Missing In Action

We’ve been away on a long-awaited holibob for the last week or so, hence the lack of posts since the commemoration of the Chuckle Brothers’ two decades at the top of their tree (which admittedly isn’t a terribly big tree – more a comedy bonsai than a redwood).

A highly enjoyable week was spent in Newquay (evidently the site of an explosion in a centrally-located pebbledash factory sometime in the mid-‘50s) where we paddled in the sea, sat on the beach in jumpers in the traditional British style and ate enormous amounts of nourishment-free food. Mmm! The sheen was taken off the enjoyment though by the knowledge that despite five of us embarking on the trip, only four of us arrived.

Kermit (also known as Kermy, Mr K and lately, Kerm) – our three-year-old’s favourite soft and cuddly companion – failed to emerge from the Citroen Picasso at the end of the 200 mile journey, having vanished en route. After a mental re-tracing of our steps that afternoon, consensus was that the likely location of the unwitting split was during a routine coffee/urine break (the coffee was drunk and the urine was passed, they weren’t in a mug together) at a Moto service station on the southbound M5.

Enquiries to his whereabouts at the same service station on the return journey proved to be fruitless and we’re now reluctantly coming to terms with the fact that he’s gone for good.

To be fair, Kerm had had more than a couple of close shaves before, having been abandoned overnight in shops and nurseries, left at people’s houses and the subject of a thousand supermarket searches, though he always seemed to emerge triumphant, bouncing back like a green acrine penny. His luck finally ran out however at Bridgwater where he was either left in the loos or unknowingly abandoned in the car park.

While the loss has affected me and Mrs C in a manner akin to bereavement (connected, as it is, to an important part of our son’s childhood), our three-year old seems to have handled the disappearance extremely well. Even a little too well. His mind seems wholly unconcerned about the welfare and whereabouts of his hitherto inseparable green gangly friend and the lavish attentions normally reserved for him have switched effortlessly to “monkey” – another bedfellow who had previously taken second place in the affection stakes.

Maybe a ragged and unshaven Kerm will probably knock on the door in ten years’ time, having successfully navigated his way across the wilds of Somerset subsisting on a diet of berries and morning dew, like that scene in The Deer Hunter where Robert De Niro returns from ‘Nam to find Meryl Streep has moved on (though to my knowledge, De Niro never had to rely on two sticks propping up his elbows to employ makeshift animation to his arms. Or maybe he did and they were just green-screened and lost in the edit).

Fittingly, if Kerm was ever green-screened he’d disappear almost entirely. All except his eyes which would still be capable of producing tears, and his mouth which would still be asking the singular plaintive question – “Why?”