How Not to Live in a Fairy Tale

Yesterday I went to get the Physicist and all her worldly goods from her seat of learning for what’s known in the trade as the long vac. Nothing to do with hoovers. We had a number of fairy-tale encounters. This is what happened:

Once upon a time there was a mother whose daughter, after being in a far away land of academia for many months and weeks, was finally allowed home. The mother got in her silver chariot (or small car) to go collect the daughter but had no fuel. And the fuel-deliverers were on strike. After searching high and low, in dell and out of them, she finally found, hidden away in a mysterious woods, a petrol station that actually had some petrol. It was very expensive petrol. When the mother asked the curiously twisted and wizened old man selling the fuel why it was just so very costly he replied ‘It is magic petrol. For from this moment hence your fuel gauge remained steadfastly on full’.

‘Bollocks’ said the mother but paid the old man the money and went on her way.

When she got to the land of academia she discovered that the Physicist hadn’t packed all her worldly goods and chattels. For she had been to a ball and lost her slipper, or at least a silvery kind of shoe. They knew what had happened of course. Anyone would.

In the end they left a note for Prince Charming re the slipper:

‘Please return shoe you evil stealing bastard and if you have let the entire population of Oxford maidens try on this shoe and if it has been damaged or infected in any way due to this I expect appropriate compensation.’

Physicists are not interested in romance.

Eventually, the mother and daughter drove merrily down the road laden with the worldly goods minus one shoe and slip of notepaper.

Then there came an evil smell.

‘I hope that’s not our car that is making that smell.’ The mother said.
The car veered in agreement.
‘I hope that’s not our car veering dangerously about the place.’ The mother said.
And then the car showed them a cheerful warning light of the brightest orange imaginable.
‘I wonder what that means.’ The mother said.
The car stopped and, as if to answer the question, emitted a deal of evil smoke from the wheel.

The mother, luckily enough, belonged to the RAC (Rent A Charming-man-to-come-and-rescue-damsels-and-physicists-in-distress). In due course a Knight arrived in his van of the brightest orange imaginable.

‘Your car is knackered.’ Said the Knight, ‘climb on the back of my van and I will carry you home. Or at least to Leigh Delemare, in the land of the rip-off coffee. For I cannot cross the border. But there will be another Knight just as charming as me, of even greater power than me who will carry you to Wales, the land of the rugby, and there deliver you to your home under the smallest mountain in the world.’

And so, after many hours and minutes of travelling in vans of the brightest orange imaginable with lights of flashing yellow and Knights of the utmost charmingness the mother and the daughter arrived at their home under the smallest mountain in the world.

The mother wanted to kiss the Knight but the daughter thought it would be better just to fill in the form and sign it.

And so it came to pass that the curiously twisted and wizened old man in the petrol station was right, for the fuel gauge was still on full.

‘This petrol really is magic.’ The mother said.

And from that day hence they never used another drop of petrol. Nor did the car ever move again.