The Princess on a Pea

"Once upon a time there was a prince who wanted to find a princess, but she would have to be a real princess. So he traveled all around the world to find one, but there was always something wrong. There were princesses enough, but he could never be sure that they were real ones. There was always something about them that was not quite right. So he came home again and was sad, for he so much wanted to have a real princess."

Okay, so yeah, it perhaps appears to you that falling off my rocker has been achieved at last. And you know something, you might be right at that.

Then again, it could be spending all that "quality time" in the Haight/Asbury district of the city lately has reprogrammed my "little gray cells", eh Hercule?

Anywhoo, indeed we spent the majority of Tuesday afternoon tramping about the Haight and Golden Gate Park, reflecting in the oddity that is the modern day "flower child" in the native environment of their grand parents (or in some cases, great grand parents)

She found it rather bizarre that kids aged between 17 and like, I don't know, 26 ,felt She knew John Lennon, Roger Daltrey, David Bowie, Freddie Mercury and Mick Jagger personally, or had the words/lyrics to their long forgotten musical 'masterpieces' etched inside her memory, never to be forgotten.

It's that "Camilla Parker-Bowles" quality in your voice I hesitated to proffer by way of explanation, She was clearly not amused by the association!

"Now they could see that she was a real princess, because she had felt the pea right through the twenty mattresses and the twenty featherbeds. Nobody but a real princess could be that sensitive. So the prince took her for his wife, because now he knew that he had a real princess. And the pea was put in the art gallery where it can still be seen, unless someone has taken it."

"Now see, that was a real story!"