Amy's homemade heart cake

http://www.sportrelief.com/whats-on/tv-listings/the-great-sport-relief-bake-off

And then there was this fantastically sweet story in the Mail about a woman, Cath Webb, who decided to bake one Victoria Sponge a day and give it away to cheer someone up:

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-2084478/Good-Samaritan-Teacher-plans-bake-cake-day-year.html

In the nine months since she started she’s baked for everyone from family and friends to hospital wards and the homeless.

I’ve no doubt her cakes have gone down a storm and put a smile on many faces. But what really impressed me about this story was that Cath has had the courage to share what she’s doing. That can’t have been easy, which was something I was discussing with a friend yesterday.

Our instinct is to keep our heads down. Not to make a fuss. And certainly not to seek attention or praise for the things we do well or the good that we do.

And yet, and yet…if we don’t share by example then there is no chance at all that we might influence one other person to be a little kinder themselves. It is by giving of ourselves that we give permission to others to do the same.

Marianne Williamson’s wonderfully wise words from A Return to Love came to mind as we discussed our own fear of standing out. Of seeing in someone’s eyes the thought ‘who does she think she is?’

“There is nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won’t feel insecure around you.” is what Williamson wrote.

It’s one thing being kind for charity if you are a ‘celebrity’ (which is not to downplay the fact that those who were featured gave up two days to work for nothing.)

For the Cath Webbs of this world, as for us, the recipe is more complicated: along with kindness we need to mix in courage and commitment – trusting that by putting ourselves out there the impact on others may be greater still.

The season of giving indeed (unless you’re waiting for someone to vacate a parking space in which case you’ll see there are plenty of others – with faster foot action on the accelerator – who are willing to take).

After much pondering on the political, social and economic upheaval of this most topsy turvy year I had already begun to dust off this neglected site and start planning some more forays into acts of kindness. You’ll be reading more on this very shortly.

In the meantime I spotted and had to share an article from the Huffington Post* which begins with a simple statement whose truth hit me with all the force of something familiar and yet forgotten: money doesn’t bring happiness; giving does. And that’s official.

What I love most about this article is its examples, which really drive home relative value: amongst a whole lot of Xmas spending I could but won’t share with you I recently paid £19.99 for a tea towel for a dear friend. (I know, I know: there is so much wrong with this statement I hardly know where to start. A tea towel? For a Xmas present? And one costing twenty quid; yee gods. In my defence it is shocking pink, and carries a hand-drawn picture of a place that is special to us both. Plus it’s great fun and will be a talking point in her kitchen. Still – a TEA TOWEL?)

Never mind the wisdom of my choice; you can leave me to rescue the friendship. The point I want to make – and which Michaela Haas makes so well in her post – is that the £10-20 I routinely spend on each of my friends at this time of year could fund two years of education for someone in India, or provide the materials for someone to start their own business, become self sufficient, and entirely transform lives.

I love giving gifts. I even like getting them. But I’m grateful for the reminder that there are a few friends – whose names I don’t even know – who I’ve forgotten to add to my gift list.

As for any friends whose names are on the list and who happen to be reading this, apologies in advance if when you tear the paper on Xmas day you’ve got the tea towel. It really isn’t just any other tea towel you know….

* I’ve obviously been away too long as every attempt to embed the link to the article has failed. So while I investigate whether I need to upgrade software or whatever, I have to ask you to cut and paste this into your browser to read said article

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/michaela-haas/charity-education-girls_b_1136700.html

Since one of the seven themes running through the book is ‘giving’ you’ll see I haven’t given up on kindness – and if you’re feeling kindly towards me I’d love to see you over on my new blog, which you’ll find here http://www.bestyear.co.uk/site/index.php/site/blog/

only fools and students...yes, I drove one of these once

Talk about rubbing salt in the wound. For 35 years I’ve driven an assortment of old bangers the length and breadth of Britain without once being caught speeding. And in the same week my record attempt is dashed by the arrival of one of those stern official envelopes from the Fixed Penalty Support Unit I read of a 99 year old man named as the UK’s safest driver for not getting a ticket in 84 years on the road.

Oh well. I’m happy to let Mr George Geeson have his five minutes in the spotlight. He deserves it, not just for his ‘safety first’ maxim, but for being old enough to be able to boast that his first car was  a Model T Ford. How cool is that?

And I deserve my speeding ticket, for as surely as traffic lights turn red the moment we approach them, I confess I have  never been a slave to the speed limit.

road sense

It turns out that while I’ve been smugly crowing about my clean sheet, everyone else I know has been racking up points like  Tesco shoppers. Indeed, some of the tales I’ve heard make my 37mph on a deserted Watling Street at 7.30am on a Sunday morning sound positively pedestrian.

But getting the ticket did set me thinking what a thankless task it must be, sitting in the FPSU (there’s catchy!)  grinding out thousands of letters that you know are going to ruin the recipient’s day.

I wonder if dealing daily with calls from Mr and Ms Angry has worn them as thin as an illegal tyre, or whether they still get some job satisfaction from the thought that every ticket they send just may have a tiny impact on our fast-forward-world. That occasionally it may just make someone pause for thought about the effects of speed, and the fact that every morning when they jump into their car they’re putting themselves in charge of a dangerous weapon?

I don’t want to come across as po-faced about this but the older I get, the more I’m inclined to agree with gorgeous George that, when it comes to the roads, safety comes first. And not just my safety but the safety of all the pedestrians I pass, preoccupied like me with all the things they’re hoping to do that day and therefore not necessarily paying attention to what’s going on around them.

a small thank you

So there’s a subtext to today’s act of kindness, parcelling up a box of Marks and Spencer chocolates to send anonymously (for fear they may think I’m trying to bribe my way out of trouble) to the FPSU as a thank you for doing a thankless task.

And that’s my growing sense of gratitude at having been caught, and reminded that I am not in a hurry to get my life over with.

I’m a bit worried it’ll end up in the bin without being opened. It’s possible  their soft centres have been hardened by the treatment they get from the public and fear of being poisoned will prevent them taking a risk with M&S’s finest. The best I can do is enclose a note explaining this is a genuine thank you from a sorry speeder.

In praise of slow

Meanwhile, I can now see where I went wrong. Take a look at the list of cars our careful record holder has owned. Hard to speed in a Ford Anglia and even in the 80s owning an Austin Maxi condemmed you to only venturing out after dark for fear of being caught committing a crime against car-style.  My first car was a black Morris Minor with a split windscreen and a top speed 20 miles under the national speed limit. From there I graduated to a three-wheeler Reliant whose power, like its’ street cred, had been by-passed. If I’d stuck with those cars I’d still be tootling along in the slow lane – instead of being captured on police video, singing my heart out along with ‘Good Morning Sunday’ and failing to spot that the higher the notes, the faster my speedo was rising.

The first time I tried was in the early ’90s when there were more stories about HIV/AIDS than the X-factor in the papers and no enthusiasm for donors whose blood had ever darkened the Dark Continent.

By the end of the 90s the mention of Africa no longer sent the NHS screaming into a corner and my 10-year conviction for having been there was allowed to drop off my donor licence. Sadly, one glimpse into the lecture theatre where prostrate bodies lay hooked up to lines and bags bulging with the red stuff, like a field hospital from the Crimea, and the blood drained right out of me. My second attempt ended with smelling salts, which was pretty much par for the course. I’m someone who passed out so regularly during school biology lessons they banned me from sitting on those wooden lab stools and installed a beanbag so I didn’t have so far to fall.

The spirit was willing but the flesh was oh, so ridiculously squeamish.

blood banking on friends

Then came an email from a friend still reeling from the news that her father, young, fit and 11,000 miles away in Australia, had been admitted to hospital with minor chest pains and rapidly transfered by helicopter to a special unit for a quintuple heart by-pass. Pre-empting all the ‘if-there-is-anything-I-can-do’ responses her message ended with the following appeal:

“Please give blood. It’s largely painless, you get a mars bar at the end and you could literally be saving someone’s life. It’s particularly healthy for your own heart as it’s meant to lower your iron count, and an excess iron count can lead to heart disease. It’s also a complete credit crunch donation – costs you nothing, yet you get the warm buzz of being able to contribute positively to the social fabric.”

It was time to test that third time lucky saying…

personal services

I’m going to pass over the details of the paperwork to be completed in advance. Not that it was long or complicated or anything. Just a tad, shall we say, personal (in the sense shops use the term to mean anything concerned with matters below the waist and above the visible panty line).

And to note in passing that Africa is now SO last decade. It’s South America, indelibly linked with Swine Flu thanks to this year’s media obssession, that now sets alarm bells ringing at the Blood Donor clinic  – or  ’the bleed’ as I heard the staff rather unnervingly refer to it among themselves.

I was shown first to a row of chairs and asked to have a big drink and read the small print. Unfortunately, my appointment letter hadn’t mentioned it helps speed the bleed – and recovery – if you drink copious amounts of water ahead of donating. Thanks to a Starbucks voucher in that day’s Guardian my blood was almost pure Americano (presumably making it a pefect match for any sick journalists).

Next I was led behind a screen so a nurse could check my paperwork. It wasn’t entirely in order: in my haste to demonstrate what a healthy, clean-living type I now am I’d answered the men’s questions as well as the women’s.

The nurse looked up at me just a little sternly: “You did read these statements before ticking them didn’t you?”

more in the same vein

A small sample of blood taken for testing, then another nurse brought me to one of a half dozen beds set out in a circle in the middle of the room. It all looked quite convivial – more campfire than circled wagons – and once a third nurse and I had established that I am squeamish and might be there to give blood but best not to mention it or let me see anything ressembling blood, I was hooked up to one of the machines, good to go.

It was all pretty painless, took less than 10 minutes, and though I did get my usual touch of the vapours at the end it was nothing three more cups of water couldn’t put right. Which is pretty amazing considering what brilliant stuff blood is.

Among the things I learned are:

• that the NHS gets great value from each donation because the blood breaks down into red cells, platelets and plasma which are all vital for treating certain conditions
• that 53% of all donations go to help people being treated for cancer, leukaemia, sickle cell disease and similar conditions; it never occurred to me before, when I’ve been wanting to support friends and relatives with cancer, that becoming a blood donor is a fantastic way of giving active support
• and that only 5 percent of those who can give blood do so.

local heroes

In the months I’ve been experimenting with acts of kindness this was one of the best experience I’ve had. Of course it helped that the lovely staff got all excited to be bleeding a ‘first-timer’ and made a point of thanking and congratulating me at every stage along the way. (A Mars Bar afterwards would have helped even more but perhaps it’s only the Aussies who know what comfort there is in chocolate; in austere Britain it’s Rich Tea all round.)

But sugar rushes aside,  the 40 minutes  I spent at a community centre in Newport Pagnell were an embodiment of what this blog is all about: anonymous acts of giving, where what is in my heart, my intention,  counts for more than how much I spend or what, if any, thanks or reward I get. 

Three months ago a friend was found to have pancreatic cancer – one of the cancers that causes people to speak in an even more hushed tone than usual. The good news was the doctors decided it was worth operating on and after eight long hours under the surgeon’s knife he’s sufficiently recovered to enjoy whipping up his shirt to show off the pyramid-shaped scar cutting his chest in half.

 The fact that he’s in a position to turn my stomach at all is down to a dozen people who gave up their time to attend a bleed.

I’ll never know how and where and who my small donation will help. But what I do know is that I won’t have to feel quite the same degree of helplessness next time I hear of a friend’s cancer, pass the shocking evidence of an accident as I whizz up the motorway, or switch on the news to more tales of distress and disaster.

Perhaps it’s time to wear the badge of a bleeding heart liberal with pride?

links

National Blood Service  Do It!

And while we’re at: organ donation at The Wall of Life

Let me explain. One of the joys of Twitter is linking up with the kind of people you’d never meet in the normal run of things. A few weeks ago I got a message  saying my tweets were being followed by @stopsleyvicar.

Intrigued, not just at the thought that a vicar might find my views interesting, but by the coincidence of him being based in the part of Luton where I spent the first 12 years of my life, I decided to follow him back.

Since when I’ve been tickled by his efforts to get his creative juices flowing for sermon writing by playing heavy rock; enjoyed his real-time updates as he listened to the Bishop of St Albans speak about making Christianity relevant today; followed his outing to see Mott the Hoople at Hammersmith, and been reminded that this is the time of year when churchgoers everywhere raid their cupboards and veggie patches to put together a harvest offering.

basket cases

How the memories came flooding back, pressing parents to spare a tin of pink salmon or bake a fruit cake to give the shoebox covered in crepe paper a bit more class. All the time knowing that Karen Greenham’s basket overflowing with goodies from Sainsbury’s – the rest of us Stopsleyites shopped at Bishops beneath a concrete monstrosity called Jansel House - would get centre stage at the harvest festival service like it did every year.

It’s no good telling an eight year old that it’s the thought that counts.

Still. I always loved making up a basket and loved the service even more, entranced by each year’s bumper display of fat marrows, perfect carrots, gleaming tins and, best of all,  harvest bread: a perfectly reproduced sheaf of corn complete with field mouse, all glazed to the colour of caramel.

season of mellow fruitfulness

Half a lifetime later I love autumn even more. Not only  have I joined the ranks of folk with soil beneath their nails and homegrown vegetables on their dinner tables (but please, no more runner beans). I’m also lucky enough to have moved from Stopsley to a new city which could rival New England for autumn colour: 20 million trees in Milton Keynes and every single one of them a slightly different shade of fire.

Once I started reading my Stopsley vicar’s messages about harvest festival I wanted to be a part of it again. I wanted the pleasure of packaging up a surprise basket for a stranger, selecting a few treats to hide in among the staples, adding some of my own harvestings from the veggie patch and allotment: plum jam, golden pumpkin and apples fat as footballs.

I wanted to imagine the smile on someone’s face when they received it. Above all, I wanted to say thank you in a very small way for being able to enjoy autumn and growing, picking and eating my own produce. Forget what I said about the runner bean glut a moment ago. I can always go back onto the internet to find a recipe for runner bean chutney, roast runner beans or even bean wine (though if it’s anything like the homemade brussel sprout wine an enterprising neighbour brewed up, the suspiciously green colour will put anyone off drinking it).

closed for business

Talking of suspicious, it wasn’t quite as easy to find a home for my beautiful wicker basket as I’d hoped. The first two churches I tried were locked, and, like them sadly, I had no confidence that if I left my gift outside it would still be there in the morning.

But I recalled walking around Willen with some friends and calling in on St Mary Magdalene, which off the back of a tenuous Christopher Wren connection keeps its doors open to tourists, and was able to leave my basket there, with a note of gratitude.

In a few days someone will be enjoying my pumpkin, swiss chocolates, organic red wine…and the inevitable can of baked beans.

Mind you, I’m certain that somewhere Karen Greenham is browsing the shelves of Waitrose, selecting extra virgin olive oil, macademia stuffed dates and Scottish heather honey for this year’s centrepiece basket.