A Year of Doing Good

by Judith O'Reilly

  Good deed no. 142.

  Monday, 23 May

  I invited myself over to Diane’s farm for coffee, and as my good deed picked up another mother who I know likes company and brought her along with me. Diane’s little girl took me upstairs to see her plump, purring cat, which was curled up in high comfort on her brother’s duvet, and asked me to read her a book, so I lay next to her and we read stories together. Diane said she slept right through the night for the first time in months. She shouts out at night wanting to know where she is, and if she’s not persuaded, the shouting slides into hysteria. What handbook is there for mothers? My child is different. Just how ‘different’ is she? Is she different like this? Or like that? Try this approach. Try that. This ‘How to Parent’ manual worked for me. And people are so quick to judge. I had noticed myself that the child roams, that Diane will be talking and her little girl will be away, and occasionally someone rounds her up and brings her back. Do they wonder why this child doesn’t cling, doesn’t hang off Diane or hide behind her skirts? But she’s in a world where noises crash and bang, where no one speaks her language, trying to find her way.

  Good deed no. 143.

  Tuesday, 24 May

  Al asked me how I felt and I said, ‘Like I’m standing on a cliff top screaming,’ and he backed away and said, ‘I’ll make you a nice cup of tea.’

  On the upside, the headteacher at my eldest son’s school has rung with a whizz-bang idea for the Jam Jar Army. She has got 104 jars of jam coming from the local and very public-spirited Sainsbury’s to give out to her children, and her Year 6 (thirty-three kids) are going to walk along the coast from one village to the next – around eight miles – to raise public awareness of the Jam Jar Army. Which is astonishing. The head is doing this totally off her own bat as part of the kids’ community week. I’m amazed and delighted and worried that people are taking me seriously and it may all come to naught. My son clamped his hand to his forehead when I told him. ‘Because of you, they’re all going to blame me for having to go on a mega walk in the rain,’ he said. He’s ten and about to disown me. Welcome to my future.

  Good deed no. 144: toing and froing between the school and hospice over the Jam Jar Army walk.

  Wednesday, 25 May

  Despite the fact the RNLI turned down my kind offer to be a crew member, I filled in a nomination form at the supermarket for them to be a Sainsbury’s community charity. Maybe they’ll change their minds if I tell them?

  Good deed no. 145.

  Thursday, 26 May

  Cryssie’s lessons are taking on their own shape. We start by talking about the book she has just read. She read two this week, both of them historical. Then we do a bit of research on those books and their authors, after which we turn to her homework and finally get her to take on the planning of her story. I’m trying to pin down what she is capable of and what if anything I am capable of passing on. I don’t think I can be doing any harm because at the very least she is going to walk away with a better understanding of how to read, if not to write.

  One of her books was based on New Lanark, the new town set up by social pioneer Robert Owen which educated children and which housed its mill workers in decent homes, and the other was based on the Irish potato famine. Cryssie wasn’t aware of either New Lanark or the potato famine, so we researched both on the Internet. We found a documentary about Robert Owen and an interview by the author of the potato famine book, Michael Morpurgo, about how he writes. He bases his books on an element of truth and builds from there, and he advised doing lots with your life to give you plenty of material and trusting your heart. I was critically aware as I sat next to Cryssie, who moves deliberately and slowly as if her frail legs were trapped in metal braces, that her disabilities would limit that life experience, but she loves greatly and is greatly loved in return, so that box at least she can mark with a juicy fat red tick.

  After seeing Cryssie, I drove down to Newcastle for a presession meeting with one of the students about her writing. She married when she was just out of university, and had her kids early. Now they are grown and she is wondering what to do. It’s difficult, I think, for a woman to get to her forties and start over. Middle age is a hard place to be without that silk and goosedown cushion of ‘potential’ the young carry so casually tucked beneath their arm. This woman is smart and talented but sensitive to criticism, and cyberspace can be a hard place for the soft of skin. She badly needs to decide what she is willing to put out there and whether she is going to write as she wants to write, or whether she is going to write looking over her shoulder, waiting for wounding words to fall. There is no one-size-fits-all for women. But if you have a career and then the family, although you might exist in a state of permanent exhaustion, at least you’ve been there and done that in terms of ambition – there are no what-might-have-beens and I’ll-never-knows as you cook the tea. Either which way, children first or children last or children not at all, criticism is surely no stranger by the time you hit your forties. But so what? Because by then you have decided who you are, and for those who don’t like you, those who don’t get you, those who claim you disappoint them or argue you should change to suit them, well, you can shake their hands, say ‘Each to their own’ and ‘It’s been a pleasure meeting you’, tip your hat, and carry on past regardless.

  Good deed no. 146.

  Friday, 27 May

  I rang Kathryn for Diane, who is about to go on holiday. She hadn’t asked me to, but I know she’s daunted because the nights are so bad at the moment – let alone climbing on a plane to Portugal. There is no doubt about the child’s autism, and I figured Kathryn would have travelled often enough with her own autistic daughter to hand on some wisdom.

  She answered the phone, and in the background I could hear a sheepdog barking. We talked it through and she advised taking an extra bag of toys and pens and paper to keep the little one thoroughly engaged and locked on to what she is doing so she doesn’t get mesmerized or upset by the hustle of the airport or the strangeness of the aeroplane. The toys would also comfort her in a strange bedroom. Later, I googled ‘holidays with autistic children’ and emailed Diane what I found. The advice on the Internet was pretty similar to Kathryn’s, basically ‘Don’t get stressed’ and ‘Keep a sense of humour’. I imagine that’s easier said than done.

  Good deed no. 147.

  Saturday, 28 May

  Since it was half-term, I expected the girls’ tap and modern dance class to be cancelled and I breathed a sigh of relief I would not have Ellie for the morning. Al brought me up a cup of tea and, still yawning after I drank it, I broke through a skim of snowy bubbles to slide my weary bones into a boiling-hot bath smelling of lemons, which was the natural cue for the phone to ring. Lily was calling to say dancing was on even though it was half-term and wasn’t that good? I stood there, naked – that part of my body which had been beneath the water a riotous fleshy red – dripping steadily onto the stripped wooden floor, staring hard at the footprints from the bath to the bedroom phone, and thinking that if I was a genuinely good person I would dry myself with a rough white towel and drive the girls down to dancing, and not mind the bickering that starts up, and the incessant pleas that she come back to my house and play, or that we go to the café and drink hot chocolate.

  I am not a genuinely good person. I am no better than ever I was. I said, ‘Let’s skip it, shall we?’ ignoring the silent disappointment down the line. I followed the trail of footprints back into the water and slid back beneath the waves in shame. I wonder, were there many leggy fish who crawled on up the beach out of the roiling, bucking, funky stew, thought better of it and crawled back down again?

  Kirsty and her husband arrived, which would have been great but for the fact he too is a fan of Manchester United, so the evening consisted of sitting round the telly watching Man U’s chance of one cup or another swirl down the drain. I just about managed the first half when there was some prospect of victory, but had no interest in the second half at all
. Al let the boys stay up to watch it. It is difficult to teach them to lose with grace when their father is patently gutted whenever his team loses. Perhaps I shouldn’t try. Perhaps I should take the view I am breeding winners who do not have to learn to lose with grace because it will never happen. I was taught to ‘play to lose and win if you can’, which is Delphic but basically means you treat losing with the same grace as winning, and I still regard myself as competitive.

  Kirsty is using two sticks after the operation to replace her knee. She came off her rheumatoid medication for the op and has been vomiting and nauseous with the painkillers, so she has had to give them up too. Her hands, feet and knees are swollen, and you want to scoop her up and hold her till she’s better. She is resolutely optimistic: she says she is looking forward to the swelling going because the new knee will make a big difference to her quality of life. Everybody has their own story. With Kirsty it is all about grace under pressure.

  Good deed no. 148: had a neighbour in for the football. He told a very bad joke: how many Manchester United fans does it take to change a light bulb? Two to hold the ladder, one to change the bulb and one to drive them back to London afterwards.

  Sunday, 29 May

  Al always takes the children to his brother Rob who lives in Wales for this half-term week and leaves me to work. Since I wasn’t travelling with them, I did not have to jump up and down on the same spot yelling ‘Look at the bloody time!’, which meant Al left for Wales at 2.30 p.m., approximately four hours late. If I had been going, the fact he disappeared into the study to ‘finish off a bit of work’ in the morning instead of herding the children into the car and setting off would have hacked me off no end. Instead, I inhaled deeply, let it out slowly, and thought, ‘Calm down, dear. You don’t have to put them to bed at ten o’clock tonight and you don’t have to be there tomorrow morning when everyone is grumpy as hell.’

  Good deed no. 149: emptied out a neighbour’s grill pan in kitchen cupboard, which was catching water from a leaking pipe.

  Monday, 30 May

  I ate my solitary breakfast today – poured my milk, spooned up my cereal and drank my tea – and there was silence everywhere. This is how it would be to live a single life: one bowl, one cup and emptiness.

  Good deed no. 150: tipped out water from the neighbour’s grill pan again and called them to say that the plumbers hadn’t been.

  Tuesday, 31 May

  Spent all day on the Jam Jar Army website when I should have been writing. I kept setting myself deadlines: first noon, then 1 p.m., then 2 p.m., then 4 p.m. It’s 6.30 p.m. and I’m still tinkering with the website. It really would help if I knew what I was doing. When I finally stopped working on it and sat down and closed my eyes, my overloaded brain fizzed and pulled a wobbly, and every single screen I’d opened up that day on the computer downloaded before my eyes, one after the other, at huge speed, like something from The Matrix.

  It does me good to be on my own. You walk out and nothing seems to pass you on the road that runs down to the sea and on into the village. The only movement is that of the wind in the leaves of the banked trees; the only other sound, the chirruping song of birds; the only other sign of life, your own breath. It is nerve-wracking at night, though, as I bolt the doors against the darkness; and even when I am safe and locked-up virgin tight, the cottage is old so it creaks and strains, and above a pump roars into life all unexpected, which makes me jump and wake again. If I was in the city, I’d think ‘thief’, but in the country dark, with the silvery moon hidden away in the clouds, away from shining houses, far from streets of beery laughs and the tip-tap scurry of those late home, the thought ‘thief’ would be a light relief; I move straight instead to ‘Maniac – there’s a maniac in the house.’

  Friends arrived next door at their cottage. He’s a teacher, so they are up for a few days during half-term week – it is just as well because I started talking to myself this morning.

  Good deed no. 151: let in the neighbour’s plumber and made him a cup of tea when I was too busy to make myself one.

  Wednesday, 1 June

  Woken up at five o’clock in the morning by some stupid pigeon deciding to fly through my open window into my otherwise entirely silent house and entangle itself in my curtains. My windows were only open a hand-span for fear of psychotic murderers creeping in, so the damn bird must have limbo-danced its way in.

  Thanks to the pigeon, I was half asleep when I stumbled across the ‘World Giving Index’ by the Charities Aid Foundation, which says in terms of money we are the third most generous nation in the world (equal to Thailand), with 73 per cent of people having given money in the last six months. Top came Malta and the Netherlands. The index also calculated the percentage of those giving time and helping a stranger. In the UK, 29 per cent had given time and 58 per cent had helped a stranger. Overall, in terms of these three factors, we ranked eighth below Australia and New Zealand, who came joint first, then Canada and Ireland, who came joint third, then Switzerland and the USA, joint fifth, and the Netherlands, seventh. Eighth came Sri Lanka and the UK, which is pretty good.

  Apparently in Britain, according to some government white paper, we give more than £10bn a year. That is wildly impressive. It has flattened out in the last couple of years, so the government is trying to do various things to reinvigorate it, like mobile giving (on mobile phones) or rounding up your giving to the nearest pound. It all seemed very technologically cutting edge. Then there is me and a jam jar.

  Good deed no. 152: drove into the local market town and left flowers on the Lovely Claire’s door handle from the ‘flower fairy’. Facebook said it was her birthday. She had ninety-five birthday congratulations and good wishes. That is not normal.

  Thursday, 2 June

  Glorious day. The heavy hum of buzzing bees through the nodding spindly yellow poppies, the imperial purple of aubretia spread along the stone walls, the do-or-die song of unseen birds, and a cashmere breeze and azure-blue skies, immense and wide, stretching down to the sea over the pastures. Even the ground beneath my stockinged feet is warm as I stand and listen to the wind moving through the trees. Some trick of nature makes that wind sound like the sea, and there are times when the seas run high and you hear the sea and the sea’s impostor together. I like that best of all.

  Good deed no. 153: lent a neighbour a body board and change for the parking machine.

  Friday, 3 June

  Good deed no. 154: had my picture taken for the Jam Jar Army in the Gazette. (I hate having my picture taken. I wonder if they can take a picture of me if I use both hands to hold back the fat, which would also have the effect of smoothing out the wrinkles. Or would that look odd?)

  Saturday, 4 June

  Good deed no. 155: boosted a local writer’s new book on Twitter, Facebook and Amazon with a five-star review (despite acute attack of jealousy that I didn’t write it).

  Sunday, 5 June

  I said bedtime prayers every night when I was a child – I had my own altar in my bedroom with prayerful statuettes glowing in the dark and a writhing silver Christ hung upon an oaken cross. ‘Matthew, Mark, Luke and John, God bless this bed I lay upon, and if I die before I wake, I pray to God my soul to take.’ It’s amazing I ever closed my eyes. My Irish aunty has come back from a parish trip to Lourdes. She spent two whole nights crying to herself once her friend had gone to sleep because she missed my uncle so much, and never told a soul. What’s the point of saints if they only watch us while we weep? I’d rather those that stop up that weeping altogether.

  Good deed no. 156: set aside £20 for raffle tickets for my eldest son’s school fete in aid of the RNLI (despite the fact they didn’t want me on their poxy life-saving boat).

  Monday, 6 June

  Week of the Jam Jar Army launch. So far today I have:

  given eldest a dozen DVDs for the school fete;

  paid out £20 to ice-cream parlour for ice cream (the shop-owner did it for me at cost) to be given out when the kids do their Jam J
ar Army walk on Thursday;

  picked up leaflets at hospice and dropped them off at school for distribution on the walk;

  gingered up hospice folk re engagement/active partnership/commitment with the newspaper appeal so that they are not just being passive recipients. The hospice must regard me as a mixed blessing: on the one hand, I am delivering publicity and the chance of cash; on the other, I am a pain in the arse.

  Good deed no. 157.

  Tuesday, 7 June

  Al in London and my daughter down with stomach migraine. I was literally hopping from foot to foot as I tried to figure out if I had to cancel the school assembly I was booked in to do on the Jam Jar Army, which the photographer was turning up to shoot. I didn’t have the photographer’s number and there was no one at the Gazette to call. I ended up getting in the expat to look after my daughter while I went to the school. I made three platefuls of jam sandwiches to give to the children at school on the premise that the jam jars had to be empty before they could be filled with money. No one threw anything at me, so it could have been worse.