Contact lenses and the absent u-bend

The Famous Writer here has worn contact lenses for as long as I have known her, and they live a life of their own, much of it spent trying to escape. 

As a result, there has been much scrabbling over deep pile carpets, in cinemas, patches of nettles, puddles, and sinks. Even meals have been turned over in the hunt for lenses on the lam. And of course, the Famous Writer cannot join in as without the lens she is as blind as a bat with a hood on.
 
I was at my sister's when I got the call. While putting the things in, the FW had lost a lens down the bathroom sink. Or maybe on the floor. Or anywhere on the landing. In short, the thing is chuckling to itself anywhere in the building, or even outside. It was possible to narrow the search to less than half the known universe.

FW is convinced that it has gone down the plughole, so that's the obvious place to start. With a bit of a struggle I dismantle the u bend, but find no lens. The u bend is fairly icky, if not positively disgusting, so I bung it in a bucket to await a good clean. I gently shake the towels and then with a soft brush start systematically going over the floor. And voila ! Like a miracle, there it is. Undamaged, even though the FW has been stampeding around the place in boots in a panic. The tiny circle glares up at me from the lino, its freedom curtailed yet again.

I tell the FW that I will clean the u bend before reassembling, and go downstairs with it in the bucket. I am happily cleaning the damn thing when there is bellowing upstairs, combined with some light shrieking and the sound of some animal being slaughtered. I rush up to find that the FW has decided to clean my hand prints off the sink, has filled it up, happily cleaned up, and then taken out the plug, having already seen me take the connecting pipe downstairs. She is now 20/20 in both eyes, but her practicality circuits are still misfiring and her feet are getting wetter by the second.

As she is now safely landed in San Francisco for a couple of weeks, there is nothing to worry about here besides next-doors guinea pigs, but don't get me started on them.