To have and to have not

…I know I/we shouldn’t be so attached to material possessions but I can’t tell you what an awful, totally sleepless night I’ve had since leaving my stuffed-with-precious-things, poppy red holdall on last night’s chunder express bound for Bedford.

Desperate, moribund and inconclusive nocturnal efforts to trace-it/replace-it and utter frustration at not being able to call Bedford Station direct myself, led me at 6.45 this morning, to send devoted-&-slightly-to-blame(!) bf Paul, back to St. Pancras Internazionale prontissimo, to see if there, they might contact the train’s terminus & check if the bag had been found overnight.

I am utterly overjoyed to tell you that soon after, I got a call from said bf, to say that the bag was indeed in Bedford and that after kissing the station supervisor who gave him the good news, he was already en route on his First-Capital-Connect-mission of contrite retrieval.

…As I set down this happy conclusion, I notice that approximately two mega-tonnes of stress are finally beginning to uncoil their sickening grip from my fraughtest of guts.  Although I think it will take several brandy-tanked, earl grey, celebratory cuppas to release the remaining 50 tonnes, still making an Isambard Kingdom Brunel fist of it in there.

Hard-earned thought for the day:

“Mostly it is loss which teaches us about the worth of things.”
― Arthur Schopenhauer, Parerga and Paralipomena

Happy Days.