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.
How a stranger provided the cure for post-holiday blues September 7, 2009
Posted by Jane Matthews in acts of kindness.Tags: Kindness, Luton Airport, queues, random acts of kindness
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photo by http://www.flickr.com/photos/special/
Arriving back in the UK after two weeks in Andalucia was never going to be the highlight of my summer.
I guess everyone’s familiar with the post-break slump that follows a return to the desk/office/washing/plunging temperatures, as inescapably as peeling skin accompanies our first tentative exposure to holiday sun.
Still, I usually manage to hang on that lazy post-holiday glow for at least a couple of days beyond the baggage hall.
Not this year, though. First off, no-one at Luton airport could be bothered with crowd control, as a result of which we stood in a passport queue for more than half an hour as each new arrival disgorged another 300 passengers into the middle of the existing line. It was the first time I’ve looked at the non-EEC-passport huddle, getting their hostile grilling about what conceivable reason they might have for wanting to come to the UK, with something akin to envy.
free-for-all
Passport control wasn’t the only bit of Britain that wasn’t working. The airport’s introduced a mean£1 drop-off charge so rather than spend the money the bus to the ‘airpark’ stops just outside Bedford: at least that’s how it felt, trundling heavy cases through crowds, traffic and up and down curbs.
There was a bus at the stop but its’ doors were resolutely shut, even though the crowd of waiting passengers was already quite large. More were arriving all the time, and so was the rain, carried on ferocious gusts of wind that drove us all deeper and deeper into a shelter designed for three or four at most.
It goes without saying that almost everyone pushing and shoving to claim their inch of shelter was wearing tee shirt and shorts with gooseflesh like the serrated rows on a cheese grater (an annual display that proves the British are not quite the pessimists the rest of the world believes, for why else would blind faith in high temperatures overrule decades of experience that says whatever the weather we’ve left behind, the skies over the airport will be wet and cold).
act of kindness
It had been 90 minutes since we landed and in all that time I hadn’t stopped chuntering about everything that was wrong. I was also working myself up into having an even bigger rant about the newcomers still arriving at our bus-stop. So what if the crowd was now so large they were forced to stand in the rain? I could see they were in a far better position to secure a place on the next bus, whenever it chose to show up.
In that way we have of awfulising situations, my mind was already 10 minutes ahead of itself, and all these selfish folk had shoved those of us who’d been waiting longest to one side and nabbed all the space in the bus so we were left behind for a second time.
Aaargh!
I would have carried on stewing for another 90 minues – for the rest of the day, indeed. But for a small scene played out beside me, where one couple – wearing fewer clothes than the average swimsuit model – shivered as gloomily as me.
Behind the bus stop a car skidded to a halt, a man jumped out, opened his boot and fished out a large golfing umbrella. He darted over to the semi-nakeds and, with a large smile, shoved the umbrella at them, vanishing before they thawed out enough to thank him.
my Monica moment
This truly random act of kindness acted like an emergency brake on the roller coaster of my sulky sountrack. It reminded me, ironically, that I’m the author of a blog dedicated to exploring how it feels to be someone nicer, and what I’v been learning about how focusing on others, on kindness and gratitude and the good in me, is proving to be an antidote to the negativity to which I seem to have been prone all my life.
Strangely, it also brought to mind the episode of Friends, where Monica and Chandler are on honeymoon and beaten to all the upgrades by another couple. Increasingly glum and angry, they finally confront the other pair who look at them in amazement. They’re on honeymoon, for God’s sake: why would they such trivia bother them?
I’d just had two wonderful weeks on holiday, getting up and going to bed when I wanted, spending time with my family, enjoying great food, stupendous scenery and those fat paperbacks you only ever tackle during a summer break. What in the world did I have to complain about?
Today I put a spare umbrella in my own boot. Hell, I may even go and buy half a dozen from the market to keep somewhere handy so that I too can save a stranger from the rain. And, even more important perhaps, give an onlooker that moment’s pause for thought that saved me from myself, and becoming a victim of my own, self-induced, post-holiday-blues.
Someone Nicer in Starbucks August 2, 2009
Posted by Jane Matthews in acts of kindness.Tags: coffee, Kindness, pay it forward, random acts of kindness, Starbucks
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Truly, I need to do this more often. I mean get more practice, until I can be someone nicer without feeling like someone stupid. Without being overcome by that oh-so-British urge to stick my head in a paper bag and pretend it’s nothing to do with me.
Let me explain. I’d been thinking how most of my recent posts had been a little more, well, impersonal. Doing good without appearing to do so, so there’d be no awkwardness on either side.
Which wasn’t my original intention, if you remember. I wanted this project to take me outside my comfort zone. Which meant it was time to up the ante on myself a little: feel the awkwardness and do it anyway.
pay it backwards
Coincidentally I’d been reading about a spate of random acts of kindness in the US. Apparently Starbucks‘ customers have been ‘paying it backwards’ by paying ahead for the next customer’s drink – thereby encouraging that customer to pay it forward (still with me?) by doing the same for the person after them.
One barista claims to have witnessed a chain of five pay it backward/forwards (though the blogger reporting this is, you’ll see, adding his own large pinch of salt to this coffee story – could Starbucks possibly be brewing this one up themselves for the PR?)
So, Starbucks it would be, even though I already knew it would be a stretch. I’ve never been in a Starbucks where there isn’t a big queue breathing down my neck. How would I pay for the next person in line without them overhearing and perhaps feeling awkward about it?
indecision
As it turned out, not being overheard was only one of a string of logistical problems.
As I approached the counter I thought how will I know which drink the next in line wants and therefore how much to pay?
What if it was a whole family? Would I then look mean if I only paid for one drink?
And the other thing about Starbucks, it takes a while for your own drink to come. Was it a problem that I’d still be hanging around when my ‘victim’ joined me for the waiting game…
Aargh!
and more indecision
This all led to a little bit of lurking, suspicious enough, I’ve no doubt, for the store’s security cameras to be trained on me while I stepped forward and ducked back every time another large gaggle of friends approached the counter.
There are limits to my purse, sadly, if not my kindness.
Then, bingo, I overheard a teenage lad and his father, discussing whether there was time to queue for a drink. “I’m in a hurry,” the dad said testily. “We can’t stop to drink it here. What do you want?”
OK. So perhaps paying for his son’s drink would soothe this guy’s agitation a fraction. I continued eavesdropping while I waited to be served, mentally trying to calculate how much to put behind the till as the son announced he wanted a caramel macchiato, then changed his mind to a frappuccino, then back to a different sort of macchiato, then something with cream on the top…
hissing and pounding
It was my turn. I ordered my usual tall black americano – to take away. ”Anything else?”
My heart was going faster than a washing machine on the spin cycle. “Yes”.
The barista looked startled. Somehow, my yes had come out sounding more like ‘get stuffed’.
I leaned towards her, hissing: “Can you take another £2.50 towards the next customer’s drink?”
“Sorry”, she shouted at the top of her voice, “I didn’t catch that”.
make that a meal
To add to my difficulties, testy father and thirsty son now had the nerve to change their minds entirely. I could hear them agreeing that not only were they both going to order drinks, they were going to eat too!
For heaven’s sake: my couple of quid wasn’t even going to be noticed by the time they’d clocked up for two drinks, two packs of sandwiches and two buns.
Just the same, I repeated that I wanted to pay extra on my bill towards theirs.
Then I scuttled off to wait for my Americano, praying it would be served before the two spendthrifts caught up with me, unsure whether I wanted them to know it was me and acknowledge my (by now) tiny contribution, or simply note it in the spirit of a random act of kindness from a nameless stranger. It was, and they didn’t.
conscious kindness
But here’s the thing. The more I’ve thought about it, the more I think I should have turned to the duo and said, with a smile on my face and certainty in my voice, “I would like to buy you both a drink and I’ve given the barista some money to pay for it. I hope that’s OK?”
That would have made it human. That would have turned something nice-but-odd into a gift. That would have reminded us all that a part of what we’re here to do on this planet is to connect, make life a little better for each other, make a messy and confusing world - momentarily – appear a little less random.
I really want to know what you think about this. My sense is that there’s more power in kindness when it’s no longer an anonymous act but offered openly, not in any spirit of expectation, of wanting anything back, but absolutely from the heart. (And as I write that I don’t underestimate how big a challenge that is.)
So once again I feel a sense of a job half done. That I need to return and try again, and this time be honest about what I’m doing – rather than be a lurking, whispering oddball looking for answers at the bottom of a cup of coffee.
It feels positive to have realised this, and there are two more positives to report. I left the shop feeling great: lighter, taller, and a pleased with myself for being brave enough to follow through.
On my way home I popped into the co-op to buy coke for my teenage son and, on a whim, picked up an instant scratchcard which won £6. Enough to pay for my coffee and whichever creamy concoction that teenager opted for in the end.
Pay it forward at work, d’you think?
