and my backup machine was in an unstable state for a while and I hadn't fixed it. Examination of my collection of USB keys found no linux installer, so I was stumped through lazyness.
But at the bottom of a pencil holder I found another usb key with an old copy of Linux Mint which enabled me to download Arch and recover.
Luckily all my inportant files were saved, and I use Bitwarden too, so with a new SSD I was quickly back up and running.