Sent: 26th February 2005 • To: ELC Head Office • Subject: The Great Toy Giveaway!

Dear Early Learning Centre,

I am writing to congratulate you on the free toy giveaway offer held in your Inverness store on Friday the 25th February. It is very rare that a large corporation literally just gives away items with no cynical hidden motive, and as a parent I am delighted to see you making such a bold, selfless move in our otherwise capitalist society. May I suggest in future, however, that the toys you elect to give away are from your own extensive range, rather than one which until very recently belonged to my two year old son?

Confused? Allow me to explain...

Yesterday, my partner and I took our son on a trip to Inverness, which is around sixty-five miles from our home town of Fort William. The main purpose of this trip was to buy some new clothes for our son, who has just gone through a growth spurt and was rapidly beginning to look like an extra from "Oliver!". As a bribe to convince him to tour the clothes shops and try on various garments, we promised him we would also buy him a toy.

Now while the Early Learning Centre offers a fine range of toys for all ages, my son - taking a particularly geeky leaf from his old man's book - had his heart set on a toy from Kenner's range of Batman figures. And so, following a visit to a couple of clothes shops he and I stopped off at the Inverness branch of Toymaster and picked him up the very figure he'd seen advertised on television which had first fuelled his desire to own one.

One transaction later, he was happily trotting round a few more clothes shops, Zip Slide Batman clenched tightly in his tiny, excited hands.

Now while the Early Learning Centre offers a fine range of toys for all ages, my son - taking a particularly geeky leaf from his old man's book - had his heart set on a toy from Kenner's range of Batman figures. And so, following a visit to a couple of clothes shops he and I stopped off at the Inverness branch of Toymaster and picked him up the very figure he'd seen advertised on television which had first fuelled his desire to own one. One transaction later, he was happily trotting round a few more clothes shops, Zip Slide Batman clenched tightly in his tiny, excited hands.

On the way back to the car, after all necessary clothing had been purchased, we passed the Early Learning Centre. As his birthday is coming up soon, we decided to have a look in at some of the toys available. While there, my son decided to play with the Thomas the Tank Engine wooden train set you have set up in the shop specifically for this purpose. The time, as noted by the oversized and vaguely frightening musical clock directly outside this branch of your shop, was 1:13.

A short time later we left the shop, after Kyle (my son) reluctantly agreed to say goodbye to the tired looking train set. The time was precisely 1:30, as noted by the first eight notes of "The Animals Went in Two By Two" being played in a hauntingly out of tune fashion by the giant wall mounted timepiece.

It took us around four minutes to get from the shop to the lifts, and then from the lifts to where our car was parked. This would make it approximately 1:34. At this point we realised that Kyle was no longer carrying Batman. We knew he had been holding onto it when he went into the shop, and so my partner returned to see if she could find it. Assuming it took us one minute to decide on this course of action, and then another four minutes for my partner to return to your store, this would make the time somewhere around 1:39 PM - nine minutes after we first left your store.

When she reached your shop, my partner was delighted to discover that someone had indeed found and handed in the Batman figure! This was uplifting news, as Kyle at this point was crying his heart out in the darkened underground car park after I made the foolish mistake of likening it to The Batcave. He had not until that moment realised the Batman figure had been misplaced, and was only calmed down when I repeatedly assured him his Mum was on her way to get it back.

Unfortunately, my partner's luck was changing in your shop. While the figure had been handed in, it had apparently been give to a member of staff named Jamie to deal with, and Jamie was currently off on her lunch. No-one else seemed to know where the dark protector of Gotham City was currently lurking, but they promised to take our address and post him to us once Jamie returned and revealed his hiding place. This, however, is not really a viable option when a two-year old's heart is 100% set on getting something back and getting it back right bloody now, and so we decided we'd return later in the day instead, even though we had at that point intended to start our journey home.

Around fifty minutes of child-soothing later I called the store and by sheer luck got hold of Jamie. I asked her about the missing Caped Crusader and she informed me that yes, a child and his parent had indeed found Batman, and yes, they had brought him to the counter to hand him over to a member of staff. However she was unable to lay her hands on him at that precise moment as she had decided that as a reward for finding the toy, the child in question should be allowed to keep it. As you can probably imagine, I was not overly amused by this turn of events.

While I appreciate that you do not run a lost property office and that it was really our own fault for leaving the toy there in the first place, surely a grace period of under ten minutes for items accidentally left behind is a little on the strict side? As I say, the time between us leaving the toy and coming back for it was around nine minutes, and yet in that time it was found, reported, then given away. No wonder Jamie felt the need to take her lunch break right at that moment, I'd have been tired after such decisive snap decision making too. Couldn't she have hung onto it for 24 hours, perhaps? Or even until the end of the day? Or for more than the few seconds it must have been in her possession at least?