry them a lot either packed very light or got very grumpy. Considering how long ago the wheel was invented, it is amazing to me that it took until the 1980s for someone to attach a pair to a suitcase. But there we go, now you can wheel them and everyone’s happy.

That’s airport etiquette at its most straightforward. Hosties are, by definition, the least delinquent, least selfish, least disorganised people in the airport – least likely, therefore, to run over your foot or suddenly change (imaginary) lanes, or otherwise inconvenience you. They taught the rest of us how to do it. Nobody ever got off a plane wishing this innovation hadn’t happened.

But as for wheels generally, airport convention is confused. For kids, you can buy little wheeled trunks that have eyes painted on them, and look fleetingly like animals.

Strangers like them in theory, because they think they’ll make children moan less, but in practice, when they get rammed/obstructed/ delayed/just sheer annoyed by the sight of innocent pleasure, they hate them. And parents aren’t mad on them either, because the number of things that could go wrong outnumber the one thing that could go right by such a tremendous margin, it’s risk-taking gone crazy: it’s like putting uranium in your drink just because someone in the pub told you it wasn’t dangerous.

Nevertheless, it’s a suitcase, it’s related to travel and there’s no question that you’re allowed to own one. That makes it more acceptable than, say, a micro-scooter. No child is allowed a scooter, a trike, a bike, or any other kind of wheeled solution that actually gets you from A to B.

The problem is that flying came into the everyday domain after the iron rule of the aristocracy had been phased out. They were useless at almost everything, aristocrats, but they were incredibly good on etiquette, even the etiquette of situations in which they never found themselves. With airports and, indeed, every other innovation of the last 70 years – the internet, the mobile phone – we’re flying blind. Although, of course, not literally.