Normal just took a nose dive

Missing Madeleine: If anyone took and harmed J or D - I would want to find them and then kill them. No calm press conferences, media strategies, little chats on Woman's Hour about how I was feeling about it - nope, it would be animal and horrible. Or at least that's how I think I'd react. Who knows? Lets hope to God I never find out. But it does make you think...

...which is why the mystery of missing Maddie is turning into THE human interest story of the moment/year/decade(?) So many dimensions: it's "every parent's nightmare"; the bizarre twisting plot of her parents; and the ebb and flow of our faith and trust in pretty much everything - the media, our reaction to the media, the police, foreigners, yummy mummy's (come on...its being talked about..) catholics, forensic science, men who live with their mothers (and clean their drives...you gotta watch um), parents, those nice GPs...normal people.

J&D and I are normal, well normalish (divorced and stuff...but that's normal yeh?). But if the whole world were dissecting the intimacy of our family life, then I'm guessing people would figure that aspects of our lives are a bit weird. Enter stage the left the McCanns. They are seemingly so normal it hurts, but then they leave their kids when they go out for their dinner. Do other people do this sort of stuff? After the fact there's the whole media management thing. They want to find their kid, so anything goes....including on stage and being interviewed at the Edinburgh Fringe...??? The whole hanging about in Portugal.....visiting the Pope, clutching the teddy, continuing to keep a diary. Feels pretty weird to me...but then I'm not the one with the missing kid....

This week, we get the real kick in the guts....The notion of the predatory stranger seizing Madeleine was terrifying but 'normal' - not weird - not unexpected, we have the psychological space to compute etc. With the naming of the parents themselves as suspects - well - we're suddenly all over the place. Forget shaking the kaleidoscope - its smashed in bits on the floor. So now they're either normal/a bit weird and the victims of a really, really horrible smear....or...they're cold, psychotic killers responsible for the death of their own child...Heavy stuff.

Lets hope its the former and that the little girl gets found (and if so, then we're gonna feel real guilty about the shit we've been gossiping and bitching about - me included)....If its the latter, then we're in for one huge collective psychological head fuck. A whole new depth to how weird and fucked up the most normal of normals can seem, but not be.