So planes are still planes: you buy a ticket, you board, they go up, you freak out over turbulence, you sip V8 or juice, they come down, and you’re thousands of miles from where you started out in a different time zone. But that bit’s just space, and doesn’t even account for That Other Time Stuff.

Green LED lights shine up in a curved pattern next to a yellow painted blacked bordered line on an airport runway under flat gray morning skies.

I’ve no local yet to replace my old spot, which closed in September. I did find myself at World Grounds this morning with an hour free. There was coffee, à la carte menu items, weeklies on tables: if not for the running industrial floor fan in the open doorway, it could’ve been 2019, or even 1995.

A wooden tabletop with a leaf pattern or motif and a white paper bag on it containing a cardboard tray with sliced grilled sausages and turkey bacon, near a large white cardboard sleeved paper cup with coffee.