Today we took Alma to the rec. To Alma it's a play-park, to me it's still the recreation ground.
We found a little red handbag/purse with a long strap left on one of the seats. My daughter asked around and nobody claimed it as theirs so we took the next step and looked inside. There was little child's drawing and three pound coins. But no name or address.
We looked around in case there was handy policeman to hand it over to, but the old rule still applies. You can never find one when you look for them.
There was a little over half an hour left on our parking meter so we decided to walk up to the nearby cop shop, and hand it in. Alma was a bit disgruntled at being taken away from her swing but once we explained it was probably a little girl's bag she changed her tune and decided we were 'doing a good thing'.
On the way there we adults decided Alma would be doing the handing over and most of the talking, and she did us proud.
The police lady behind the desk was very good when we held Alma up above the 'drunk and aggressive persons barrier' so she could report it.
The police lady listened to Alma explaining where it was found, wrote down the details, and only glanced at the adults for confirmation. Then she asked Alma for her name and address, which she got right.
Alma didn't know the family phone number, "So that if we can get it back to the little girl someone might want to ring you up and say thank you."
"There's three pounds in there," Alma said, so seriously. "That's a lot of money for a little person to lose."
"It certainly is. It was very good of you to bring it in. I'm sure we'll find the owner."
Now we just have to hope that the little girl and her parent(s) have sufficient faith in human nature to think that someone may have done the decent thing and enquire about it.
We got back to the park with ten minutes still on the meter so Alma got her swing time after all. And an icecream at Grandad's house when we got home.
My daughter says she remembers doing the same with a purse we found when she was little.
A nice little lesson implanted for very little effort on our part.
Gyppo
