I was making the kids tea just now (at about tea-time, as it happens) and I wanted the raspberry jam.  I keep opened jars of jam in the fridge.  I therefore looked in the fridge for it, but couldn’t see it.  I thought that maybe it hadn’t been put away after it was last used.  I looked on the kitchen surfaces, but I still couldn’t see it.  I thought that maybe it had been put away in the cupboard where I keep the unopened jars of jam.  I looked in that cupboard, but I still couldn’t see it.  I looked again in the fridge, studying every jar I could see really carefully, but I still couldn’t see it.  I looked again on the kitchen surfaces, studying every jar I could see really carefully, but I still couldn’t see it.  I looked again in the cupboard, studying every jar I could see really carefully, but I still couldn’t see it.  I looked in some random cupboards; cupboards that I never put jars of jam in.  I still couldn’t see it.  Finally I went back to the fridge and opened the door.  Standing in the middle of the top shelf, right at the front, at roughly head height, was the jar of raspberry jam.

I knew it was there somewhere.  I looked in the place I expected to find it.  I looked in some places where I thought I might find it.  I looked in some places where I didn’t expect to find it.  And when I finally found it, it was, literally, right in front of my eyes where I had expected to find it all along.