A missing child is always big news, and rightfully so. Some cases attract more attention than others but staggeringly over 140,000 under 18’s go missing every year – and every 3 minutes another missing child report comes in to the Police.
One of the positives to modern technology and social networking is that news of a missing child invariably gets to millions of people rapidly, therefore increasing the chance of a happy ending. Speed of communication has not always been so present though.
Strangely enough during the summer of 1978, I managed to become a missing child for a short period of time…well a short period in my mind, and probably only a few hours in real time, but in all likelihood a lifetime for my Mum.
Evidently my Mum was chatting in the front garden to a neighbour. I was milling about and my baby brother was in his buggy. She took her eye off me momentarily and within seconds I had gone.
The rear gardens to the houses backed onto woods which bordered the old Hove Golf Course, and thankfully not the A293 (A27 link road) that opened in 1992, so onto the lawns was really the only direction I could have gone.
Having discovered me missing, my Mum naturally ran around in a panic and got neighbours up and down the road looking for a blond (yes blond) 2 year old boy.
Bear in mind back then not everybody had landline phones, and NOBODY had a mobile cellular phone, so Mum had to find someone somewhere with a landline phone to make the call to the Police. She couldn’t call my Dad as he was at work driving his bus and therefore totally uncontactable, so having called the Police and given details they said they’d pop along shortly. She then went onto the golf course with a few of the neighbours to ask the golfers (of which there were many) if they’d seen me.
No joy.
From my point of view I can just about remember walking along a stretch of grass (supposedly the golf course) and subsequently walking up the A270 Old Shoreham Road towards the junction with Hangleton Road, which is a distance of just over half a mile.
I couldn’t have been on the roadside long though before I was approached by two young girls who had got out of a bronze car and started to speak to me.
In fact the photo below (taken in 1987 Dave Denyer - with thanks) shows exactly the spot where they picked me up!
In fact the photo below (taken in 1987 Dave Denyer - with thanks) shows exactly the spot where they picked me up!
I have no recollection who they were or what they said, but evidently they took me to a Police box* in Olive Road, Hove
*#tardis
Soon enough the Police bought me home to my relieved Mum. When my Dad got home, oblivious to what had happened, he asked my Mum if she’d given me a bloody good hiding for running off!
It’s fashionable to knock modern technology at the moment – and in particular mobile phones – but in some cases, what would we do without them?
