Not now, Prince Charming

A year ago, I wrote a post suggesting that Cinderella would have got bored with life at the palace and would have wanted to go back to a life where she had something to do, something to keep her busy.

I think I was wrong about that. Now I'm thinking that she would probably have refused to go back to the palace in the first place.

Imagine it. The night before, she had been whisked away from the kitchen, quite possibly before she had finished her evening chores (washing up after dinner, tidying the kitchen, putting the cat out) and had spent hours and hours at the ball. At the stroke of midnight, she has to go running back home and what do you think she finds?

Well, at a guess, and knowing what her sisters were like, she would have found teetering stacks of dirty dishes dumped on the kitchen table (and more spread like a fan round their chairs in front of the television), the leftovers from dinner spilt on the floor where the cat had been at them, her favourite saucepan blackened from a not very successful attempt to make hot chocolate, the bath left with a ring of grease and hair round it from cack-handed depilation, sodden towels on the floor and the toilet left unflushed.

And so, next morning, when the Prince comes a-knocking with the glass slipper, what would she have said? I haven't got time for any of this! Look at the state of the place! It's going to take me days to catch up and get it all straight again! I haven't even finished the washing-up yet and I'm never going to get lunch on the table in time. If you think I've got time to mess about with a silly slipper...

Rain

It was a wet day yesterday and the lovely English people were behaving in their usual lovely illogical way when faced with unseasonal weather, whether rain in summer or sun in winter. Half were over-reacting and half weren't reacting at all. So there were people all wrapped up in raincoats, with long boots and collars turned up and umbrellas, and there were people in summer dresses and flip-flops, and they were all on the street at the same time. There were even people who couldn't decide which way to behave, so they were half-and-half, people with great thick padded anoraks and sandals, people with flimsy tops and fur-lined boots.

Surely we are all used to inconsistent weather by now? It is always inconsistent weather in England.