Back-up, redundancy: always worth while

So to nobody's surprise, I have indeed just broken my cafetiere (that's French press to those of you in transatlantic climes; I have no idea what the French call them).

Blessedly, I do have a spare. This is why I have a spare, because I was certain to break it. The spare is stainless steel, and pretty much unbreakable.

Unfortunately, on account of its being stainless steel, it doesn't make the best coffee in the world. Also, the lid is loose, to the point of falling out (with the whole press mechanism and filter and all) if you tilt too far without remembering to hold on to it.

So, I see shopping in my future. Sigh. Well, no sigh to the shopping, I love shopping, especially for batterie de cuisine; I'd just rather not have to spend the actual, y'know, money. (Actually, of course, even that's not true. I love spending money. I just don't have it. What I spend is debt; and truly is it written that what you expend comes back to you, twofold and threefold and more...)

"Don't know what you've got till it's gone"

Missing things: we miss them.

Newcastle airport is just a few miles from my house. If I go walking on the moors across the way, there's not a heavy but a steady flow of aircraft coming in; look the other way, there are always contrails from aircraft heading off.

Not today, and their absence is ... something I'm aware of. I don't lament it, exactly (tho' I am and always have been vulnerable to the excitements of flight, of heavier-than-air machines in air; and I do still sometimes go to the airport just to watch them fly), but I am very aware.

What this most reminds me of? The reverse: flying into Newcastle at the height of the foot-and-mouth epidemic, seeing the whole Tyne valley below me utterly empty of cattle and sheep. Seeing lines of smoke on the wind, from the pyres where they lay burning.

As above, so below. Smoke on the wind, and empty.