Runner beans, the vicar, and me October 8, 2009
Posted by Jane Matthews in acts of kindness.Tags: autumn colour, harvest festival, Kindness, Milton Keynes, random acts of kindness, stopsley, vicar
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It was all the vicar’s doing.
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.
Lessons from a book-signing July 27, 2009
Posted by Jane Matthews in acts of kindness.Tags: acts of kindness, Borders, Jordan, Katie Price, Kindness, Lindsey Davis, Milton Keynes
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And this is the other way to sell books in Borders - courtesy of Jordan
Life was a lot cheaper when teenage daughter worked in a card shop. Ever since she got a job at Borders I’ve found myself ‘accidentally’ turning up to collect her 10 minutes early. Which leaves me no option but to have a browse.
I may be single-handedly keeping the Milton Keynes store afloat.
Every so often I see the displays have been shoved a little to the side to make way for an author signing.
embarrassment
Ah, what potential for embarrassment. Unless the author behind the teetering pile of books is a) a celebrity chef or gardener b) the writer of a hugely successful sci-fi series, or c) Jordan (before she became a pariah for ditching Peter Andre) the customers will dodge past pretending not to have seen them.
The author – who assumed all they needed to do to sell their masterpiece was to turn up – will eventually settle for adopting an expression of indifference and pray for a power cut so they can leave early.
Before you ask, no, I’ve never done one. But I know I’ll need to when my next book appears in 2010 because publishers now expect it. In an era where selling one thousand books is considered acceptable, the dozen or more you might shift at a signing represents a useful contribution.
Not that I’ve ever seen anyone who wasn’t already a celeb shift a dozen books at a signing. I’ve never actually seen anyone sell a single book (though I have seen people fall over trying to avoid getting within hailing range of the desperate author behind the books).
I suppose this means I have a vested interest, but I’d like to think it was a desire to be kind (and to compensate for the many, many times I was the one doing the avoiding) that led me to Borders this Sunday, specifically to attend an author signing.
It’s been in my mind to do this for a while so I would have gone whatever the book’s subject. I’m sure I know someone to whom I could pass on the Clubber’s Guide to Bognor Regis or How to make art from nail clippings.
touching
But as it turned out the writer doing the signing had come up with her own personal take on the Milton Keynes story: Touching the Heart of Milton Keynes, so I had a personal and professional interest on top of my mission to be nice.
What was interesting was that Borders themselves seem to have got a little wiser and had moved the signing table to a spot near the door where it was virtually impossible to miss the book and author Susan Popoola, who’d printed off hundreds of bookmarks to hand out as a means of starting conversations with her potential customers.
She’d also, she told me, mugged up on how to have a successful signing and learned you should never sit down (unless like Lindsey Davis, who I saw talk in St Albans, you know it’s going to take you two hours to get to the end of the queue of loyal fans).
Apparently it helps if you can enlist friends to turn up at intervals and be interested customers. Nothing attracts a crowd like a crowd.
And you need to use every conceivable network to tell people about the signing so that when they stumble across it they’re less inclined to slip into that anxious frame of mind that we all adopt when we’re not sure what we’re being approached about. Sort of like when my son asks ’will you do something for me?’ and I’m expected to answer without knowing what something is – though it’s a fair bet it will involve money changing hands.
bestseller
I wasn’t the only one who stopped to talk to Susan about her self-published book. In the five minutes I spent chatting to her I saw three other customers pick one up, and several people hovering, presumably waiting to get their’s signed.
Today I discovered through her Twitter stream that her book was the bestseller at Borders MK over the weekend.
It turns out she didn’t really need my act of kindness, or certainly not as much as all those other authors I’ve avoided in the past.
This is one of those occasions where it’s me that’s benefitted most from being someone nicer. Not only have I learned some valuable lessons that will one day help me shift books at my signings.
I’m feeling eversos slightly less scared at the prospect of putting myself on the line by taking my book out to sell.
Thanks, Susan, for a powerful lesson in facing your fear and doing it anyway.
Teacher in Wolf’s Clothing? May 29, 2009
Posted by Jane Matthews in Uncategorized.Tags: Big Issue, homeless, Milton Keynes, milton keynes community foundation, MK Dons, tattoo, Wolf Man, Wolfie
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Ernest, Big Issue seller and Wolf Man of Milton Keynes
Oh joy! Another Big Issue seller. And this time I’m nowhere near Tesco, but heading back from some trustee duty stuff at Milton Keynes Community Foundation.
I have my money out at 200 paces, and the £2 coin is still changing hands as I blurt out “Got many left to sell?” – thinking this time I’ll be brave and offer to take them all off his hands.
Only this Big Issue seller grins when he replies. “Oh yes, plenty.” And I realise I’ve got it wrong again. He wants to be here. This guy is pleased to have a reason to stop and chat to the occasional Suit, dashing up the city for an M&S sandwich.
So instead of offering him money to go away I stop to talk.
celebrity
Blow me! It turns out I’ve stumbled on a celebrity Big Issue seller. My new (toothless) friend might be sleeping out under the stalls in the marketplace and selling the magazine for beer money. But once a fortnight, during the football season, he puts on a wolf’s head and prowls the line at the MK Dons’ football stadium. He tells me his real name’s Ernest but he’s known to thousands as Wolfie. He’s even on YouTube. And probably loads of fanzines because he’s got the Dons’ logo tattooed across his forehead. Apparently, he got fed up wearing the logo on a woolly hat.
We chat about the fact that the Dons let him into matches for free. That Wolfie would rather sleep rough in Milton Keynes where he can still follow his team, than do what the local council suggest and head back to his home city of Birmingham where he’d get onto the housing list. In any case, he doesn’t think after all these years on the streets he could sleep indoors again, he says. It would kill him.
But sleeping rough is hazardous. While he’s crashed out his stuff gets nicked, and there was the time some late nighters laid into him with a baseball bat.
toothless
Wolfie is also a poet and musician, he tells me, and to prove it launches into an energetic rap: his life story told in a series of staccato couplets.
To be honest, the lack of teeth make it hard to follow.
But every so often there’s a hand gesture directed at the forces of law, order and clean streets which I can understand: payback for hassling Wolfie about his life choices.
Milton Keynes’ own Smiling Man?
What a reward for spending £2. I’ve accidentally stumbled on someone who represents exactly what I mean when I talk about putting myself out there. Wolfie does it every day, hard knocks and all. I have no idea if he’s happy; whether I’ve just caught him on a good day; whether he’s just making the best of a bad job. Or if this really is who he is and how he is.
But I do know that he never once stopped grinning while he was talking to me.
And that afterwards I felt like I was the one who’d benefitted from someone being kind to them. Funny that…
