Who?

I'm often concerned that I won't recognise Reto when I have arranged to meet him somewhere crowded, and instead of looking for his face I look for the clothes he's wearing or for the bag he has carried pretty much every day for the last 7 years. Clearly this is ridiculous and obviously I am pretty familiar with what he looks like, but I remember being worried the first time he came to Australia that I wouldn't recognise him at the airport (I hadn't seen him for 6 months or so) and my concern doesn't seem to have abated much since then.

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Yesterday we went out and bought Reto a new bag for Christmas. I had bought him a different new bag for Christmas, after he had spent forever going on about how his old bag was on its last legs and he needed a new one. He decided he didn't like the bag I gave him (fair enough; it was deceptively small and not super terrific) but it wasn't a complete loss because it provided the impetus to end the complaining and actually go and buy a new one. And so we did, and although the new bag is the same make and brand as the old bag (Freitag. Apparently I'm not Swiss enough to understand why everyone here loves them so much) it's a different colour and he looks completely different carrying it than he looked with the old one.

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I can't button up my normal winter coat any more. This problem was clearly getting closer and closer before our Christmassy sojourn in Australia, and now that we've got back and it's so freezing all the time I've been forced to retire the old green one (which I've been wearing constantly for the last 2 and a half winters) and embrace a less charming but more spacious brown one that I found in the cupboard. Yesterday as we were walking through a crowded train station, Reto and I were slightly separated (by no more than a metre) by people walking in the other direction. The crowd thinned and I was moving back over towards Reto when I noticed him looking distractedly out past me into the crowd. Had he seen someone he knew? No, he was looking for me. He didn't recognise me because I wasn't wearing my green coat. This (I hope) also explains why I saw him making a move to hold the hand of a stranger the other day during a similar crowd-separation situation.