For the very first time I felt today that I was making a difference. Perhaps it was because I got thanked and most of what I’m doing is thankless. I also got to feel lucky. A local Citizens Advice Bureau gave me their annual report so that I could draw up an application for a competition to win some money for them. I have been putting it off because I expected it to be so dull; what became clear was the reality and scale of the problems and the effectiveness of the service.
This particular CAB helps all these people who come to them with employment problems and debts, or who are sick and don’t have the money to drive down to hospital in the south of the county or into Tyneside for a chemotherapy appointment. Their workers are handling cases of more than £3m of debt – more than a hundred people had to go bankrupt, according to their latest figures. And alongside the annual report was a spreadsheet on the causes of problems last year. Fourteen were down to bereavement as clients struggled with something as basic as the cost of a funeral, let alone the emotional toll of their wife’s death, or their baby’s, which was also listed. Debt was another significant problem: some were harassed by debt recovery agencies, some had their benefits stopped for one reason or another, while those in jobs suddenly found themselves redundant or working in jobs with their wages unpaid. And, in black and white, diseases: strokes, leukaemia, non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma, spinal degeneration, breast cancer, cancer of the oesophagus, head injury, terminal cancer, Alzheimer’s, and some sectioned under the Mental Health Act. People’s stories, their lives, their deaths.
The CAB caseworkers can relax. I read through the feedback forms. There were comments like: ‘Without your help and advice I would be in a mess’ and ‘Gave me hope’ and ‘I was treated with dignity and respect once again’ and ‘Words cannot describe the courtesy meted out to me’ and ‘We would have given up without you’.
Good deed no. 189.
Saturday, 9 July
Good deed no. 190: gave money to dance school’s coffee morning.
Sunday, 10 July
Good deed no. 191: worked on the media student’s CV for her.
Monday, 11 July
I slogged round a couple of the local villages planting another eighteen jars around shops and cafés. It turned out that quite a few people, although they had been given posters and a sticker, didn’t actually stick the sticker on a jar. ‘Sticker’ – the clue is in the name. I am having to go round all over again at a time I thought we would be doing a first collection. Had a couple of world-class miserable responses, including one local shopkeeper who pronounced gloomily, ‘There are too many charities,’ while a local pub owner rejected the jar because he had other collection tins. That is absolutely fair enough, but when I offered him a jar for home, he said he didn’t ‘do charity’ other than wine at Christmas for a local school. He eventually softened enough to let me put two jars on the mantelpieces, while warning me it was ‘at my own risk’. Anyone who wants to steal a glass jar with a few coppers in it needs that money. It is far more likely that the glass jars will get knocked off by someone’s elbow on a Saturday night. And he wasn’t the only misery: another hotel manager up the road turned down the idea of a jar on his bar because they had a collection tin already, and no thanks, he didn’t want to put them on the tables. In fact no one wants to put the jars on tables, so that particularly brilliant idea went down a storm.
Even more of a shocker: Berwick High School (of 128-uneaten-jam-sandwiches fame) hasn’t done it. Seriously? I rang to talk about collecting the jars, and the assistant head told me that it’s been very busy, and they didn’t get round to the jars but would give them a go in September. And they are not the only ones. I rang another school and they haven’t done it either. And another, and they haven’t done it either. At this rate we are going to bring in a couple of hundred quid and count ourselves lucky.
Good deed no. 192.
Tuesday, 12 July
I spent an hour and a half reworking a letter of complaint over the crocked car after Karl’s mother came to pick it up and found a few errors in it, but at least she bought me a bottle of wine as a thank you, which was kind of her. Her grown-up daughter asked me if I enjoyed doing it. Enjoyed writing other people’s letters of complaint? As an alternative to a crossword? I said no, it was excruciatingly dull, adding (because I felt I had to) that it was worth the time and effort if it helped someone out.
Fate must have taken me at my word because the son of our lovely elderly London neighbour who died earlier in the year phoned again. His mum had been cremated, and the family wanted her ashes scattered over the ground where her husband’s ashes were and a memorial rose already grew. Unable to face dealing with the ashes themselves, they had trusted the crematorium staff to do it on their behalf.
Despite being told it had all been done, when they went to visit the plot nothing had changed – there was the rose tree and the plaque to their dad, but there was no joint marker for their mum and dad. Initially, they were assured they were at the wrong plot – despite having visited their dad over nine years. It turned out they were not at the wrong plot: their mum’s ashes had been interred in someone else’s plot with a similar name across the crematorium. Understandably, the son is distraught. The family do not know what to do. The crematorium says they need them to sign the official documentation before they can move the ashes from the wrong plot across to the right plot, but understandably the family are worried there’s been heavy rain and there won’t be any of their mum’s ashes left (plus they might get some of the other guy). They have been to see a solicitor at the CAB and, such is the upset, they are even contemplating suing the crematorium.
What can be done to make it better? Even if they scoop up the ground and bring it across, the danger is the family will be wondering how much of their mum’s ashes is there every time they go and visit. They are sending the correspondence.
Good deed no. 193.
Wednesday, 13 July
Good deed no. 194: gave one of the expats a lift to the garage. (They cut their hair and take their car to the garage more often than anyone else I know. We cut our hair when we can’t see out from underneath it and take the car to the garage when it won’t start. Planning ahead? Hmm. I didn’t know you could do that.)
Thursday, 14 July
Took round 110 washed and re-labelled jars to Ally, who has agreed to give them out for me at something called a ‘puppy show’. I went to one a couple of years ago. All the hound puppies from the local Percy Hunt are shown in a ring. They all looked identical to me. My friend is incredibly sociable – she knows everyone. I’m hoping there is alcohol to soften people up and that she’ll shift the lot. She said the master of the hunt said I was welcome to come along too, which was very nice of him, but it’s events like the puppy show that make me realize that, however settled we are, I will never belong. If I went I would only know about three or four people there and everyone would be talking nineteen to the dozen with immense vigour and animation to everybody else about things like horses and harvests.
Good deed no. 195: taught Cryssie writing. (I am coming to the conclusion I’m not that good a teacher, though she seems happy enough sitting at my kitchen table writing away.)
Friday, 15 July
The correspondence arrived about the mistake at the crematorium, including a Ministry of Justice form which is necessary because Section 25 of the Burial Act 1857 states you cannot remove a body or the remains of a body which have been interred in any place of burial without a licence from the Secretary of State.
A letter of the 20th May assures the family the ashes were interred that day and a double plaque (for the mum and dad) placed at the rose. Which was nice to know. The follow-up letter on the 16th June from the chairman of the crematorium confirms an ‘unintentional error’, offers ‘sincere and heartfelt apologies’ and blames ‘human error’ for the fact the ashes were buried in a stranger’s plot. Both plots bear the same surname (although not the same first name), and are in a row with the same alphabet
ical letter (although in completely different parts of the crematorium from each other). Classic cock-up.
The crematorium letter asks the family to sign the form necessary to obtain a licence and move the remains. It goes on: ‘for practical reasons this needs to be done without delay … I would stress that any delay renders the process of reburial more difficult.’ Signed by the chairman of the cemetery and crematorium, it says: ‘I hope you will understand that this type of mistake can always occur, although thankfully very rarely in my experience. We are reviewing our procedures to try to ensure that it does not happen again, but I do appreciate that this will be of no immediate comfort to you.’
The letter offers a refund of £181.50 for their mum’s burial and double plaque, alongside the offer ‘that the rose be yours for life with no further payments being made to the cemetery for the upkeep of the rose’. (Every ten years you pay for the upkeep of the rose, which seems odd enough in itself, frankly. This costs £450.) Doubtless they mean well by the offer of the refund, but £181.50 and a pot plant for burying your mum in the wrong place is brutal in print. The form they want the family to sign admits ‘cemetery error. Cremated remains buried at wrong memorial’. I talked to the cemetery manager, who seems keen to resolve it, and so she should be.
Good deed no. 196.
Saturday, 16 July
Good deed no. 197: took Lily’s daughter to dancing lessons and lunch.
Sunday, 17 July
The expats came along for tea, and their gorgeous, glossy, black and white springer spaniel promptly went into the lounge – which is, I might state for the record, one of only two rooms in the house with a fitted carpet – and promptly shat on it. I went in to bring out an empty glass, and there in the middle of the carpet was an enormous and gently steaming pile of dog poo. I contemplated saving the expats embarrassment and cleaning it up as my good deed – frankly, I couldn’t face it, so I went back out and told them and they did it. The woman was mortified. They treat the dog like a child. I would be equally mortified if one of my children shat on their carpet.
Later, we went for a walk along the beach, the tideline high with twisted, bubbled heaps of chocolate-brown seaweed and silvery driftwood, while out at sea the wind planed the swell of the water, the parings curling and twisting away from the blue. Beautiful – then my husband ruined my mood by ordering me to stop saying hello to people. Beach etiquette dictates you raise your eyes to the people passing you and if they do likewise, you say ‘Good morning’ or ‘Hello’ or, at the very least, you nod or smile. That is just what you do. It is not me – I am not a nutter. Greeting your fellow man is a good thing: it helps connect us to each other. It isn’t as if I yell at them in a ‘I’ve got better manners than you, matey’ way in the event they stride past on some rainy ramble from hell or they are concentrating on rescuing their dog from drowning. Occasionally, you make a mistake and they glance your way and you give someone a cheery hello and they don’t know the rules so they are past before they get to say hello back – but all you have done is give them a nice warm feeling that someone out there cares. He made me stop doing it.
Good deed no. 198: gave out twenty stickers and three posters to an RAF contact for the Jam Jar Army. (I am trying to do a ripple effect. It is like pyramid selling: find a contact, then let them spread it through their own community.)
Monday, 18 July
We have tipped over the £1,000 mark for the Jam Jar Army, which is great – only £9,000 to go, which is less great. I am in a cold sweat about not making the target. I can come up with the idea, I can get the local paper involved and do media interviews, I can set up a website and a Facebook page, tweet about it and get labels and posters printed up at my own expense. I can hand them out to whoever will take them and get schools on board. I can slap labels on jam jars and give them to shopkeepers. But I can’t put a jam jar in everybody’s house in Northumberland – at a certain point, people have to engage with the process and decide for themselves to do it. Will they, though?
Good deed no. 199: handed out jam jars to fellow parents at school sports day. They’ve already filled them once, but hey, no harm in repeating yourself. I said there’s no harm in repeating yourself.
Tuesday, 19 July
I am fed up with good-deedery. Any spare minute I have, I am soaking jam jars to get their labels off them or sticking my labels on them, or super-duper helpful people are suggesting things I might do to bring in money. What they don’t realize is the Jam Jar Army is me. I want to say, ‘Thank you for your idea. Yes, of course I’ve thought of involving the Scouts/the WI/the Rotary. The problem is I haven’t the effing time. How about you do it for me?’ But of course I can’t say that, so I have to play dumbstruck, as if it’s an idea of sheer genius and the first time anyone has ever suggested such a thing, and thanks very much, and I’ll get straight on it, and their idea will make all the difference between success and failure. Good on you.
Good deed no. 200: bought end-of-year gifts for teachers and staff.
Wednesday, 20 July
Good deed no. 201: arranged coffee morning between three parents with autistic children.
Thursday, 21 July
The family rang back and have decided not to sue about the cemetery mix-up, which I think is the right decision. The most important thing has to be that their mother’s remains are laid to rest alongside their dad’s. His mum’s illness, her death and now this has made this poor man think the pain of losing his mother is endless. My friend is sleepless with it; he said that he feels as if they got it wrong last time when they left it to the crematorium, and now he is torturing himself with whether he needs to be there in case they get it wrong again when he simply can’t face it.
I told him I would witness it. Al and I loved his mother. She was more than a good neighbour. She was our friend. A tiny, busy, immensely kind Cockney through and through. We couldn’t be there when she died, but this is something I can and want to do for her. I can stand by and watch while they move her from a stopping-off place to a resting place. I can make sure they take every last scrap of ash, every ounce of soil that she might have touched, that they place it in a wooden casket and carry that casket with due reverence to the rightful plot and bury it there. The cemetery manager isn’t keen on the whole thing being witnessed – apparently it is ‘against regulations’. As is piling someone’s ashes into the wrong plot in the first place, I imagine. But she understands why the family feels the need for it to be witnessed, and we have made an arrangement for a week on Monday, by which time the paperwork will be through and I’ll be down in London on holiday.
Good deed no. 202: wrote and printed out sixty-odd letters for potential Jam Jar supporters from the puppy show.
Friday, 22 July
A nice woman called Sharon Williams has seen the Jam Jar Army in the paper and started marching round her village giving out jam jars. How amazing is that? She has a holiday cottage and saw the piece last week on the cottages Lily had managed to get the jars into. Sharon has had friends die of cancer in the last five or six years so was happy to put a jar in her cottage, then she did one better and took it upon herself to go round her village with them. She has also been decent enough to start going round the shops in the market town giving them jam jars too. My only concern was that, as with the local villages, some of the shops in the town took posters and stickers a month ago and with a few exceptions didn’t get round to sticking the stickers on a jar and getting the jar out by their tills. Small, screaming noise. Never mind, they’re out there now.
Good deed no. 203: picked up 2,000 more labels for jam jars (at a cost of £78.72. This charity thing is making me a pauper).
Saturday, 23 July
Good deed no. 204: made a ‘thank you’ jar for hospice supporter Stephen Waddington’s five-year-old son Dan, who had squished £136 into their jar. I painted a jar gold, stuck gold stars on it, bought a sheriff star and decorated it with gold stars, bought three Freddo chocolate bars (at seventeen pence ea
ch) and popped the sheriff star and chocolate in the jar. I told him I had made him a star in the Jam Jar Army. Hope his dad doesn’t think they were the most expensive Freddo bars ever.
Sunday, 24 July
Good deed no. 205: washed labels off a dozen jam jars and stuck on my labels. My kitchen is now like the cottage industry of a jam maker who keeps forgetting to make the jam.
Monday, 25 July
There’s interest from a Sainsbury’s store down south in taking on the Jam Jar Army. Apparently, the local Sainsbury’s community relations lady up here (who has given us 225 jars of jam for schools) has put details up on an internal fund-raisers’ forum. Whoop-whoop noises.
Good deed no. 206: offered a cousin’s daughter and her kids our house for a week while we’re away in London in someone else’s house.
Tuesday, 26 July
Opening up the boot of the Ratmobile has to be done with immense caution now as there are always a few of the bolder jam jars perched on the edge, ready to make a break for freedom. I trailed round one village like a Bible salesman. Knock knock, big wide trust-me smile, I’m going to let you into a secret which guarantees eternal salvation, my friend. It must be hell to be in sales. I have no idea how you keep it up. You put yourself on the line every time. I was trying hard to keep the kids outside one café where I expected to be rejected, and they insisted on coming in because, as my youngest son said, ‘I want to be there when they say no to you.’ I got a good reception, though, from a pub and the café that looks onto the golf course, who agreed to put them on their tables – in fact I gave out a huge boxful of jam jars. But today’s good deed is buying a stranger a parking ticket. I had driven through to the market town and parked up, I had paid for my ticket and then put the money in again for another ticket. The stranger was standing behind me and I turned and gave the ticket to him, explaining, ‘It’s my good deed for the day.’ He looked puzzled but very pleased. A few minutes later, after I got the kids out the car and we were walking down the road, he was standing in a queue for money from the cash machine with two teenagers and as we passed he said, ‘I’ve told them we all have to pass that forward today,’ which was really nice because that means there will be another good deed floating around the world and I didn’t have to do it.
A Year of Doing Good Page 19
