Sent off my passport today to get a new one - the old one expires in four weeks - and feel strangely vulnerable without it. Not that I was planning on going abroad in the next month, but the sense that I couldn't if I wanted is unnerving. Though not as unnerving, or not in the same way, as the new passport will be, which will (God willing) be my trusty travel companion until I'm - yoicks - can't say it - have as many years behind me as there are cards in a standard deck.