OK, save-places in emacs is not working, this is not the issue, there are a lot of other things in play.
So I thought I would use fd to find the locations of the places files in my home:
l pl*
.rw-r--r-- xircon xircon 9.7 KB Mon Apr 5 12:02:59 2021 places
.rw-r--r-- xircon xircon 9.7 KB Mon Apr 5 09:23:52 2021 places-old
.rw-r--r-- xircon xircon 0 B Mon Apr 5 11:55:35 2021 placesp
fd places
places-old
placesp
locate places | grep emacs-term
/home/xircon/dotfiles/emacs-term/places
/home/xircon/dotfiles/emacs-term/places-old
/home/xircon/dotfiles/emacs-term/placesp
Why doesn’t places appear in the found files. I am going back to bed 
This gets weirder:
mdcd testxx
touch places
touch places1
touch places2
touch places2
touch places3
fd places
places
places1
places2
places3