Very far from home...

Had a bit of an atypical journey home yesterday after work, everything went perfectly normally (enjoying reading the latest Dexter novel - which, incidentally, seems to have been heavily influenced by the TV show and become some sort of off-white comedy - oh well) until I yomped off the train with all the other drones of the thousand yard stare and trotted down the stairs to wait for my bus at Redhill bus station...

It was drizzling a little bit, so I didn't get my book or PSP out for fear of spoiling them (especially as the former had been lent to me by Surrey County Council), so my eyes were wandering a little bit more than usual...settling from time to time on a bench companion of mine who (and I have no idea really why) I started to become concerned about...after a few minutes feeling unsettled I just couldn't help myself asking her if she was okay and was everything alright? Her response (which didn't make any sense at all and prompted me to ask her to repeat herself several times) just made matters worse...when I had jumbled her words around in my mind a few times, trying to pluck some sense from them, two words did sort of seem to mean something..."Did you say 'key worker'?" I asked her (frowning slightly), and she replied "Yes, lost"..."You've lost your key worker?" I attempted to clarify..."yes, lost key worker" she replied...

Uh oh...

In five minutes flat (as she was freezing cold and seemed to have absolutely no idea where she was) I had managed to negotiate us into the little tea room attached to the bus station (for the drivers) and had got a conductor calling an ambulance and some officers of the law (one of which should know what to do), and had got her a drink sorted from the drivers tea machine...the ambulance arrived first...the paramedic went through the same sort of process I had initially, then checked her over medically, somehow (with clever use of medical profession cant our friend was familiar with) managed to get the name of her care home out of her and got on the radio...

Turns out (when the detective work had been completed) that she had been with her key worker on a little trip out earlier in the day in Bermondsey (that's London Bridge way!) near her care home, when they had fallen suddenly ill and had lost track of her...somehow, she had managed to make her way, unaccompanied, all the way to Redhill in the intervening hours (most likely, it was concluded, on a bus (or succession of buses), as barriers would most likely have thwarted her progress on the railway and some buses you can board without showing a ticket)...so when the police arrived, all they had to do was give her a lift back home to London... ;)

What an adventure, just lucky I spotted her and saved her from whatever may have befallen her in the early hours in lovely Redhill town centre...