The Fairy Godmother Part 41

“Ethel had her report on the table and ready for me when I came in here this morning,” said Enid as I put my report on her table. “I’ve nearly finished reading it,” she added. “And a very well written report it is too.”

“Ethel works in here,” I replied. “So she could put the report on your desk as soon as it was written. And my report is ready for you to read as soon as you finish that one.”

“It better be good,” said Enid, closing Ethel’s report and opening mine. “You have a high standard to reach.”

I sat down on the other side of her desk and waited.

“You know I don’t like being watched whilst I am working,” said Enid after five minutes.

“Yes, but I’ve checked my pigeon hole and there’s nothing in it,” I smiled. “So I thought I’d best be on hand to offer any explanations or comments if the report is less than clear.”

“I think your report is perfectly clear,” said Enid.

“That’s nice to know,” I said. “But I wouldn’t like to leave before you’ve finished it.”

“There’s an envelope in your pigeon hole,” said Ethel.

“And one in yours,” I said, looking at Enid.

“I didn’t do anything,” she said failing to look innocent.

“I know you did,” I smiled, taking down the envelope, Ethel had beaten me to it and was busy ripping hers open to find out what was in store.

I know this has nothing to do with computers, but I think it requires a logical approach, which I believe is what is needed with computers.

There is a kingdom, the one with sleeping beauty, well, she woke up when she gave birth to twins sons. That was about six months ago, they are planning the Christening and they don’t want to make the same mistakes as last time, nor do they want to mess up with the seating arrangements. Put the wrong people next to each other and you could have a war on your hands.

The Fairy Godmother will be good at flannelling people whilst you sort out the guest list and seating plan.

Shouldn’t take long. Good luck. Enid.

“Goodie,” said Ethel clapping her hands together.

The Kingdom of the sleeping beauty, it has been decided to Christen her sons, they’ve been putting it off because that’s where they went wrong last time. So we need to make sure that they invite everyone they need to to the Christening, not missing anyone out. Also, they need a seating plan which wont end up with anyone going to war with anyone else. Ethel can sort things out whilst you reassure everyone that it will all go well.

Good luck, you’ll need it. Enid.

“Thanks,” I smiled, lifting my wand.

“Remember the red instructions from last time,” she hissed as we began to disappear.

“What was Enid saying?” asked Ethel as we found ourself in a great hall.

“It’s a good question,” I said. “She’s always making last minute comments, they don’t usually make much sense.”

“Did Enid send you?” asked an extremely flustered court official dashing across the room towards us.

“If you mean the Head of the Fairy Godmothers and now the Head of the Fairy Council,” I said. “Then yes, she has sent us to help you.”

“Promotion?” he asked.

“Not exactly,” I smiled. “There was chaos after the departure of the last Head of the Fairy Council. Enid was told it would continue until she agreed to take on the job.”

“No one wanted to be Head of the Fairy Council?” he asked.

“I think it’s one of those jobs, everyone thinks they can do all sorts and when they take it on, they find out how little they can do,” I smiled. “Only thing was Enid knew this before hand, which is why she didn’t want the job.”

“But the twisted her arm,” said the court official.

“Does this mean Enid wont come to help us?” asked the King who had just dashed over to see what was going on.

“I can ring her at any time to run ideas past her and check up on guest lists,” I said. “But the idea is that we sort out the plan and she says if it’s a goer.”

“Wouldn’t it be simpler if she came?” the King asked.

“If she comes,” said Ethel. “The Council will be constantly interrupting her asking her questions about something or other, which is a recipe for nothing getting done well and in this case, for missing someone off the list.”

“The gardeners have managed to get the ivy off the south tower and they want to know what to do with it,” said someone who had just dashed in.

“I know what you mean,” said the King, looking a bit bemused.

“I would suggest a bio-digester,” said Ethel.

“What?” asked the King.

“It would digest the ivy and can be used to produce electricity,” Ethel explained.

“What’s electricity?” asked the King.

“I think if we concentrate on arranging the Christening, we can sort out the bio-digester later,” I said.

“So,” Ethel continued. “If we sketch out a plan, Enid can check it out to see if we’ve forgotten anything. And we can run it through our data base to see if anyone has been missed out.”

“Sounds like a plan,” said the Royal Princess, pushing a double pram into the hall.

“I do wish you wouldn’t keep pushing them around like that,” said the King looking worried. “We have servants who could look after them.”

“I don’t see why they should be given to someone else to look after,” said the Princess gazing over the handle. “I did all that hard work bringing them into the world, I’m not going to miss out on the fun part of it all.”

“I just wish we knew who the Father is,” said the King shaking his head.

“If I knew I’d tell you,” said the Princess. “But he didn’t have the manners to wake me up. The first thing I knew about it, I was giving birth, not the best of wake-up calls. It would’ve been nice if someone had explained something about that beforehand.”

“I didn’t think it was necessary, not before you were married,” said the King, looking somewhat sheepish.

“It would have been nice to know what the hell was going on,” she said.

“I wish you wouldn’t use language like that,” the King said wincing slightly.

“I could use much worse language,” she said.

“I’m sure you could,” the King sighed. “And I’m sure it would be very justified, I’d just rather not hear you say it.”

“So, the question is who to invite,” I said with the hope of focussing attention on the job in hand.

“Normally I would suggest starting with the guest list from my daughter’s Christening,” said the King. “But we’ve been out of circulation for a bit since then and we are only just beginning to get on top of the changes.”

“What do you mean?” asked Ethel.

“Normally I would have invited my good friends from the kingdom adjoining us,” the King sighed. “But two of them are ruled by the grandson’s of the Kings I knew, one is ruled by a distant niece whose Mother didn’t get on at all well with my old friend and three of them are republics, I hate to think what they did to the monarchs they got rid of. Then again, one of them, I could quite understand them wanting to get rid of him, I tried telling him that he wasn’t treating his people right but, he just said they were only peasants so it didn’t matter.”

“All people matter,” said the Princess.

“I agree,” said the King. “Any way, we don’t have to worry about him, he’s history.”

“We need to make sure that any Fairy who thinks they should be invited has been,” said Ethel.

“And any leader of any neighbouring country has an invitation,” I added.

“Even the republics?” asked the King.

“Yes,” I said. “If they don’t like it, they don’t have to come, but the onus is for them to think of a reason. You have fulfilled your part of etiquette by sending out the invitations. It doesn’t matter if you send out more than will come as long as you don’t miss anyone out.”

“Or at least not anyone who can cast a spell on anything,” the Princess agreed. “I don’t want anything hanging over my kids. The last one destroyed the home spinning industry.”

“Things have changed so much,” sighed the King. “Before all this happened you wouldn’t have worried about the home spinning industry, I don’t think you knew anything about spinning.”

“That’s because you outlawed spinning wheels,” she replied.

“I was trying to protect you,” the King replied.

“You don’t solve a problem by hiding from it,” the Princess replied.

“So what do we do?” asked the King.

“Check our data base, make out a list, send out the invitations and wait,” she said.

“We could create a web site for people who are interested in attending,” said Ethel.

“What’s that and what would it do?” asked the King.

“Well,” said Ethel. “Anyone who thinks they should have been invited can go on the web site and register their interest and we can send them an invitation if we think they should get one.”

“Sounds like a good safety net,” said the Princess.

“Let’s get going,” I replied.

By Janice Nye © 2020