Take Carrie Bradshaw's love for shoes and double it and you'll have a rough idea of how much I love handbags. I cannot stand shopping for clothes, can't understand the appeal of lingerie shops and rarely enter a shoe store if I can help it, but I will happily browse the handbag stores, or handbag sections inside department stores, from now to the end of time. I don't smoke, rarely drink, and can't stand cream cakes. But I do have one addiction. Yes, my friends... My name is Gina, and I'm a bag-aholic. And it was my love (obsession with?) handbags that resulted in us flying to Paris on Wednesday morning.

It was a foggy day, but that didn't stop me whipping out my camera as soon as the little green light that tells you to keep your seatbelt fastened was turned off. I've been flying since I was a baby, but I'm still as fascinated with it now as I was when I was knee high to a grasshopper. The way the plane charges the runway, the whoosh and sudden sensation of lightness as it leaves the ground... It's magic.

To add to the excitement, I was frisked when we went through security... A new experience for me. I can only put the need for it down to the fact that I look like an evil genius who's up to no good (the first part may well be true... Ok, the second part may be too sometimes). And I had my eyeballs registered at Heathrow. Well, not my entire eyeballs, just the irises. They were scanned and recorded (which, I assume, means that Interpol will now have an easier time finding me). 

But getting back to our reason for flying on Wednesday. We made the trip to visit the Champs-Élysées. No. 127 to be precise... to go to Lancel, home of the Adjani pink confetti handbag, the bag of my dreams. In fact, it's not a handbag, it's a portable work of art. And the pink Adjani has super powers. It can communicate with you telepathically (all the way across the English Channel) after just one meeting, then haunt your dreams night after night until you surrender and agree to take it home. It spoke, I dreamed, I surrendered.

With my lovely bag clutched in my hot little mitts, we then made our way back to Paris CDG airport, which, I might add, is one of the most hideous airports in Europe. If you're going, don't eat the food. You might want to avoid using the public conveniences too. And don't expect comfort in the seating area... You're more likely to get piles.

On arriving back at Heathrow, we took our pre-scanned eyeballs and headed to the iris recognition machines, which meant that we completely bypassed the queues for passport control. I flounced into the kiosk with my Lancel handbag, with the bypassed queue of 200 people looking on with curiosity, placed my peepers in front of the screen, then flounced out of the other side with a flourish. I managed to look almost dignified and VIP-ish, until I waved my arms about like a lunatic and called out 'I did it' whilst grinning like a Cheshire cat. 

Anyway, here it is... The Adjani. Pretty in Pink.