Good deed no. 275: watched over a small boy at rugby and brought him back to his dad afterwards. (My daughter got her first rugby trophy today for being the player of the week, and won’t let anybody else touch it.)
Monday, 3 October
Spent the morning in the Salvation Army shop tagging clothes and drove straight from there to school for the Young Journalists’ Group I’m helping with. I sweat virtue.
Good deed no. 276.
Tuesday, 4 October
Good deed no. 277: worked in a charity shop (steaming clothes).
Wednesday, 5 October
Caught ‘Thought for the Day’ with Chief Rabbi Lord Sacks on BBC Radio 4’s Today programme. He was talking about Yom Kippur (or the Day of Atonement), the holiest day of the Jewish year. It’s happening on Saturday, and is held to be the last chance to change God’s judgement of one’s deeds during the previous year and to set one’s fate for the year ahead. Lord Sacks said: ‘Too often we spend our time on things that are urgent, and neglect the things that are important: the good we do, the love we give, the difference we make to other people’s lives. Yom Kippur is God’s way of asking, What do you want to be remembered for? When it comes to doing good, don’t leave it too late.’
Apparently at Rosh Hashanah (the Jewish New Year) the idea is that the names of the righteous and of the wicked are written in one of two books: the Book of Life and the Book of Death. Most souls, however, have the (fabulously named) ten Days of Awe between Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur to turn things round by repentance, prayer and good deeds before their name is sealed in one of the books. The books are a metaphor serving to remind the faithful that these days are not for easy living, but for deep reflection on the past year and hopes for the year ahead, a time when lives hang in the balance and there is the possibility of transformation. I am nowhere on repentance and prayer, I can only hope a morning of sorting knicks-knacks at the Sally Ann shop will do.
I plumped to work in the Salvation Army shop in the local market town on the grounds that it is one of the largest providers of social, community and welfare services in the UK – that and the fact I love brass bands. I am very disappointed I don’t get my own uniform. Technically the shop is part of the Salvation Army Trading Company, which boasts on its website that it has raised more than £17m over the last three years, spent on homelessness services, family tracing, elderly care and the like.
A very efficient lady called Michelle runs the shop, and last year (which was only its first year of business) it brought in £70,000. She has one paid assistant, eleven volunteers who come in regularly and ten others who come in on a more occasional basis. I’ve never worked in a shop before, but after tagging clothes and steaming them (at some risk to my fingers) and dusting knick-knacks, I feel I could. What struck me, though, was why would you do this? Why would you work in any charity shop - week after week - for twenty-five years in the case of the little lady I worked alongside, emptying pink plastic sacks of second-hand clothes, and not get paid for it? How good do you have to be to do that? Because it’s certainly not the glamour end of retail fashion. Most of the work is done out the back in a large windowless room with stalls running along one wall piled high with sacks and sacks of clothes. You pull out a sack, you pull out the clothes in the sack, and standing at an MDF bench you tag them, hang them (making sure the hanger is the right way round), slip a plastic sizing cube onto the hanger, and hang the hanger on a lengthy clothes rail. Then you do it all over again. And again.
I asked the shop’s 25-year veteran Cecily what was the worst thing she’d ever found in a bag, and she said, ‘Dirty nappies, dirty knickers and dirty sheets.’ When I asked the manager, she said, ‘Sometimes you open a bag and fleas are jumping from it – once I opened a bag and there was a rat in there. That wasn’t this shop, though.’ How do you casually manage to sweep a rat up in with the bits and pieces you’re giving to charity? Thank God there were no rats on my shift.
I preferred tagging to steaming. Perhaps it was my hot sweaty flush that prompted one of the other volunteers to ask: ‘Do you have any grandbairns, then?’ Seriously? Do I look like I have grandchildren? My youngest is five, mate. Apparently, they aren’t allowed to keep knitting needles on display in the shop – they keep them in a bag out the back. If I’d known where, after the grandbairn question I’d have stabbed myself with a pair of Number 10s, but not before I’d stabbed one of the customers.
Trailed by her husband, a bespectacled woman was walking round the rails, holding a pair of black trousers, and she asked if there was a fitting room, which there wasn’t. Irritated by my response, she said why couldn’t she just nip into the private staff area and try them on? Considering the huge number of bulging pink bags piled up in the corridor waiting to be taken away for ragging, I told her I thought that was unlikely, but I’d ask. Like the good shop assistant that I am, I duly trotted behind the scenes to ask my manager, whose answer was no, but very reasonably, she said the lady was welcome to buy them, take them away and return them later if they didn’t fit. This I duly took back, but the woman was having none of it. She said she didn’t get into town often enough, so she wouldn’t bother. They cost £1.99, these trousers. Were these people short of a bob or two? Quite possibly. These are hard times and they were shopping in a charity shop. But they didn’t look short of a bob or two, and she didn’t talk to me as if she was short of a bob or two. Perhaps she too was a member of the ‘squeezed middle’, and why waste £1.99 on a pair of trousers that might not fit? Then again, how squeezed do you have to be not to think, ‘If they don’t fit, I’ll have donated £1.99 to a good cause’?
Aside from the odd murderous impulse I made quite a good shop assistant. I steered lady shoppers to the designer labels, dug out an anorak for a man who had forgotten to bring his coat on holiday, and I even asked one tall, white-haired chap standing by the bookshelves whether he liked a good thriller. ‘I certainly do,’ he said, wrapping his arm around me. ‘Are you offering?’
Good deed no. 278.
Thursday, 6 October
Last week, I set Cryssie the task of writing a story about ‘the morning I glimpsed heaven’. She wrote a pretty realistic account of what would happen at school if she disappeared into thin air and absolutely nothing about heaven itself. What I want her to realize is that there are no limits to her imagination, which means there are no limits on what she herself can do in her imagination. In reality, she can’t climb a mountain, or swim a stormy sea on the back of a dolphin, or take a gold-winged angel by the hand, but she can write about all of those things. It’s a really important lesson – that the only boundaries there are on your imagination are those you yourself impose. I want her to understand that because her understanding would make this whole exercise worth doing. Maybe I shouldn’t be trying to teach her how to write at all? Maybe I should be teaching her how to make believe – how to step off a cliff and fly. I really want Cryssie to fly.
Good deed no. 279.
Friday, 7 October
Living where we do at the end of a row of holiday cottages, we have taken on the role of sometime caretaker. There are definitely times I feel like a Parisian, black-clothed, bow-legged Madame Concierge who spends her time sweeping the foyer with a broom and spying on her more glamorous neighbours. Tonight, my eldest came up to the bedroom and said that Stephanie’s husband wanted to watch the England match on our big TV and, if he was watching it, would it be OK if my eldest and his brother watched the first half with him? Usually that would be all right, but tonight it wasn’t. It was Friday evening, I had had a long week, and I wanted to slump on the sofa in front of a roaring fire and watch classic comedy repeats and drink wine, but by the time I got down, my husband had gone round to tell him that of course it was no problem, he could watch football on our telly – it could be my good deed for the day. Bastard husband.
Good deed no. 280.
Saturday, 8 October
Cumberland and Westmorland wrestling is genuinely strange; p
erhaps it is the strip the wrestlers wear? White long johns, white vest and baggy velveteen pantaloons – as if they have climbed out of a black and white photograph and stepped blinking straight into a world of colour. The men stand chest to chest and rest their chin on the opponent’s right shoulder. They wrap their right arm under the left of the opponent and lock their hands together around his back. They lean into each other, legs akimbo, and try to smash their opponent into the ground. Occasionally, one chap tries to unbalance the other, and the one who is trying to avoid falling is forced to wrap a leg around his opponent and hop for a while. Occasionally, one swings the other around like a fairground attraction before throwing him into the mud and falling on top of him with a loud grunting noise. I checked the rules and they say that ‘the wrestlers are allowed to use every legitimate means to throw each other’, which was definitely the impression I got. The first one to break their hold, to go down or to end up under their opponent loses. Bit like life.
We spent the afternoon at the Alwinton Border Shepherds’ Show – the last country show of the season in the last English village before you get to Scotland. We watched the sheep judging and then we watched the terrier racing. What’s not to like about terrier racing? Small dogs chase a fox’s tail down the course, leaping over plastic pipes so high they occasionally turn somersaults, and all to win a rosette. We even won a second-place rosette of our own when they let the kids race and our eight-year-old stormed his way to the finish. I imagine him ancient, turning over his boy prizes in gnarled and withered hands, finding the blue silk rosette with the golden silhouette of a dog and struggling to recall the name of the dog we never had.
Good deed no. 281: helped the ladies putting away the chairs in the tea tent at a country show.
Sunday, 9 October
Good deed no. 282: donated £10 to my JustGiving page for the hospice.
Monday, 10 October
I’m completely into charity shops now, having seen the quality of what’s on offer in them. In the Salvation Army shop there was a Berketex coat, an Alexon dress, M&S, Dorothy Perkins, a lovely Clarice Cliff gravy boat, and a dinky apple-shaped honeypot. So I popped into the Cancer Research charity shop, where I found a £35 Mappin &Webb covered serving dish and a £12 tweed jacket in bright yellow and green and red and blue for autumn. The only problem with the jacket is I’ll stand out a mile to whoever has donated it. I’d have loved the dish – it would be like buying a family heirloom (Oh, this old thing, yes, Great-aunt Jemima left it to me) – but I didn’t have the money. I did get the jacket, though, instead of buying a new winter coat: win-win, I get a new jacket and a cancer charity gets £12.
Good deed no. 283.
Tuesday, 11 October
Had parents’ evening for the eight-year-old and my daughter. They are at a little village school which stands abutting a field where sheep graze – even with the little ones in early years, there’s only about fifty or so children at the school. Their academic reports were good, but what was even better was the fact the headteacher said my eight-year-old made a point of including younger or less able children in activities. They are training for a ‘World Cup’ tag rugby tournament and he’s captain of the ‘Ireland’ team. Some of the kids won’t pass the ball to a child they think will drop it. I’d have been that child, the child no one wanted to pass to, the one who fumbled and dropped the ball – any ball – and who stood there red-faced and trembling as team-mates all around groaned. The headteacher said my son had started moving the less able children down the line next to him so that he could pass the ball to them. ‘Without anyone telling him,’ she emphasized, and the child inside me cheered the Irish captain on.
I have been thinking a lot about children, maybe because the good deeds have brought me into contact with children which I wouldn’t otherwise have had. I’ve known Cryssie’s family for six years, but this year is the first time I have actually got to know Cryssie herself. I’ve ducked it before: it required too much investment of time and energy, it was easier to drink tea and talk to the grown-ups rather than sit down and concentrate on what the disabled child might have to say for herself. After all, what if you can’t get away again? What if you can’t catch what she is saying? What could she have to say that would interest me anyway? That was wrong. I had it wrong for six years – maybe longer. At university, Sophie used to take a disabled man swimming and to the pub afterwards. He’d be sitting in his wheelchair, his arms tight in spasm, jerking, flailing, his head turned, and he would be laughing at something my friend had said, something outrageous. I’d think, ‘How does she do that? How is she so easy with him? What does she see that I can’t?’ But she saw past his wheelchair and past her pity.
I harry my kids to pick up after themselves and accuse them of being idle. I shout at them to stop squabbling and accuse them of being spoiled – ‘spoiled rotten’. I fume when, mulish, they resent the extra homework I give them; accuse them of ‘not knowing you are born, mate’. Doubtless, I have messed them up over and over again, but I know I am lucky. And I know they are lucky too – for being whole, for being healthy, for being loved. I was trawling the Net wondering whether I should abandon my own children and work in an orphanage for a couple of weeks when I stumbled across a new Barnardo’s child sponsorship scheme. Barnardo’s is the UK’s largest children’s charity. I signed up to £15 a month and was allotted a child called ‘Julian’ and was the immediate recipient of a message from ‘Helen’, Julian’s support worker. (They change the names, but they are insistent these are real kids.) Apparently Julian is severely autistic, and before he went into Barnardo’s he needed two full-time carers to take him to and from school and look after him at home. When he got frustrated, anxious or over-stimulated, ‘he could have an outburst “out of the blue”. This could be frightening – especially as Julian is quite a big lad.’ According to Helen’s report, Julian’s communication skills have improved significantly since he moved into a Barnardo’s home, and he hasn’t had an outburst since last year. His parents visit him at the home. His favourite TV show is Countdown, he likes comics and chicken curry, his favourite sport is swimming and he enjoys SpongeBob and Teletubbies. I don’t know how old he is. That’s the second time today I wanted to cry.
Good deed no. 284.
THE VICTORIAN
Thomas Barnardo, born in Dublin in 1845, wanted to be a missionary and work in China. He never made it. While training in London as a doctor so that he could be all the more useful as a missionary, he was confronted daily by the poverty and squalor in which the city’s children were forced to live. A year after arriving in London, he set up a voluntary Sunday and night school in the East End offering a free basic education. But free or not, an education is a luxury to a child without a home. One night a shoeless, hatless and shirtless lad called Jim Jarvis stayed late at the Ragged School, hoping the ‘guv’nor’ might let him spend the night by the fire, but Barnardo told him to get home to his mother and father. The lad informed him he had neither, that he lived nowhere and had no friends. The boy was ten. That night, after Barnardo fed him, the boy showed him the homeless and destitute young sleeping on London’s roofs.
In 1870 Barnardo opened his first home for boys, going out into the night himself to find the destitute. By 1872, the shelter bore the sign ‘No destitute child ever refused admission’ after the death of an eleven-year-old called John Somers, nicknamed ‘Carrots’. Carrots had never known his father, and at seven his mother turned him adrift. Promised a bed in the home in a week’s time, the boy died from exposure and hunger on the streets before Barnardo could make good that promise.
Barnardo’s has moved away from children’s homes in recent years. The charity now works through 800 different projects with more than 190,000 vulnerable children, young people and their families every year. ‘Julian’ is just one of them.
Wednesday, 12 October
Karma took her time but finally came good. I signed up to do the online National Lottery last night on the grounds
that if I won anything, I’d give half away to family and friends and good causes. And when I checked it this morning, I’d won – all of £5.90 in the EuroMillions draw. Which means I owe £2.95 to charity. I hope they won’t spend it all at once.
Good deed no. 285: put £3 lottery winnings into a jam jar.
Thursday, 13 October
Still can’t decide whether Cryssie’s learning difficulties are an impediment to her imagination. I’d asked her to write a story about a girl whose mother was a pirate, and she came up with one solitary page. Admittedly it had a fantastic start about the girl having a magic key and ending up on a pirate ship. The only problem was that it came straight out of the Biff and Chip scheme that kids are taught to read with. I talked it through with her mum and dad when they came to pick her up, and I don’t think any of us can decide the extent of Cryssie’s ability to think visually because she is obviously going to say yes to the questions we ask her:
A Year of Doing Good Page 24
