Thomas gets lost
Just to off-load re today, we went to the ecumenical service at avenham park with our church for Preston guild... it was a huge ecumenical service with thousands of people meeting in Avehahm Park along with the general Guild festivities.
Its been so upsetting; we took Rory's mum but we lost Thomas; he just disappeared. This is something he does regularly now and several times on holiday our hearts froze over after the usual15 minutes of fairly relaxed looking for him, then not finding him. Thomas doesn't respond to hearing his name shouted and I don't think he'd know his name if he were asked it. Normally we find him (like Charlotte Moore in George and Sam) just by listening out for him - it is very rare that he is actually silent.
We looked for him for 20 mins as we do, no panic, but then we started running round when we'd established he really was lost - but he'd gone. We reported him to the police but there was little to distinguish him in the description as he'd taken off his distinctive yellow ear protectors. Crucially he would not attract any attention as he'd be as happy as Larry with no realisation that he was lost or in any danger).
We gave descriptions (and typically this is the one time we didn't have Jacob with us; as they look very similar and I dress them the same for this very situation; we could have presented Jacob and said "he looks just like that" ... but Jacob had gone into the service with our friend from church.
Police all round the park were alerted but they couldn't find him - CCTV cameras etc - ALL over the massive park. Although we weren't panicking, having been through similar situations many times before, it was a particularly unpleasant hour.
Thankfully the park had no traffic (always our main concern) but it does have a massive river running along the edge and that really frightened me because like most autists Thomas loves, and is fascinated by water - we never visit the Lakes with him going for a paddle WHATEVER the month or temperature.
An hour later a friend from our village phoned saying a friend of hers had found Thomas and was he by any chance lost. They alerted the police at that side of the park and they circled him and moved him away from the river banks.
One significant walk later, we were reunited with Thomas .... who was typically completely unaware of any problem ... the policewoman said they had only been able to get to 2 metres of him before he started to get agitated and obviously he couldn't say who he was - but at least they'd kept him safe. If the lovely family from the village hadn't taken it upon themselves to recognise him, observe him and then go to the trouble of contacting someone who could contact us, he'd have been lost for hours.... and our nerves would have been shredded further. It's just such hard work when he continually goes wandering.
