Why I Believe in Fairies

Because I was one. In a primary school production of Sleeping Beauty, I played the green fairy, and was allowed to bless the crib holding the Baby Beauty with my little spangly wand.

Blatant Fairy Amazon Link :)


 I had a green vest, a white underskirt with green bows sewn on, and my one line - of which I was hugely proud - was ‘she will grow up to be healthy’. And lo and behold, she did grow up to be healthy, apart from that 100 years she spent asleep which is probably more than medical professionals recommend, no matter how hard she’s been worked by the evil step-mother/queen/grandmother (I forget which).

Reason number 2 : As a resident of Liverpool, home of raucous hen-dos and badly put-together fancy dress costumes,  I see them every Friday night on the way home from my weekly shop at Tesco Express (don’t laugh – it’s their quietest time). They congregate on Matthew Street, complete with tinsel wands, sparkly wings and knee socks, and occasionally with facial hair and handfuls of leaflets for two-for-one shots at Baa Baa that they thrust in my direction, despite the fact that I am laden with carrier bags full of loaves and sardines. They are usually much louder and lairier than one would expect such delicate supernatural beings to be, but still, seeing is believing as they say, and I have seen with Mine Own Eyes.

The Great Raymondo on her way home from Tesco

I am not alone when it comes to believing in fairies. Mr Arthur Conan Doyle of Sherlock Holmes fame believed he had some living down the bottom of the garden between his compost heap and his petunias and there are plenty of people you’ll come across at Mind Body and Spirit Fayres who will agree with him wholeheartedly and try to sell you squares of porcelain with their footprints in. If however, Monsieur Doyle and nice ladies in flowing silk scarves are not strong enough witnesses for you, why not try one of these little ways to test their existence?

1. Yank out a tooth (preferably a non-essential one, a lazy incisor or another), put it under your pillow, and sit and wait for a 50p piece strapped to the back of a little sprightly being to float in through your bedroom window.
2. Drink a glass of Absinthe, sit back, and wait for a little sprightly being to dance in through your bedroom window (it worked in Moulin Rouge).
3. Clap your hands really really loudly chanting ‘I do believe in fairies’ and see what you get (besides vibrating palms).