The giveaway idea came from Angie and Angela alone, and both of them really enjoyed the creative process involved in organising it. It was very different from their usual work at the station, but they found themselves relishing commissioning the various Felix products and getting involved in design, as well as sparking off each other as they came up with the little details that they hoped would make the day a great success.
It wasn’t all glamour and creative brainstorms. The night before the big day, Angela Dunn found herself on her hands and knees on the concourse floor, pressing black pawprint transfers on to the tiles and securing them with a damp squeegee. She and Angie had thought it would be nice to lead the children to the giveaway bags with a trail of Felix’s ‘pawprints’. It was a lot of work, but they looked amazing when they were finished – so much so that Angela told the cleaners to leave them there; twelve months later, you could still see the pawprints proclaiming that this was indeed the home of Felix the cat. It became another tell-tale sign and part of the ‘Felix tour’, alongside her ‘oil’ portrait, Billy’s bench and her famous cat flap on the concourse.
With the pawprint transfers done, Angela’s work was far from over. She and Angie then had to stuff the brown-paper bags, printed with Felix’s paw-tograph, with all the goodies they had commissioned: magnets and key rings, postcards and colouring sheets, and crayons and sweets. Yet it was work that was full of camaraderie, as the two women worked happily together, Angie worrying aloud that they might have made too many bags … There certainly seemed a lot of them; hundreds were laid out in the Hub by the time they were finished!
Before the two Angelas left for the evening, they also set the scene on the concourse: moving the station’s big black suggestion box to one side to clear space for their stall, covering their table in smart purple and black cloths printed with Felix’s name, and erecting a huge, beautiful picture of Felix behind the stand. She looked glorious – eyes sparkling, fur fluffed, proud and regal as the queen she was.
But even after Angela had waved goodbye to Angie and driven home to her empty house, she still had more work to do – this time, making special Felix T-shirts for the five team members who would be handing out the bags: Amanda, Chrissie and Angela herself from the booking office, Angie Hunte and Sara, who was still working on the platforms, but who had asked if she could help them out. Angela was up till gone midnight ironing transfers on to the five shirts: they were white T-shirts, with black pawprints on the sleeves and tummy, and ‘Felix’ in big black letters over the right breast.
It was a funny thing, but somehow Angela found that her house didn’t feel quite as empty as usual that night – not when she had such a hive of industry to focus on. Before she finally turned off the lights, she looked with pride at the T-shirts laid out ready for the morning. She hoped, after all their efforts, that people would turn up …
Angie Hunte hurried into work the next morning with a fluttering of butterflies in her belly. They had put out an announcement that the giveaway would start at 9 a.m. As she parked her car and walked across the square towards the station, it was not even 8.30 a.m. – so she was not looking out for any signs of action. The square did seem a little busier than usual, but she put that down to it being the first Saturday of the school holidays – everyone and their dog was out and about, stretching their legs and soaking up the sunshine, feeling that glorious first frisson of the freedom that was theirs for the next six weeks.
But as Angie scurried up the station’s grand steps, she realised that unusual, buzzing busyness continued inside too. Next to the booking office was a large gathering of people. At first, Angie sighed wearily. Oh, it’s going to be one of those days, she thought, we’re already rushed off our feet … But then she noticed that there was an exceptional number of children in the crowd – and the penny dropped. Oh my gosh. They’re not queuing for tickets – they’re here for the giveaway!
After all Felix had achieved to date, it may sound naive of Angie not to make the connection immediately, but she was used to seeing Felix’s fans come to visit in ones or twos. To see a whole mass of them all at once, all eager to take home Felix’s thank-you presents, was rather overwhelming. It was perhaps the first time it really hit Angie just how many people Felix had reached. And to know that she and Angela had conceived this idea, to which so many people had responded, was also touching. As Angie bustled about, getting things ready and pulling on her special Felix T-shirt, she saw that the children on the concourse were already running wild with excitement. She handed out bottles of bubbles and a blonde toddler in a pretty pink dress enthusiastically got to work, blowing big fat bubbles all over the station, so that the bubbles’ rainbow sheen sparkled in the sun.
Well, by the time Angie and Angela were ready to declare the day open, Angie could not see the door, there were that many people waiting! She quickly went from worrying that they had too many bags to worrying that they had too few!
‘Karl! Karl!’ she cried. The platform worker stood nearby. Helpful as ever, he swiftly stepped over to her side. ‘Karl, we need to capture this day,’ she told him, still reeling from the amazing turnout. ‘You are hereby promoted to chief cameraman! Any time we need a picture taking, can you please do the honours?’
Karl was more than happy to oblige. He loved Felix – so much so that he made sure to get himself one of her key rings that day; it had a snapshot of Felix on one side and ‘pub o’clock’ on the other. So he was on hand to capture all the day’s special moments – such as one of the first children in the queue: a girl of about six or seven with shoulder-length brown hair and wire glasses, who was wearing a blue jacket with floral embroidery and the most enormous grin. He was there to capture an anomaly among all the families in the queue: a plumpish man in his fifties who looked just as thrilled to get his bag as the children. (‘Thank God I’ve got one!’ he declared with relief as he finally reached the front. ‘My wife would have killed me if I didn’t come back with one of these!’) And he was there to capture the memorable moment when the star of the show put in an appearance, all with her trademark professional poise.
The two Angelas came up with something pretty special for Felix’s entrance. Of the five windows in the booking office, the top one on the far left is never used, so its white shutters always remain closed. Unbeknownst to the waiting crowds, Angela Dunn fetched Felix and popped her down behind those closed shutters. Then, as people milled in the booking office, eagerly claiming their giveaway bags, Angela pressed the button that made the shutters rise …
From the excited squeals that greeted the dramatic ‘reveal’, you would have thought those white plastic shutters were thick red velvet stage curtains, and that the cat standing behind them was the most popular singer on earth. As the crowds realised that the shutters were slowly showing off Felix herself, a collective happy sigh echoed around the booking office. It sounded like the sigh of the ocean lapping at the shore, a homecoming of sorts, as Felix met the fans and the fans met Felix.
The cat sat neatly between the two clear plastic shields of the serving hatch, so that she was not behind them but in the open air. She placed her two front paws together with a ballerina’s precision and sat proudly upright, angling her head this way and that as she acknowledged the crowd before her and invited those taking photographs and videos to capture her very best side (both being fabulous, of course). Posing for selfies, her ears twitched as children chattered happily to her, as though she was listening hard to all the secrets they were sharing. She stayed for a full half-hour, soaking up the sunshine on the desk and allowing people to have their pictures taken with her – and generally glorying in their adulation. Despite her experiences the month before, when she’d encountered the kicking fare evader and snapped at Jeff Stelling, she coped beautifully with all the attention and didn’t seem wary or lash out once. Instead, like everyone else, Felix seemed caught up in the joyful, celebratory feeling of the day.