Without a Trace

I stopped watching Without a Trace some time ago, because it was always about kids in peril, and it didn't do what it said on the tin. Because they always left a trace, which is how they were always managing to find people. I wanted it to be about a small, underfunded but dedicated team of compassionate individuals who dug up abandoned missing persons cases and solved them. Is that too much to ask? Instead it was this against-the-clock kid-in-peril stuff and everybody was in love with everybody else.

When I was a teenager I kind of wanted to vanish. I wanted to be hard to find, in demand, on the wanted list. Not by the feds, but by people who knew me. I wanted them to wake up one day and wonder what became of that guy, you know, me. As it turns out, I was ridiculously easy to find. For years. My parents were the only people left in the Dumpstable area who still had their name in the phone book. One phonecall and my mum would have spilled the beans. Everyone else was all Hollywood ex-directory.

I was gratified when my parents moved to the wilds of Stinkonshire - at last! mystery was mine. Except nobody was ever going to wake up and wonder where I was.

ITV bought friendsreunited yesterday. Those people have made a fucking fortune out of a simple and obvious idea that – bizarrely – wasn't one of the first things the internet was used for.

I do think ITV overpaid for it, though. Because growth was good for a couple of years, but then the only way they could increase revenue was by adding loads of features that went beyond the original remit. The genealogy thing, which is a way of attracting nutcases. Dating, for attracting the rest of the nutcases. And jobs, which probably works as well as all the other on-line recruitment things.

But - disappointingly - the number of people registering on the original friendsreunited thing has dwindled to a trickle. The people who haven't aren't going to, I reckon. I think they want to remain lost, without a trace, enjoying their status as the Disappeared. Me, I realised immediately I didn't want to be precious about anything, and I stuck my name on there, on the basis that it will never work if you just lurk. And because there is someone I would happily pay £7 to get in touch with. Or £70.

Still waiting. And she, as the song goes, is too gone to care.*

*I hasten to add that this is not an infidelity thing but an apology-owed thing.