A week or so ago, I went with my sister to the Coach store to find her ‘the bag to end all bags’. Obviously, a closet jammed full of bags sitting at home didn’t quite fit that description. But this isn’t a story about my sister’s or my neurotic collection of handbags; this is a story about the girl at Coach.

She was beautiful, a svelte tall strawberry blonde looking like she belonged on a runway. She also looked fittingly like one of those personal-shopper-assistant types with fake European accents you find in pretentiously-expensive shops. Hers was British, possibly mellowed by years of living abroad and a hint of something quite foreign, probably Middle Eastern.

So she’s helping my sister pick out the perfect ‘every day’ bag and ‘I’m checking her out’, not because I’m (sexually) attracted to her or want to take her home to meet my mama or anything like that. People fascinate me, I’m intrigued by her. Here she is looking like something out of a girly magazine hawking expensive leather bags, how much does Coach store employees make anyway? Judging by her expensive clothes, I’m definitely in the wrong business.

The conversation gets on to lipsticks and whatnots and she asks where we’re from. We tell her and I prepare myself mentally for the obligatory remark on that lone person from Africa she’s encountered, or that cousin in Akron, Ohio whose next door neighbours are Somalis. But then her face lights up and excitedly tells us how her parents are from Ghana! ”Well, they lived there for 20 years” she says. She tells us about how all her siblings were born there and the towns in which her father, a military doctor, was stationed. This is all exciting to us so we’re standing chatting away about our experiences and she’s talking about an incident with one of her sisters… “but this was back when we lived in Sierra Leone” she recalls.

Ok, that’s it! Could this get any weirder? We tell her that we ‘too’ used to live in Sierra Leone. We’re mildly freaked out and telling each other stuff to find out if there’s a connection. She lived in England and eventually moved to Canada by way of the US! Just like me! Coincidence? Maybe.

Now she’s no longer just the intriguingly chic girl at Coach; she’s the intriguing chic girl at Coach with whom I share a special geographical connection. It’s like we’re almost family although we’re not anymore related than we were before I walked into the shop. It’s a small world indeed.

‘We’ decide to wait till the summer collection comes out to get ‘the bag to end all bags’, my sister gets a little something to tide her over till then.

PLAYING: Through The Wire - Kanye West

READING: Lost – Joy Fielding

WATCHING: Gilmore Girls

QUOTE: “Thank God I ain't too cool for the safe belt”