Lipid died a well-deserved death, weighted down by an enormous shoulder chip, and face down in an invitingly poised jenga of dog ordure, after tripping carelessly on an overlooked raspberry cane which had snaked in from her mother-in-law’s long abandoned garden. The unfortunate combination of a large sweaty pair of ‘crocs’, a faux trug, secateurs sharpened to lethal points, and an enticing flourish of blooming gladioli led to her timely demise.
Regretfully for Lipid but fortunately for the rest of us, her daughters didn’t go outside and look for her for several hours, as they were enjoying an unaccustomed restful break from Lipid’s mania. On a normal day they were ferried between a giddying round of exhausting yet worthy activities, including an interpretive dance class performed in weighty anoraks and based around tragi-comic Brit-pop band Oasis’ greatest hits, choral caterwauling of the aforementioned Oasis songbook at the long suffering but blissfully deaf inmates of the local rest-home, weighted aerobic aqua-man swimming, and bandage-rolling for the local rabbit rescue.
Eventually hunger drove the girls outside in search of their mother, and they were nonplussed to find her twenty seconds from the house on a well marked path, desanguinated, and facially besmirched with still-moist dog turds. Their first reaction was to be enormously relieved that Lipid’s death meant they could avoid the underwater hockey class she had enthusiastically enrolled them in for the following term, until they realised their sole remaining parent was their father. Dismay quickly superceded relief.
A rapidly contrived game of rock, paper, scissors ensued to determine which of the girls would break the news to their father, Howard Frizzle, and the younger girl contrived to lose, for she had the least tact, and considered she may get a frisson of perverse pleasure as acting messenger. Howard took the news as well as could be expected, with loud displays of performative grief. Howard tried to blame everyone in the vicinity and many who were not in the vicinity for Lipid’s death, as was his wont. He finally settled on blaming his father, Morris Frizzle for the death, because if Morris hadn’t cruelly gifted Howard and Lipid the property, Lipid would never have died there. He then attempted to extort compensation for the opportunity cost by the death of his wife from his increasingly unhinged and bewildered parents. He failed, but not before he was fired by his own lawyer.
The coroner deemed Lipid died swiftly, but issued only a warning with regard to the wisdom of cultivating gladioli. The crocs, plasticised trug, unbagged dog faeces, and sharpened secateurs escaped official scrutiny.
Her epitaph as written by her offspring:
Lipid Cowball, our mummy dearest.
She met her timely end on a path well-trodden;
Her slapped arse face
will fade without trace,
Not missed & soon forgotten.
Always imaginative girls, they chose a novelty urn for their mother’s ashes which they felt best epitomised her persona and presence.
