What's In My Carry-On?

When I was at the start of my career, I used to keep track of the number of flights I’d take each year, and the number of miles I’d spend in the sky. I don’t do that so much these days, although the novelty of flying – and of airports – never lessens. And, with this much experience, I’ve also turned it into a bit of a fine art. Kind of.

Since hitting my thirties – and nearing a decade of travelling around the world in the pursuit of horses – I’ve totally and completely given up on the idea of looking cool while travelling if that coolness will impact comfort or convenience in any way. Which is a long-winded way of saying that I’m a huge bumbag apologist. Most recently, I’ve been using a custom-made Eventing Nation branded one, made by EcoGold, which is a bit of a Mary Poppins bag – I can fit an insane amount of stuff in there, and it doesn’t count towards my carry-on allowance, which is essential since all my actual allowance is taken up by camera kit.

Inside it, you’ll find my passport (if I’ve remembered it – I did once have to do a very snappy and rather expensive round-trip from Gatwick back to my house, because I’d left it behind and was running late, predictably), my purse, and at least two bags of Haribo. Generally, that’s a StarMix and a Tangfastics, which I consider wholly medicinal, because I cannot cope with unpopped ears.

Speaking of ears, my life and my flights have improved tenfold since I got a pair of second-generation AirPod Pros with my last phone contract renewal. (3, before you ask, because they’re very good for frequent travellers.) The Pros have really good noise cancelling, which you can swap for transparency mode when you want to have your wits about you a bit more. When I’m in the sky I absolutely do not want my wits about me, so it's full cancellation and my hood up, thankyouverymuch.

I’m more of a listener and reader on a plane than a watcher, although I did recently binge the entirety of Baby Reindeer on Netflix on a flight to the US, which made me feel weird inside afterwards. Usually, I’ll download a bunch of episodes of You’re Wrong About, which is a brilliant American podcast debunking some of popular culture’s most stubbornly mis-remembered moments. Some of my favourites are a three-part series on cancel culture, a multi-episode deep-dive into Princess Diana, and, basically, any episode focusing on a maligned ‘bimbo’ of the 90s. Or, I’ll listen to Brand New’s 2017 album Science Fiction on repeat while I nap, and, as I did when binge-watching Baby Reindeer, make myself feel emotionally turbulent until the landing gear pops out.

I’m a sucker for a newsagents, and even more so for those free magazine racks that Gatwick, particularly, is so good at providing, so there’ll generally be a complimentary copy of Stylist or a not-so-complimentary copy of The New Yorker crammed into the seat pocket, alongside whichever absolutely enormous novel I’m dragging around the world and attempting to find time to read. My most recent, totally impractically-sized one was Paul Auster’s 4 3 2 1, which was brilliant company for an amount of time that’s too embarrassing to admit to.

I don’t bother too much with packing food for a flight, other than a bottle of water and the hugely necessary Haribo, because I’m actually an airline food apologist as much as I am a bumbag apologist. Except for the watery Spanish omelettes that most airlines insist on serving up for breakfast. Those are inexcusable.

Instead, I take up a bit of extra space in the bumbag with skin care, because I’m both dry and sensitive and neither of those traits are helped much by recycled cabin air. I’ll never travel with makeup on – if I need to land ready to work, I’ll pop some tinted moisturiser and mascara in my bag and apply it just before landing – and so I can continue to drown my face in Kiehl’s Midnight Recovery Concentrate, which is one of my favourite skin-friendly oils that sinks in slowly and thoroughly, and mostly ensures I don’t look 105 years old when I deplane.

Under my seat, I keep a camera backpack – just a cheap Neewer one, which I got for about £50 on Amazon – which generally houses a couple of bodies and two to three lenses. In the overhead locker, I have a small it luggage roll-on, in which I can cram my 300mm f2.8 lens in its case, a monopod, a change of clothes in case my checked luggage goes missing, and my MacBook Pro, which sometimes comes out during a flight if I need to finish a form guide or an event preview before I land. This lack of available space does, though, mean I need to be fairly well-prepared with everything I’ll need for a flight, and on the very rare occasions I don’t need to fly with cameras – like when I head to Qatar each February to work on the broadcast of the CHI Al Shaqab – it feels inexplicably luxurious to have just a handbag packed full of entertainment options. Not, like, first class luxurious, though. Maybe one day.

One of my great joys in life is continually pushing the boundaries of how much I can take on board a plane, and so my next mission, for long-haul flights, is to dispense with my totally useless neck pillow and instead, bring aboard my favourite hybrid microfibre and memory foam pillow by Martian Dreams. That, plus a window seat, could finally see me crack the code to comfortable Economy Class plane naps.