BREAKFAST in London, lunch in New York, luggage in Beirut.

Baggage systems at Heathrow have often come in for some stick, but it's hard to believe that anything could have gone more wrong than the opening of the new Terminal Five.

Having said that, I can fully sympathise with the hundreds of people frustrated by their missing cases in the debacle.

After all, our precious luggage - like our precious children - is extremely important to us. Only not quite so argumentative, irritating and expensive.

How often do we put our precious belongings in to the care of complete strangers - albeit pretty, well-dressed ones - who clearly don't care too much about them?

How often have we watched our bags disappear down the chute, a small piece of cardboard the only insurance against them taking a flight in the opposite direction?

And how often did I eventually retrieve my new, super-strong case only to find that some of the great undiscovered footballers of our time had been testing its resistant qualities These are men who on a daily basis are thrilling onlookers with their skills, their commitment and their ability to spot an opening and put their boot to good effect.

Welcome to the mysterious world of baggage handlers.

I spent a lot of money on this expensive piece of luggage.

For years, we have relied on canvas cases that cannot possibly withstand the battering they receive once they have disappeared down that conveyor belt check-in.

In fact, if luggage could talk, they would probably have been whimpering in abject fear as they disappeared into the bowels of the airport.

But our new cases are different.

If there was a human equivalent of our new cases, it would be a pub full of Millwall fans who have just been offered outside by Laurence Llewellyn-Bowen insisting, in a very loud voice, that each of them was a big girl's blouse.

Our cases, we were reliably informed, were so hard that we had to make a detour on the way to the airport to have LOVE' and HATE' tattooed on both sides of the handles.

Clearly, cases with a hard-nut reputation - and a guarantee that includes indemnity only against a direct nuclear attack on each individual piece - are a challenge to the professionals who lurk within the bowels of Gatwick or Orlando International Airport.

Certainly those of us who waited patiently for our bags to appear from flights recently would have been surprised to note that there appeared to have been a major explosion or traffic accident involving our baggage between the time it had been thrown off the plane on the tarmac and kicked on to the conveyor belt a few hundred yards away.

It was certainly a bit of a shock for the lady with the pink knickers and bra set which was neatly placed on the belt next to her exploded piece of luggage, as well as the man whose neatly packed and shrink-wrapped box had been unlucky enough to be trapped between two love-making elephants.

And our pristine cases? Well, they weren't a pretty sight. Bruised, scuffed and battered, if they'd have been a boxer, the trainer would have thrown in the towel to avoid them taking much more punishment.