A moment of silence, please.
London Mug version five is gone. It broke on my birthday, which feels like the universe has a sense of humor.
It was sitting in the cupboard, perfectly safe. Or so I thought. I opened the cupboard and out it fell, because A hadn’t put it in quite right. Happy birthday to me. To her credit, she felt really bad about it.
So now I’m on London Mug version six. Well, M is on London Mug version six. I ordered versions seven and eight as backups after all this happened, which tells you everything you need to know about where we are as a family.
If you haven’t been following the ongoing London Mug saga, this is not a new problem. Back in 2012 I bought a mug in London. It has a graphic of London on it. We have since proceeded to break many versions of it, with every member of this family, at one point or another, being responsible for a London Mug casualty. Grogu has also been implicated. Nobody is innocent.
A couple of versions ago I was smart enough to buy two at once. One broke, I used the spare. I felt like a genius. Then this one broke and took out my last spare with it. No backup. Back to zero.
Fortunately, I saved the link to the place that makes them. They’ve been at it for something like 14 or 15 years now and it’s still in their standard collection, which is genuinely impressive. I ordered two more. Because I know us by now.
My rational, or possibly irrational, fear is that one day I’m going to go back to that link and I’m not going to be able to get it anymore. The mug stops being made, the shop disappears, and that’s it. That day will be a dark one.
But today is not that day. Today we are on V6 with two more in reserve and cautious optimism.
Rest in peace, V5. You were good to us, mostly.