Bus Stop Princess

Dear Reader,

I was driving slowly down the Cowley Road in Oxford when I saw this unobtrusive person at a bus stop.  I looked at her and she looked at me and then she smiled. And that smile quite transformed her. The woman I saw was no longer Cinderella, but a princess, and a beautiful woman. 
Hence this poem.

She waited, unnoticed, invisible.
Her fluffy green jersey egg-stained,
uninteresting trousers and sensible shoes
inviting no attention.
She was a brown paper parcel,
loosely string-tied.

But she smiled at me
with such sweetness,
such a smile of goodness,
I saw her sensible shoes
become sparkling slippers,
her shabby clothes
turn into a ball dress
fashioned from sunlight,
stitched up with love.

Not then a story-book princess
but a real princess
glimpsed at a bus stop.

             *

My musings this week are on:      Oscar Wilde, Dorset and Schadenfreude.

Oscar Wilde once said: "other people's happiness is a trifle dull" so I will be brief in telling you that our holiday in Dorset this week was delightful in every way.
The sun shone for us, the sky was clear and bright blue, and the small hotel nestling in the Dorset hills was perfect.  However, it is well known,  that people would rather hear about your misfortunes than your good times. How, on your holiday,  it rained every day, the view from your hotel bedroom was over the dust bins, and that you and your partner were hardly speaking by the end of the break. So I was wondering this week what it is in us that gives us more satisfaction learning of others misadventures than learning of their pleasures?  It is called schadenfreude, if that helps.

Very best wishes,  Patricia