The curtain rises to show a simple domestic scene of pre-Christmas pandemonium. Downstage a young(ish) woman (LUCIE) sits amid a sea of wrapping paper. She has bits of sticky tape in her hair and is sobbing brokenly into a piece of tinsel.
LUCIE: Less than a week until Christmas Day! How will I ever get it all finished in time? I must wrap all these presents and get them to Father Christmas without delay, yet there is also the laundry and the cleaning and to do that I must find the floor under all this paper. The tree is drooping and the Christmas cake is not made. All I want to do is read a book! (She sobs.)
Enormous flash, stage left. Enter FAIRY GODMOTHER, with Kindle.
FG: Oh, do stop snivelling, woman! Buck up and pull yourself together. You'll get it all done, because you always do, and if you don't, well, quite frankly, does it matter? You don't even like Christmas cake and there's a packet of Cadbury's chocolate fingers in the cupboard.
LUCIE: I've already eaten most of them.
FG: There were two packets, so nil desperandum. Unless you've already eaten both, in which case you are a glutton and I have no sympathy. Now put down that sticky tape -
LUCIE: I can't, it's stuck to me.
FG: I shall ignore that remark. Shut up and listen. While you shall not go to the ball -
LUCIE: Why not?
FG: You're a hermit. You hate parties.
LUCIE: Oh yes.
FG: Where was I? Oh yes. While you shall not go to the ball, you shall have a good book to read over the Christmas period, for - tra la la and abracadabra - Looking for Buttons will be free to download from Amazon for five days, starting on Christmas Day!
LUCIE: Oh.
FG: You're supposed to leap about for joy at this point.
LUCIE: But I've read it several times. I wrote it. And I don't have a Kindle.
FG: Flaming heck, you can't please some people. All right, here's a second hand boxed set of Hammer House of Mystery and Suspense. You can have an hour off from the chores to watch the one with David McCallum and then you'll have to get back to work.
FAIRY GODMOTHER waves wand and turns LUCIE into a teapot before turning to beam at the audience.
FG: Meanwhile, those of you who love romance, happy endings and aren't whinging hermits can download Looking for Buttons free from Amazon, 25th-29th December. Merry Christmas!
She turned her into a teapot??? That's not very fairy godmotherly. I think Lucie should make a formal complaint to the proper authorities.
ReplyDeleteIt's probably quite hard for a teapot to write a decent letter of complaint. Spouts aren't terribly suited to holding pens. Mind you, elephants manage to manipulate things with their trunks, so you never know. I've always felt that fairy godmothers are terribly brisk and have little time for people who whine. At least by being turned into a teapot, Lucie becomes useful.
DeleteLawks, I'm talking about myself in the third person now. Talk about self-publishing going to one's head.