Before term starts

School kit is bought once and judged for a year. The failures are predictable: a strap that frays, a lid that stops sealing, a zip that gives up in week three. What follows is chosen on whether it survives the term rather than whether it looks good in the shop.

For anyone carrying a laptop rather than a pencil case, the useful feature is a padded compartment that actually fits the machine. This one takes a large laptop without the corners pressing into your back, which is the difference between a bag you wear and a bag you carry by the handle.

Smaller people have a different problem: the bag is bigger than they are. A child-sized backpack sits above the hips rather than below them, and the licensed character on the front is doing more work than adults tend to admit. Wanting to wear it is most of the battle.

The matched set is the pragmatic answer to a morning where nobody can find anything. Bag and lunch kit in the same pattern means one thing to look for instead of two, and at the age where possessions get left in cloakrooms, that matters more than the design.

Lunch boxes are where the real engineering happens. A compartmented box keeps wet things away from dry ones, which is the whole argument - a sandwich that has spent four hours next to apple slices is a sandwich that comes home again.

And sometimes the deciding factor is simply that a child will open it. A character lunch box gets eaten out of, which is a low bar that a great many sensible containers fail to clear.

More of this under rugzak and broodtrommel. Tomorrow's edition is in the daily.