A New Leather Wallet

Speaking of wallets, you now pull out your battered old “authentic” Ralph Lauren you picked up from that market in Istanbul several years ago. The zip regularly jams and with the R and the L starting to peel off it looks decidedly more like “alph auren”. Istanbul itself was truly amazing of course. From the fragrant spice markets to the Grand Bazaar to the Blue Mosque, you spent four hazy sunny days taking in the delights whilst munching on fresh baklava. Unfortunately your wallet hasn’t lasted as well as the memories.

Isn’t it funny how you can tell a lot about a person from the purse or wallet they carry? It’s not actually very often that you get to see someone’s wallet, inevitably only appearing at shop checkouts and bars before being hastily rammed back into a pocket or bag. But in those few seconds of a glimpsed wallet, judgements rightly or wrongly are easily made about a person’s possible age and status and where they are generally in life. Having sat in Departures at Heathrow last year waiting for a four-hour delayed flight to Barcelona, you got people watching down to a fine art, including what they were carrying. Young backpackers and clubbers with large bulging backpacks clutched wallets not dissimilar to my own “alph auren”. At 30-something you remember fondly the round the world ticket you bought on your gap year more years ago than you care to remember, indeed stopping off in Dubai to take in the excellent hospitality and to watch the world’s tallest building – the Burj Khalifa – not quite finished at that stage, rising up into the night sky.

You never thought in a million years back then that you’d actually be lucky enough to work there.

Now looking down at the scuffed fabric and half broken zip you know it’s time to move on and embrace the next stage. With a stylish PrimeHide leather wallet, like the Outback RFID Bifold Wallet (£16.99) for example, you can be safe in the knowledge that whichever restaurant or first class lounge you end up in with your new colleagues, you can pull it out and look every inch the confident professional. Made with smart luxury leather you can keep all your cash and cards together, plus it’s RFID safe so it doesn’t matter where you store it.

You decide to treat yourself to some new shirts and ties from Duty Free at the airport. There will be loads of time to kill no doubt and frankly by then you’ll be so full of nervous energy you’ll be glad of something to do. Your mind drifts back to that delayed flight to Barcelona and the beating your credit card took whilst you were again trying to kill time. Having become so engrossed in buying CK Escape and Absolut vodka (some of those flavours aren’t even available on the high street – it would be rude not to) you’d completely lost track of time and ended up only just making it to the gate before closing. The irony was not lost on you. Having tried hard to ignore the varying degrees of annoyance on the faces of your fellow passengers you’d slumped gratefully into seat 19C a rather sweaty mess. At least it was an aisle seat and you hadn’t had to climb over anyone. The worse thing though was that because you were so late boarding the plane, the gate staff had announced the cabin lockers were full and you’d need to check your hard shell cabin case into the hold. OK you thought, for a short 2-hour flight you can manage – but when your case was unloaded the other end it looked battered and bruised to say the least. Time now for something new.