-The 9 year old girl turns up after being missing for two or three weeks - that’s great, and I’m really happy she’s alive - because it didn’t look hopeful.
But… She was discovered in the drawer in the base of a divan bed in an apartment - a few hundred yards from her home.
Wuh Duh Fuh?
Theyve arrested the man who appears to have abdicted her and been keeping her there - according to neighbours, he was just a regular guy. A regular guy who keeps abducted girls in his clothes drawer. Yeah.
Just what the fuck is the matter with this planet?
How do you pronounce “divan”? Is it “dive-in” (rhymes with Ivan) or dee-van? Is the accent on the first syllable or last?
And what exactly is a divan anyway? A sofa with drawers? A convertible bed? A loveseat with cushions? It sound like it should be a kind of waterbed, but who can tell?
As you can see, divan beds feature a mattress on top of an upholstered base with no space underneath for storage unless supplied with drawers. They are the staple of cheap beds, as opposed to a nice timber or iron frame.
A long backless sofa, especially one set with pillows against a wall.
I guess I don’t have the right character set to do the pronounciation characters. The first pronounciation is di-vahn (rhymes with kahn) and the second is di-van (rhymes with can). Both show emphasis on the second syllable.
Well, I submitted a little too early and tried to rescue the edit quickly so perhaps I didn’t go into enough detail. It’s true that not all divan beds are cheap and crappy (I’m sure there are some out there that are quite spiffy), and it’s also true that you can get cheap bedsteads that aren’t divans (my slatted timber Ikea job was £35 and that’s a double), but when I think of cheap beds, I think of cobbled-together wood stapled together with gaudy fabric and the optional shitty laminated chipboard drawer(s) that collapse under the tiniest of weights. My dad’s in property, and with the kinds of tenants he keeps, I’ve seen my share of these beds, either from buying them at ghetto furniture warehouse stores or through destroying them with a sledgehammer (the frame gives a satisfying crack) and Stanley knife (cuts through that blue and yellow tartan like butter).
Anyway, to keep the Pit juices flowing, I’ll go ahead and say that if you’re going to abduct a preteen girl, you might as grab one that doesn’t look as though she hit every branch of the ugly tree on the way down. Fucking amateurs.
The bit about the girl seeming “quite calm” seems surprising. Still, it’s good to see one of these “missing child” things end up with the child rescued.
I’m just giggling about the fact that the first 7 replies to the OP don’t actually address anything in the OP. Other than the definition and pronunciation of the furniture in which the girl was found.
I’m glad she’s safe now, too. It’s just the neighbours who saw her being brought out of the house who say she looked calm and not upset. She could have been in shock or drugged for all they know. The same neighbours said he ‘was just a regular guy’. They know nothing and will say so proudly on TV.
According to neighbours, they heard the sound of “children’s footsteps” in his house despite them thinking he had no children which first alerted the police at which point they forcefully entered and found her.
So despite daily national media coverage and local searches of the highest scale the neighbours only mentioned this now? I don’t think the neighbours are normal let alone the guy.
And also (and I may have my facts wrong) since when is a neighbour’s assumption that the noise she heard was children’s footsteps ever been enough evidence to make forcible entry into a person’s home? I mean well done for being right, but was that just some serious luck?
Do we have divans in the US? Never seen one. Never seen a kid kept in a drawer, either, but I bet we’ve got em here, so there’s no telling (unless you tell me…).
