So that was a waste of an hour of watching television with my heart in my mouth. Or was it? On Thursday evening someone on Twitter posted a link to the American news website Msnbc with the words “Six-year-old in runaway helium balloon”. I clicked and at first assumed I was watching a piece of YouTube-like video footage that would, I thought, have a happy and/or comical ending. But it soon became clear that I was watching live television on my laptop and that the strange, flimsy, flying-saucer like structure blowing across Colorado with — it was alleged — a small child stowed in the “basket” dangling beneath it was travelling in real time.

We now know that Falcon Heene, the six-year-old, had been hiding in the attic of his home in Fort Collins all along. On Thursday, though, he was believed to have been cruising along at an altitude of 8,000ft in a container made of cardboard and plywood, powered by batteries and never designed to accommodate a person (Falcon’s father is a weather enthusiast who is always sending balloons off into the ether).

Within half an hour of it taking flight, helicopters and film crews were tracking it from the air so the balloon’s trajectory was broadcast live across America. Falcon’s father called the sheriff as soon as he realised his son had gone, but they didn’t know what to do so the Federal Aviation Administration, the US air force and National Guard were all called in as well.

The balloon came to rest in a freshly ploughed field; sheriffs, rescue workers and ambulance crews were already on the scene. They tethered the balloon, calling out reassurances to the boy everyone hoped was alive and well inside. Then they opened the container and: nothing. Nobody.

Falcon’s parents had assured the police that the child wasn’t at home; one of his brothers had claimed to have seen him climb into the container beneath the balloon. The gasps must have been audible across America: this strange, visually surreal story would surely end with the grim news of Falcon’s body having tumbled out of the sky somewhere over Colorado.

Everyone was tweeting like mad about this and eventually one cross voice rose up, saying words to the effect of “For God’s sake, there are millions of people all over the world dying every day — why aren’t you freaking out about them?” Which was true and a good point. We don’t stop making supper or delay bath time to watch television footage of child soldiers in Sierra Leone, but we are willing to put our world on hold for a child in a balloon over Colorado. I suppose it’s to do with everyone knowing how stories about child soldiers generally end and not wanting to watch — or even know very much about — anything so utterly bereft of hope.

I think the reason why Falcon and the balloon gripped so many people for a couple of hours is because it was one of those rare news stories that have resonance at a sort of primitive, subconscious level. The whole thing was pure fairy tale — and, as we know, fairy tales speak to our darkest anxieties: the stranger in the woods who wants to eat you up, the stepmother who wants you gone, the lost, vulnerable child. Chuck in flying, the one thing everyone would love to do but can’t, and no wonder this story had such a visceral appeal.

I don’t have giant balloons tethered in the back garden but, like any other parent, I have a terrible fear of my children somehow becoming mislaid. Falcon’s story illustrated that fear in digital form: 21st century, first world, sophisticated everything, but look — one gust of wind, real or metaphorical, and whoosh, the whole thing turns into a tale by the brothers Grimm and there’s nothing anybody can do about it except wait and pray for a happy ending.

Years ago one of my children “disappeared” in Heal’s, the London furniture shop. You call, then call again, then run about, then scream. Within seconds you feel completely mental; you know that — God forbid — if you even caught a glimpse of an adult speaking to your child, any adult, even a nice-seeming old lady with rosy cheeks, you would tear them apart with your bare hands. It turned out my son had got bored, climbed into a bed and taken a refreshing nap. But that sensation — of the world falling away from you — is exactly what Thursday night reminded me of: it was the same fear, except enacted on live television. No wonder everyone had to keep watching.

One of the many utterly brilliant, visionary things about Up, the latest Pixar/ Disney collaboration (which I implore you to see, whether you have children or not), is the way in which it subverts the age-old fairy-tale fear of the unknown and the elemental: one gust of wind, in this case, and the horrible known world that breaks you a bit more every day falls away — off the protagonists soar, not into darkness and cold and thin air but into the wide blue yonder. At the screening I went to last weekend, children whooped with delight while adults sobbed with regret: at some level we’d all like to be untethered.

As it turns out, nobody soared anywhere on Thursday — although I expect there was some soaring of viewing figures for the news channels — and at the time of writing there is some suspicion that the whole thing was a stunt, although what the stunt might have been in aid of is unclear. Interviewed live on television, Falcon told his father: “You had said that we did this for a show.” Asked to clarify the boy’s comment, Richard Heene said he did not know what his son meant.

Regardless of whether the balloon escapade was real or a fix, regardless of whether it was an accident (“Yeah, he climbed into the balloon” is exactly what an older brother would say about a younger one who’d been getting on his nerves all afternoon and was due a bit of a telling-off) or a deliberate set-up, I shan’t forget this story in a hurry. It’s not often that you turn on the news and see, literally, a flight of fantasy, the crash of the 21st century meeting primitive anxiety head on — all that and a happy ending, too. So not a wasted hour after all; just a strange, slightly unreal one that brings you back to earth and makes you count your blessings.

+ I’m so fed up with not getting any mail. The general volume is down by about 80% and where once there were stacks of post in neat little rubber-banded piles, now there is the odd lone bank statement.

I’ve actually chased after the postman and asked what’s happened to the rest of my mail, to be met by a shrug. That’s the other thing: I used to love our postman, who’d been working this patch for years and knew everybody, but he’s been replaced by a series of inferior ones who keep delivering stuff to wrong addresses.

A friend who lives in east London had a chat with hers and was told there was such a huge backlog of mail that it was simply undeliverable; there was the suggestion that it never would be.

Meanwhile, today I received an invitation to something that took place three weeks ago. This has been going on for months. I have some sympathy for the postal workers, but I expect I’m the last person in the country to feel this. Enough now. Sort it out, before people get so cross they start assaulting postmen.

india.knight@sunday-times.co.uk

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