As older readers and devout Christians among you may know, today is the feast-day of St Anthony of Padua. For younger readers and non-Christians, however, I should explain who St Anthony of Padua was, and how he became one of the most popular of all saints, especially among Catholics.
Born in Lisbon, he was a 13th-century friar who became famous in Italy for the power of his teaching. It is said that when his body was disinterred in the 1500s, his tongue alone remained perfectly preserved, as testimony to its eloquence. Yet his enduring fame among followers now derives mainly from his reputation for finding lost objects.
For centuries before Google, St Anthony was the western world's leading search engine. You entered three Hail Marys followed by a description of the thing you were looking for (the "and/or" operators were unnecessary) and hit "send". Then the object would miraculously reappear. The waiting time could be a bit longer than with broadband, it's true. But the pace of life in general was slower then.
It wasn't just lost objects he found. It was stolen objects too. Given this and the fact that money sometimes changed hands during the transaction (where I grew up, the Hail Marys were often accompanied by a donation to the poor-box), the ethics of the arrangement were perhaps questionable.
The whole thing had the ring of something that a modern-day Anthony - say, a Soprano - could be involved in. An object went missing. You made representations to a guy who knew somebody who might have an idea where it was. The object turned up. You didn't ask questions.
St Anthony was nothing if not versatile. In some traditions, he found things that were not even lost: future husbands, for example. Wealthy future husbands, too. I know many women regard eligible men as being lost - almost by definition - until a wife locates them. But the translation of one Italian prayer suggests the urgency that could be attached to the search: "Blessed Saint Anthony/ Make me find a husband/ Who is a good man, and rich/ And if possible right away."
For all his flexibility, St Anthony could not have attained such popularity without a reputation for success. The key, arguably, was the fact that he did not operate to deadlines. Like a private detective, he would remain on an investigation as long as he deemed necessary, at a daily rate of three Hail Marys, plus expenses. Only if all the leads dried up would the case be handed over to his colleague at the department of lost causes, St Jude.
I MAY YET have to hire the services of St Anthony in the search for my TV remote control, which is now entering its fourth week. The device has gone missing many times before for short periods, usually down the back of the couch, or behind the radiator, or - once - in the fridge.
Sometimes it disappears mysteriously for a few days - perhaps to attend monthly meetings of Remote Controls Anonymous (after contacting the other members via those buttons that don't appear to do anything) - and then just turns up again as if nothing has happened. But it has never been gone this long before, and I'm worried.
For an alpha male, or even a beta one, loss of the remote control is a bit like erectile dysfunction (yet another thing St Anthony was invoked against, by the way). It only hits you when the ability to make annoying ads disappear, or to check football scores, or just to flick channels - all while reclining on the sofa - deserts you. Then, suddenly, you find yourself questioning your value as a man.
My feelings of impotence reached a new low last Sunday at 9.30pm. You wait years for a Monaghan win in the Ulster Championship, and when it happens - typically - RTÉ and BBC schedule their brief highlights packages for exactly the same time.
This is when you need the remote, to maximise the enjoyment of such match-turning moments as the one where St Anthony caused the entire Down defence to go missing, allowing the unmarked St Jude in for a goal. But not even an emergency could inspire me to remember where the damn thing was.
In common with televisions themselves, remotes have become flatter and thinner in recent times, allowing them to get lost more easily. We have cracks in the floorboards that are now wider than the remote. But I didn't think the device has slipped through one of them. I suspect its disappearance may have more to do with my two-year-old son.
In his ongoing attempts to assert himself against the household's dominant male (that would be his seven-year-old brother), Daniel has by now worked out that the remote is an important power source. In one sense, this was a welcome development, in that it allowed him to move on from that classic toddler phase when he would turn the television off at source while you were watching, forcing you to get up and switch it back on, even when you had the remote.
But each phase brings new challenges. In the latest challenge, I believe that Daniel has hidden the device somewhere: in one of his toy-boxes; in a hole in the garden; or - who knows? - in the recycling bin that was emptied into a lorry last week.
The trouble is, it can be very difficult to get quality information out of a two-year-old. Like the most committed insurgents, the average two-year-old is quite impervious to interrogation. I've tried everything I know on him. Now it's time to get tough. If he won't talk to me, maybe he'll talk to St Anthony.