Gone Girl (then Back Again- Phew)

The lights - and with it, the internet - went out on Christmas Eve. They eventually came back on, but still no connection to The Outside World - which was not wholly unpleasant. Anyway, I was about to post this then, which seems a bit out of date now.

It's  December 24, as close to Christmas as it can be. There's no turkey or roast potatoes or old-socks-smelling Brussels sprouts, no one going crazy in the kitchen, having eyes rolled at them behind their back; no neighbours calling over unannounced, filing the hall with cold smokey air and loud greetings; no tins of Guinness being ferried in from the garage, no half-eaten boxes of Ferrero Rocher lying around.  Without these essential prompts it shouldn't feel like Christmas- it's 28c for goodness sakes - but throw some crooners on the cd player, wrap a few presents, put new pjs on the kids and stuff them full of (melting) chocolate and The Wizard of Oz, and Bingo! It's beginning to look a LOT like you-know-what.
It nearly didn't. For a few horrific minutes this afternoon, the world - not just the holidays - looked like caving in: the Girl did one of her famous disappearing acts. One minute she was there, in the cafe, chatting and climbing and demanding things; the next she had gone.  Nowhere to be seen, anywhere. To begin with we didn't worry to much, we pottered about looking in the obvious places; but as the minutes ticked by, and then 10 minutes had gone, then 15 - by then I was really panicking, so much that the Boy was telling me to calm down, we'd find her, it'd be fine.  But I couldn't calm down; I wasn't screaming like a banshee - the way I was when the school bus lost her one day - but in my head I was already imagining the worst. The sitting and waiting and praying and hoping; describing her to strangers ('she's got a somewhat crazed look in her eyes, and dirty blonde, matted hair. Nits still, probably.')  It'd take one person to quickly scoop her up and that would be it - gone forever.  (I spoke to someone today [friday] who told me that, in fact, this happens quite a bit in Bali; fair-skinned western girls disappear. A few a year, she said. Thank CHRIST I didn't know that then.) Anyway - PHEW - all turned out fine. She was halfway down the beach, oblivious to the fact that I had four policemen and several (quite hot, actually*)  surf dudes looking for her, and really didn't grasp at all the enormity of what she'd done. "You CAN'T  run off like that!' I told her: 'There are people who might take you, and lock you in a cellar, and do TERRIBLE things to you, and you'd never see us again, EVER. What would you do then?" Apparently, she'd do very little, and would be completely nonplussed by whatever horror might befall her.
Anyway. All the frantic pleading with St Anthony worked and now I'm not allowed to complain about anything ever again.  (HAHAHAHA.)
So. Happy Christmas to all of you. I hope it's filled with warm Guinness and cold mince pies, music like they don't make any more, over-excited children, and Skype calls to family and friends who you really, really miss.

(*silver linings, etc)