Fedelma – A Tale Of Hope And Success (excerpts)

Where there’s a will…

Fedelma was born into a working class family yet from a very young age she somehow knew it wouldn’t last.

Every penny she got Fedelma saved from an early age from her earliest days… She would proudly listen to it clickety-click down through the piggy’s back of her piggy bank. One… Five… Ten… Fifteen… Fifty… pence… Working her way up to her first pound…

Given the simple condition of her surrounding she didn’t study very hard nor very long and didn’t even make it to O Levels… Still Fedelma was one of those flowers that soar out of nowhere in a bed of roses to eventually tower over them all unchallenged. Nobody expected them to and nobody ever seems to know nor understand how… How much strength, how much hard work has gone into that…

Fedelma didn’t stop at a nine-to-five.

She landed a cleaning job at sixteen and stuck to it, clang to it as though to dear life.

Fedelma had got her first solid gold independence token with this first hard-earned wage.

While all her friends went out to paint the town red she decided not to spend it but to save it. And she saved and saved and saved. But she didn’t spare her energy. It seemed saving gave her energy. And she didn’t bend nor bow to the hardships of life. One… Five… Ten… Fifteen… Fifty… Hundred… One pound… Working her way up to her first hundred…

People studied, her friends had a good time, Fedelma worked…

She led a simple life below her means even… for she knew one day her call would come. Her ship would come in…

On her meagre wages she still managed to save for a rainy day… still and rise and shine every morning. One… Five… Ten… Fifteen… Fifty… One hundred pounds… Working her way up to her first thousand…

People studied, her friends had a good time, Fedelma worked…

Fedelma dusted, Fedelma washed, Fedelma cleaned, and Fedelma scrubbed every opportunity she was given. Fedelma scraped every opportunity she was given. And more and more cleaning came her way. By then she had lost count of dirty chores and her stardust was mere dust ! To the point you couldn’t see her for dust…

Reach stretch push seven eight ! Work that body !

She often wondered why Diana Ross had never advertised Jeyes cloths…

She was living in her own bedsit by now eighteen… and was not to be led astray from her goal. Boys came and boys went men came and men went but she had no time for romance. All she did was work and work and work.

She worked mornings. She worked afternoons. She worked evenings. And sometimes she even worked nights. She worked weekdays. And she worked weekend days. She worked workdays and she worked holidays. Work beat the rhythm of her life and music tuned her work aerobics.

Fedelma sung her days away for she knew that one day… One far day… One day in her life… would be the day to end her old days… Donna Summer’s Once Upon A Time was reeling and turning on the turntable in her head… soon to be found on her Walkman. Cause she believed…

One… Five… Ten… Fifteen… Fifty… Hundred… Thousand pounds… Working her way up to her first hundred thousand pounds… pushing her way to her first million.

People studied, her friends had a good time, Fedelma worked…

Days came and days went… Good days bad days all alike… and it was all work and no play still that didn’t make Fedelma a dull girl.

For Fedelma had a dream.

She had a dream that one day her bygone days would be over. Bygone. Bye. Gone.

Fedelma would live in a mansion, Fedelma would raise a family with all those luxuries life can bring. She would meet Prince Charming and he would really be a prince, well and wealthy and all… Money doesn’t buy you happiness but sure can make your life easier…

People studied, her friends had a good time, Fedelma worked…

She strove on.

On and on and on she ploughed digging deeper for gold in the dirt… until one day, when she reached twenty-five, Fedelma decided she could use an education.

She took a couple of evenings off to attend night classes and get her O Levels.

She passed her O Levels with flying colours and went on to get her A Levels. Again she passed her exams. That was when she decided she needed to broaden her horizons and introduce some general culture into her world. Night classes found her on their attendance list again…

People studied, her friends had a good time, Fedelma worked… and worked and worked and worked…

Nearing thirty found Fedelma ready to take the big wide world on.

Her old faithful bedsit was now the witness of her exercising for tone-up even at the end of her long hard working days working like a dog… Night sleeping like a log… Reach stretch push seven eight ! Work that body ! Again…

One two three four five six seven eight and Pull… Reach… Stretch… and one… two… three… Topping all the exercise she got in the course of her daily work.

A solid savings account in the bank, degrees and culture to account for, Fedelma was indeed a serious challenger for all those women born with a silver spoon in their mouths… She had the money, the education and the looks everybody who knew her praised her for.

A careful clothes shopping spree and she was off to a brassy classy sassy nightclub.

And did she look a million dollars ! Boy, you should have seen her. All the heads turned… The rain in Spain, they say, falls mainly on the plains… Eliza Doolittle couldn’t have done it any better. Couldn’t have beaten her to it…

This new kid in town was no newcomer...

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Jesse CRAIGNOU