Once upon a time, so the old, old story goes, the prince and his princess got married, moved back to their homeland and lived happily ever. And that meant that each day the Prince rode off on his silver charger, except, wait, not this morning; because the silver steed had not started since Friday night and the Fairy God-RAC-man had been thwarted by the evil garage assistants who had been hanging onto it ever since. So the prince tottered off on the 8am train and left the princess to see to cleaning up after their fairytale weekend.
Except, wait, not this morning; because this morning the princess’s marvellous modern brush and dustpan dirt-sucking-contraption didn’t get very far. In fact, it got two minutes into the bathroom floor, leaving the crumbs from 11 hungry visitors from Sunday afternoon to fester under the dining table – not to mention the dirt tracked through the hallway by twenty-two Sunday-best shoes. The princess was just as unhappy about the loss of her vacuum as the prince was about his wheels.
So she phoned the nice customer service people, who assured her that it was all very simple. It was going to be all very easy. All she had to do was…
wait in between 9am and 5pm the next day for an empty box to be delivered
wait in between 9am and 5pm the day after for someone to pick up the box, now containing her sad, shiny-no-longer vacuum cleaner
pay an extraordinary sum of money and
wait a few days for the return of a new, shiny, problem-fixed vacuum.
Here’s what happened….
the princess waited and waited and waited, and at 4pm called the nice people to see what had happened to the empty box
called back at 5pm, as requested
called back at 6:30pm, as instructed
received helpful comments on how it was too late to rearrange delivery now, because the delivery service was closed for the day
arranged with the helpful man for another box to come tomorrow
then the princess hopped around the dirty-floored flat making up bad words.
Shortly afterwards, the princess’s fairy god-next-door-neighbour turned up with the empty box, which had been delivered at 11am.
So she called back the helpful man who said he was really sorry, but tomorrow’s pick-up had already been cancelled and she would just have to wait until friday. This was okay with the princess, because she didn’t really fancy being stuck inside for three days in a row.
The next day, after the prince had disappeared on the 8am train, she got dressed and went out for the day. When she arrived home, she was met by the tall and handsome stranger who’d been waiting for the box for ten minutes.
And now, the princess is waiting. In her dirty floor home. Living happily ever after.
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