Saturday 26 May 2007

body bags

The luggage shop at the airport is called "CarriOn". It really is.

The inference to be drawn is that somebody once explained to the proprietors why this was a bad idea. But the proprietors were only momentarily put out. Quickly recovering their composures, they assured each other that nobody the hell has ever heard of that word, not outside of the sixteenth century anyway, and even if a few freaks have somehow managed to come across it, in some dusty obscure forgotten discursive corner, the rich parade of mercantile benefits sure to flow from deliberately misspelling 'carry on' must far outweigh the costs associated with repulsing a few freaks who undoubtedly stow their belongings in homemade sacks of calico anyway.

And the proprietors in their sagacity are most probably correct.

8 comments:

David Nichols said...

I believe that titles such as this are supposed to compel the customer to remember them, and the best way to make the customer remember is to challenge and/or disgust them. I have come across many other examples and they are filed away in my mind somewhere but I can't remember what they are. Just trust me.

tigtog said...

Better Read Than Dead (my nearest full-retail bookshop) is an example of the same idea done much better, methinks.

I can't think of any other names for a business offhand that would irritate me in quite the same way as CarriOn does but Bodily Waste would be quite a good band name.

Kerryn Goldsworthy said...

Creative writing exercise: write a couple of paragraphs describing the character who thought this up.

But anyone in a position where they had to buy luggage at the airport (busted suitcase? last-minute change of plan? drug mule?) would probably be in such a tis-was that they wouldn't even notice the name of the shop. Or how much the luggage costs. CarriOn is probably raking it in.

Anonymous said...

Who on earth has to buy luggage AT the airport?

Wouldn't one normally take luggage full of stuff to the airport?

tig - my close-ish second hand bookshop is The Merchant of Fairness.

Carry On Punning Mrs Slocum.

lucy tartan said...

Bags come to bits, or they are the wrong size, or people get dissatisfied when they see other people dragging more expensive bags around. Who knows.

Anonymous said...

or they've bought a heap of stuff on their holiday and need a new case to put it all in...

I know people who've done that (whereas I tend to throw out most of the clothes I take with me and come home with less than I took)

There's a hairdresser called Chainsaw Massacre. I don't find that reassuring, but it's been there a while, so others must.

Anonymous said...

Maybe they're like me, the last person in the world who doesn't use the suitcases with wheels, and then one day at the airport... they crack.


Cast Iron Balcony

boynton said...

CarriOn for culture-vultures?