In Competition No. 3248, you were asked to submit the last will and testament of a fictional character.
In a smallish entry, Frank McDonald’s Ancient Mariner made a splash:
To make amends with my last breath I must give more than words, So my small fortune I bequeath To a charity for birds.
I was amused, too, by Brian Murdoch’s Lucky Jim Dixon: ‘I desire to be cremated, and for my ashes be placed in a rolled-up copy of the Daily Mail and inserted up the bum of Professor Ned Welch, while, and this is very important, they are still hot’; Alan Millard’s Mrs Malaprop: ‘Being of round mind and not acting under duress or undue influenza, I do hereby decline this to be my last will and testicle…’; and Bill Greenwell’s Owl: ‘THIT LATH WITLWILL ANDESTY TSTSTA MENTO OF WOL (ME)…’
Mike Morrison, John O’Byrne and David Shields were also unlucky losers, narrowly outstripped by the winners, printed below, who pocket £30 each.
I, Miss Bates of Highbury, being – as my friend Miss Woodhouse so cleverly and often observes – of empty mind and full body, am grateful this is my last Will and Testament, another being quite beyond my powers. Mr Frank Churchill has kindly offered his services as Executor, observing that his duties will barely inconvenience him, his being so regularly in town about tonsorial business. I have but three very dull things to bequeath, all of them shawls. Should I predecease my Mother, an eventuality we discuss constantly with much animation, she may have all three shawls. She insists upon them, though only the beige truly compliments her complexion. Should Mother predecease me, the shawls – even the lilac Mr Knightley was so gallant as to remark approvingly upon at Michaelmas – go to my niece Jane Fairfax whom they also do not suit, not even my favourite, the lilac.
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