'Just another love story' by Lynda McMahon

 

Did you know that a glass slipper is also a coaster for glassware on the table? In the light of that knowledge, what if we’ve got the whole Cinderella story wrong? What if it’s not about a shoe at all but a quite ordinary piece of domestic line? Prince Charming producing the Glass Slipper with a flourish and placing it upon his loved one’s foot becomes utterly ridiculous. Cinderella, pretty foot outstretched, from which dangles a scrap of wine stained cloth! Also pretty no doubt, but not very practical as footwear. And how would P.C. prove she was ‘ the one’? Is it a unique glass slipper; one of a set that only she owns having inherited it from her dead mother?

 

Imagine, ny young woman in the land could go,

     “Here, P.C. I have the other eleven with only one missing! Now you’ll have to marry me...” Are they mass produced, do you think, or especially woven by fairies at twilight? The possibilities are endless. Perhaps there’s a store just for godmothers where they can order from a special catalogue...or a click and collect for magic goods...or even fairy eBay!

 

So, the revised scenario. Cinders turns up at P.C.’s ball clutching her personal glass slipper. On the stroke of midnight, everything else being as previously imagined, she runs from the Palace forgetting her glass slipper. The Prince discovers the odd item among the Palace linen and, as soon as Cinders produces the other eleven, he knows her. Or he actually recognises her as the young woman he spent the evening with; he doesn’t need a slipper of any description to find her; she is so much herself that he would know her anywhere? Not much of a story! But it works for me.