Monday lunchtime and leaving the house with much more luggage than I used to take on a business trip. Lots of extra clothes and my little blue bag full of ileostomy products, and of course work stuff and passport. Somehow I took all I needed.....but only just.
I got through Heathrow security easier than ever, I was almost hoping for a "beep" and a body search and explaining what the lump was. I was trying to remember all the things I should not eat and drink before the flight and think I must have got that bit right as baggy behaved impeccably on the plane, no inflation at all. Into Munich and a new hotel that was fab and served Weiss Beer. I met up with some colleagues from Sweden, Belgium, Hungary and Russia, people I hadn't seen for well over a year and we enjoyed beer and stories until 1:30am I gave in and went to bed.
Tuesday in the "meeting" and there were 40 of us, so a lot of hello's, gruscott's, bonjour's, etc and I soon settled into my old ways. By the way there are head tilters abroad you might like to know, but most just avoided asking anything except for those I've known a long time (20 years). The one thing that was concerning me was that my suit trousers were feeling very tight, I think the bag plus a bit of weight gain was causing this, and I worried that it might squash things. However, the day went well (apart from a headache, German beer is strong) and baggy was well behaved. We went to a traditional Bavarian restaurant on the evening and had some high colesteral food and more beer. I was sat with a guy from Brazil who spoke 4 languages and I told him being British we only needed the 1! (Only jealous.)
Wednesday, last day of meeting and still all was well with baggy and no head ache today, but I think I did myself no favours having a lot of fruit for breakfast and some yoghurt, as you will see. I got to lunchtime and whilst standing up, eating and chatting at the same time, baggy started gurgling. The noise was not like gurgling I had heard before and I thought it must be the fruit playing up, but it went on for 10 mins. Finally I managed to excuse myself and visited the toilet. OMG....... The noise was baggy leaking......
Imagine this if you will, I'm in this toilet (lucky for me it was disabled and head plenty of loo paper and paper towels) with mess over my shirt, pants and trousers and it was heading for my socks. My blue bag and luggage bag were in the meeting room so all I could do was apply paper towels which was pretty useless. Then a lucky stroke, I poked my head out the toilet door and saw my English work mate on his phone and off he went and got my stuff. It must have taken me 20 minutes to sort things out, at one stage my stoma was doing an impression of a fountain. Unfortunately I had no spare work shirts left (all creased up) and no spare suit trousers, so I picked out a selection of clothes, changed and walked back into the meeting late with luggage and new attire. When I sat down my mate said I looked like a cross between a 70's disco dancer and a clown, do you think anyone noticed? I guess they did, ha ha!
The journey home was trouble free, the affected clothes were binned, I need to buy new trousers that fit me now, but that will probably be to big after my reversal!
So there you are, my first leak with the new design bag, in a foreign country with 40 business managers from across Europe. I guess I should have cried or got down about it, but after a couple swear words I just dealt with it and I didn't feel embarrassed one bit. However, I could have done with sharing the info with my macland friends but I didn't get a spare minute and don't have a phone with the interweb.
Thursday and back to work with visitors from Hong Kong, glad they came to see me as I don't fancy taking baggy all the way there!
Tight Lines
Tim
