A bit of context, there’s a school sports centre with a floodlit astro and a car park, boys football training at one end and a men’s kick about at the other end; it’s 50m to the indoor changing and toilet facilities.
A busy ‘A’ road runs outside, it’s a 40mph limit but a lot of traffic goes faster. Opposite the car park are open fields and an unlit hard track that goes about a mile through open country to the next village. The track is used by dog walkers, random pedestrians, not ‘busy’ but reasonably well used.
18-30 yesterday evening, it’s completely dark, light rain falling. I’m dog walking back up the track towards the main road when I notice two young children leaving the car park and approaching the edge of the main road, they then run screaming through a gap in the traffic and arrive in front of me. I see that it’s two girls, the older one is y4-y5 age, 9-ish, and the younger one is 4 or 5. They look at me (older man) and dog, unsure.
I’m thinking, are they lost, running away from someone, trying to get back to the next village? What are you doing girls, are you OK? Older one, mummy said come over here to find somewhere safe for Younger One to go to the toilet! Where’s your mum? She’s watching the football!
DW catches me up and asks what’s happening, I explain. We say there’s no one down there, quickly go down there and then come straight back. We cross the road and wait, the girls go much further than they need to, they are gone for a good two or three minutes. We see them back across the main road, they run happily back to their car and climb in, mum is just sat there in the car dicking about on her phone!
When did playing about with a mobile phone become so all consuming?
Calm down, nothing happened, nothing was ever likely to happen, those girls will grow up more independent and resilient than your average molly-coddled modern child.