We have just come back home after a fortnight in a holiday apartment near Lagos, in Portugal. This was a palatial apartment - huge rooms, designer sofas, massive rooftop terrace, en-suite bathrooms, all top-of-the-range equipment (Bosch this, Siemens that) - and on a small gated development with Moorish-inspired grounds, kept impeccably manicured by an army of gardeners.
Nothing like home, which is dusty, untidy, cluttered, smells of cat and is surrounded by an equally untidy and louche garden. No maids, no gardeners. The hot tap on the bath is temperamental, which makes showers exciting, and one of the armchairs (the one I still haven't got round to covering) is draped in an old sheet with rips from the cat's claws.
Having said which, it is nice to be home, back on the battered sofa that noone minds if you put your feet up on, and the saggy old bed with its comfy duvet, much more comfortable than the brand new divan with its stiff white Egyptian cotton sheets.
I wonder if Cinderella felt the same. I expect she was thrilled to be whisked away from her hovel by the impossibly romantic Prince, and set up in the palace with handmaids and wardrobes full of frocks and delicious banquets every night. I bet she had three baths a day, and bossed the servants about, and complained to the cook if her breakfast egg wasn't boiled just right, and wore a different pair of shoes every time she went out in her BMW convertible coach.
But I wonder how long it was before she got bored, and fed up with the maids tidying things away that she hadn't finished with. I bet the time came when she would have liked to go out into the garden and done a bit of weeding, or pottered down to the kitchen and made herself a cup of tea. Six months on, I bet she would have swapped Prince Charming for Buttons and the palace for a starter home.
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