BEACHCOMBER 104 YEARS OLD AND STILL INTERVIEWING 116-YEAR-OLDS…
FOLLOWING interviews with Meghan Markle (on TV) and Cinderella (in this column), here is our tête-a-crowned-tête:
BEACHCOMBER: May I start, Princess Aurora, by saying how fit and well you look for a 116-year-old?
PRINCESS: You’re doing pretty well too for a centenarian, but you probably weren’t asleep for 100 years.
B: I was coming to that. It is commonly believed that your long sleep was caused by a wicked witch’s curse. Is that right?
P: I believe so, though if we are to believe the historians, then the Royal Family and the “good” fairies were as much to blame.
B: I have seen accounts by W. Disney and C. Perrault, but they portray the fairies in a good light. What did they do wrong?
P: As Disney says, the witch cast a curse because she was infuriated by the fairies and shunned during the gift-giving ceremony at my christening. If they’d been polite, I might have received something useful to add to the stuff the fairies gave me.
B: According to Perrault, they gave you beauty, wit, grace, dance, song and goodness. What would you have liked?
P: Intelligence? Or a self-preservation instinct that might have saved me from pricking my finger on a spinning wheel? My parents never told me about my being cursed to prick my finger and die. They tried to get rid of the wheels, but this made it impossible for me to recognise one and operate it safely on my 16th birthday. B: Perrault and Disney say the fairies put everyone else to sleep so they would be there when you awoke.
P: It seems to me more likely that my sleeping sickness was just very infectious with an extremely high R-number.
B: At your christening, they say one good fairy commuted the curse from a death sentence to sleeping for 100 years until a prince woke you with true love’s kiss.
P: That’s his story. How do you think I felt when I woke up to find a stranger touching me inappropriately and trying to kiss me? B: That’s your husband you’re on about! P: He was assaulting me and armed with a sword and shield which he said were the magical Sword of Truth and Shield of Virtue. Agreeing to marry him was the best chance of saving myself from this lunatic.
[Interview ends as Beachcomber flees from angry prince brandishing sword.]