Felicity was at least eighty-six years old. She was still trim and able enough to live on her own, except she didn’t live on her own. She lived with her husband, Laughton, who was eighty-nine. When their dog of thirteen years took ill he was too big and heavy for them to lift it into the car to take to the animal care shelter. They had to get the neighbour over to give a hand. Of course, the neighbour didn’t mind.
But that’s not what this story is about. This story is about how a storm blew in from nowhere and decimated the entire village. The neighbours seem to have disappeared. Laughton was killed by a piece of flying roofing. Felicity was literally alone.
Felicity knew that the electricity and water wouldn’t be turned on for days – such was the serious extent of the storm. She also knew that it could be days before anyone reached her house and could remove Laughton’s body.
Dear practical Felicity! She thought if she hurried, before all the cold escaped from the cabinet freezer, she could perhaps put Laughton’s body in there to freeze until help arrived. Laughton was old and light but an enormous weight for Felicity to push and shove. First she got one ankle on the edge of the freeze, and then the other. Gradually she worked to the knees. Once his bottom was over the edge the whole corpse slithered into the freezer. It had taken Felicity well over an hour and she was exhausted. Everything had happened so fast. It was as if she was in a bad dream.
She went to close the freezer lid. It wouldn’t shut. Rigor mortis had set in and Laughton’s knees were sticking up above the closing level.
It wasn’t until then that Felicity burst into tears.
Loved it. Felicity burst into tears.
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Thank you!
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Distressingly, I can well imagine myself in this position…
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When our dog got sick I couldn’t lift it!
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Poor Felicity.
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Perhaps Felicity was Mrs Brown? Knees up Mother Brown…
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Sometimes it’s that last straw. That was pretty sneaky, luring me in with the dog.
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Ha! Yes, the dog was a bit of a red herring!
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It IS surprising how much you can do under duress and then fall apart once it’s over…
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Yrs – I agree Lisa. I go to pieces quite often I suspect…
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Women like Felicity are responsible for all the men floating around in glaciers for the past thousand years.
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Yes – I think I know how these ice-bound males feel.
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Ah! The felicity with which misfortunes hit a destitute can be boundless.
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Don’t I (we) know it!
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Is that really where you’re going to leave poor, practical Felicity??
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There’s probably ice cream in the freezer so she’d need to finish that off before it melted.
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Well, obviously.
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Michael Rosen has a lovely children’s poem called “Down Behind the Dustbin” which has the verse:
Down behind the dustbin, I met a dog called Felicity.
It’s very dark in here she said, they’ve cut off the electricity.
Seems to me that your Felicity has been pretty much “cut off”.
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Did you know – and this is simply by association with the name of Felicity – that Hopkin’s poem called Felix Randal… If you look up the records in the parish in Manchester where he worked he has recorded the death of John Randal. So Felix wasn’t his name – it simply means “Happy”. I’ve never read that anywhere other than right here…
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I have just read it for the first time. Quite a poem! And you put an extra layer of warmth to the eulogy. Let us think not sad thoughts about what we have lost but happy, felicitous, thoughts for what we once had.
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I think it’s my favourite Hopkin’s sonnet – and the last line must rate as one of the greatest lines ever written!!
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Bless poor Felicity, nothing’s ever straightforward!
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I could’ve told her she’d have trouble when you try to put corpses in the freezer.
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