The joys of fatherhood.

"Have you had a small chinese lady handed in? She was stuck in the freezer". Perhaps it's not surprising that the lady at customer services looked a little perturbed by my question. But then, when you have a two-year-old, maybe you get a little immune to some of life's weirder moments. We'd been shopping in Tesco, strolling down the freezer aisle, when I realised that the little 'Happyland' toy that Joshua had had moments before had vanished. 'She fell in', he told me. I wasn't too worried, knowing that she wouldn't mind getting cold (what with being plastic). However, it was only on returning to the site of the incident that I realised quite how grave the situation really was. She hadn't just fallen into the freezer; she'd fallen (or perhaps was pushed) into a very small gap at the front of the freezer - she was still in sight, but very much out of reach. 'Oh dear', I thought to myself - 'she's a goner'. We wandered around and managed to find a very friendly member of staff, who came with us to have a look. He agreed that this was indeed a most unfortunate event, but said he thought the freezer engineer was in, so he'd see if he could be persuaded to rescue her. A few minutes later he came back, and I could tell from the look on his face that the news was not good. 'I'm afraid the engineer's not in until Monday', we were told. 'If we can get her out of the freezer, we'll leave her at customer services for you'. It was left to me to explain to Joshua the danger of dropping your toys where they can't be reached. I also had to prepare him for the fact that we would be leaving without her. The next time we were in Tesco, we returned to the scene (right next to Aunt Bessie's yorkshire puddings, if you're wondering) and saw, to our horror, that she was still there. We revisited the dropping-your-toys-where-they-can't-be-reached theme, and carried on shopping. But imagine our delight when, the next time we were in the shop, we discovered that Chinese lady had indeed met her blue-sweatshirt-wearing equivalent of a knight in shining armour. The spot she had occupied next to Aunt Bessie was now vacant, precipitating the fateful question at customer services.
The story does have a happy ending - after a slightly fuller explanation to the lady at customer services, she fished a box of property (I can only assume it was general lost property, not just items they'd rescued from the freezer) from the cupboard behind her, and after a brief search, we were reunited with our little lady, who seemed entirely unfazed by her prolonged stay in the freezer.
Yesterday, when Joshua was playing with her and her fellow Happyland characters, he turned to me, held her up and said, with the most enormous grin on his face, 'she was rescued from the freezer!'.