CINDERELLA
By George Holmes Copyright September 2010
I have always sympathized with the two ugly sisters. It must have been a great trial to come into a family where the new father was so greatly attached to his little daughter who sat at the hearth all the time. She apparently liked it and you can’t blame them when they saw how humble she was and then their mother had told them that she was really a servant and perhaps a changeling and anyway they needed a lady’s maid and why not keep it all in the family and save a salary. The sisters who were vain but not stupid took to the idea and it sort of worked out. Cinderella was a born charlady, a natural skivvy.
She had a most unhealthy relationship with her dad. He was quite good looking and well off but never could resist a pretty woman so when the mother of the two sisters set her sights on him he was ground meat, totally at her mercy with her perfumes and satins, her posh speech and little ways of tickling his fancy with her little shoes, pink bonnets and low cut dresses.
Cinderella was a bit of a prig. It is true she was quite nice to look at if you bothered to look under the grime that is but no one saw that and no one cared. She was strange you see. I mean she had friends who were mice. Mice! Do you know people who know mice? I for one don’t and have no wish to. The other sisters were not really ugly. No woman is. They are just beauty and taste challenged. These two were slaves to fashion but try as they may they had no style at all. Poor things. They were the ones that needed a helping hand, an Oprah or a Martha Stewart to guide them along but they did the best they could. Now Cinderella had this friend, a social worker she said though I suspect there was a hint of Lesbos there and she probably fancied our Cinders. The prince was a complete washout as a leader of his country and moreover had a playmate called Buttons who advised the prince to wear silk stockings, a little dove-gray jacket with flared collar and a Robn Hood hat. Well, it screamed gay. His peasants were starving, there were no jobs and he was swanning about with glass slippers Give us a break.
Of course the poor ugly ones for want of a better name had to live with what nature had given them. They were completely besotted with the prince and bought a subscription to his PR magazine that of course was a tissue of lies and innuendos from beginning to end. The also drank far too much wine. It was after a particularly boozy night that they decided to cut off their toes to get into the slipper. Can you imagine the mess? Poor things spent months in hospital and plastic surgery after that mad bout. And then the prince must have been obtuse not to notice the smell of Cinderella, ashes, mice and worse. But once she got that ring on her finger she was away. Her model was Eva Peron she said, she’d come from nothing and was first lady and now I am. So watch out.
She was corruption incarnate. Her first act was to ban mousetraps. The writing was on the wall I can tell you.
Oh boy you really know how to kill a good story don't you?
