Slightly poignant this time as this year I was also celebrating my anniversary, that of my horrendous cycling accident and subsequent hospitalisation and somewhat lengthy recovery.
You don't need me, I'm sure, to go over the fine details of the day which were much the same as many previous years.
The main deviation from the norm was that Lyra, being a motile organism this time, took the agricultural theme of the day to heart, and made like a horse by hoofing it.
By way of background we had made our way around the perimeter of the show and been for a spot of food before making our way to the animal petting area. The layout had changed slightly and we had to walk around the petting area before joining the queue.xtb v vv.e
Impulsive little Lyra decided that queueing was not for her, and ran off a toute vitesse. We thought little enough of it and dispatched Eloise to retrieve the runaway. But she came back a few seconds later, Lyra having disappeared into thin air.
So Nicole kept our place in the queue (we are British after all) while Eloise and I went off in the search of the little tyke.
It so happened that the Police, bless them, had a stall nearby where they were showing off their wares, mostly themselves. So I asked one of them, assuming he had excellent observational skills honed by years if not months if not weeks of training and practical use, if he had seen a toddler in a Frozen dress wandered or running by.
Unfortunately he had not observed any diminutive pedestrians, but he offered the assistance of his team in Operation Apprehend Elsa.
They immediately sprang, one by one, into action. "Can you give me a description of the child?"
"She's a dwarf in a frozen dress."
And off we went, with a lady police officer repeatedly telling me that she knew I was panicking, even though I wasn't.
We met up with another officer: "Can you give me a description of the child?"
Another kept Nicole company in the queue, where she was also failing conspicuously to panic, keeping her calm by asking her for a description of the child, and whether she'd agreed a rendezvous location ("She's two years old. That would probably be pointless.") or if there was something that she'd really wanted to do that she hadn't been allowed to ("She's two years old...")
Anyway I was still searching purposefully with this Policewoman in tow. "Why are you looking here?" she asked. "I understand that you're panicking by the way."
"I'm not panicking. I just thought she might have run around here." I began to suspect that the police lady was sublimating or perhaps projecting onto me. "Why don't you go and look over there where the horses are."
I went back to check on Nicole who hadn't seen Lyra but had been conversing with several policemen who'd been asking for increasingly detailed descriptions, like the place was rife with runaways in Frozen dresses with a wild look in their eyes or something. She suggested that she might have gone to wash her hands, near the exit of the petting area, so I went to look there while Nicole kept her place in the queue, still failing to panic.
It was by the sinks, where Lyra wasn't, that it hit me. I should probably look in the petting area. So I went to the exit, figuratively shoulder-charging the attendant through the medium of explaining that I had a lost child, before in a matter of seconds observing a Frozen-dress-wearing dwarf with a wild look in her eyes ministering to a slightly perplexed looking goat, clearly having forced her way into the petting zoo, bypassing the queue by the most efficient means available to her.
The police were certainly relieved to have her back after the five minutes or so of asking for her description, so we calmed them down by getting a little wristband put on her with my number on it.
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