I dropped Sheila and my three youngest at Stansted earlier today: they're off to County Westmeath in Ireland to spend half term with Sheila's mum (who was up all last night watching the election results, apparently, the briiliant, bonkers lady). On my return to Hackney I switched on News 24 to find the BBC once again leading with the search for Madeleine McCann.
The latest development is a personal plea by her parents for anyone else who saw the man who might have been carrying a child on the night of Madeleine's disappearance to come forward - that, and the revelation that Gordon Brown has been on the phone offering his "full support". After waving goodbye to my wife and our kids I'm always extra-susceptible to stories of family anguish. Like millions of others, I've bleakly imagined how I would cope with the situation the McCanns are in and try not to torment myself imagining what has become of their little girl.
More coldly, I ponder how I'd feel about the contributions of those other than the police to the search for a child who may - as few acknowledge in public - already be dead. Much has been written about the media's coverage: the rights and wrongs of giving the events such prominence; the outrageous speculation; the consensual marketing decision to depict the McCanns as suitable cases for sympathy rather than for crucifiction on grounds of irresponsibility, as might have been the case for different social types. Some have condemned politicians and others for joining in.
Would I choose to go with the grain of all this frantic attention as the McCanns seem to have decided to do in the hope that it will help or would it sicken me too much, as it often has in my role as complicit consumer of this spectacle of parental agony? And how will the McCanns look back on all that if Madeleine is never found and gradually, inexorably, the family's value as news just fades away?