A Year of Doing Good

by Judith O'Reilly

  Good deed no. 158.

  Wednesday, 8 June

  Another school assembly at another school. My daughter came with me because she was so disappointed she didn’t get to see me yesterday at her own school. She sat like a mouse at the end of the front row, and butterflies unfurled themselves from chrysalises in my tummy and flew round and round at the thought of her watching me. This time I made more than a hundred jam sandwiches; mid-presentation, I asked who would like a jam sandwich and they all stuck their hands up, so I carefully jammed a piece of bread and picked out a child to give it to. I looked at the few pieces of bread I had carefully left out, asked who else would like a jam sandwich and they stuck up their hands again; I gave another lad a jam sandwich and they all sighed with longing and disappointment. I said that luckily I had made some more earlier, and hauled out three enormous plates of jam sandwiches. Everyone laughed and cheered, but when I smugly handed the plates to the teachers to give them out, one of the teachers suddenly shook his head and said the children had better wash their hands first and wait till after lunch to eat them. I just about resisted saying, ‘You’re kidding, right?’ But he wasn’t. The poor kids watched with big round eyes as the three plates of jam sandwiches were put to one side and then watched me sorrowfully as I wound up the talk. Bet nobody ever sabotages Bill Gates or Al Gore when they’re doing their big presentations. And I bet those kids don’t get to eat those sandwiches either.

  Good deed no. 159.

  Thursday, 9 June

  Launch date. Big splash in the Northumberland Gazette. Even better, the photo of me on page two is blurry. Result.

  Ferociously busy day. The middle school were walking along the coast with their home-made Jam Jar Army banner and I went down to see them get medals from the hospice girls to thank them for their efforts. They even gave me one, which was nice – I’m too superstitious to wear it, though – maybe I will hang it round my neck if we actually make the £10k, and maybe, if we don’t, I’ll just hang myself with it. The kids seemed delighted with their medals and just as pleased with the chocolate ice cream I brought along as my thank you. I had to leave someone else to serve it because I had to drive down to Newcastle to do a radio interview to mark the launch. The interview was definitely my good deed. I was so nervous, I was virtually hyperventilating. I have spent so many years asking tough questions as a journalist that I am now almost catatonic with nerves by the time I do a broadcast interview and have to actually answer someone else’s.

  Good deed no. 160.

  Friday, 10 June

  I dropped off doughnuts at the Gazette office to say thanks for the way they handled the launch of the Jam Jar Army yesterday (doubled up as my good deed), and had a sit-down with their young reporter who is in charge of appeal stories. He did a degree at Durham, his masters at Sunderland University in journalism and has been with the paper since he finished his masters last July. He is probably twenty-two, which means I could be his mother. When does that suddenly happen? When do you suddenly become everybody’s mother?

  After I dropped off the doughnuts, I crashed and burned and went back to bed. It has been a hell of a week:

  My daughter got sick.

  I did two presentations to two schools, including preparation (and making a shedload of jam sandwiches).

  The Jam Jar Army was launched.

  And I had to go down to Newcastle for the radio interview and then teach the blog course (which entailed an hour’s drive down there, the radio interview, an hour’s pre-meeting before the blog course, two hours’ teaching and an hour’s drive back).

  Of course, Al was away in London throughout.

  I really should capitalize on the launch, and I had a list as long as my arm of things I should have done today. Instead I crawled into bed and stayed there till lunchtime. I am not a saint. I wonder if people reading the Gazette will think that I think I’m a do-gooder? Is it really middle class to exhort everyone to ‘do their bit’ and ‘pull together’ – it is, isn’t it? I never realized it was. Am I about to come across as some middle-class, patronizing whatsit when that is actually what I am trying to get away from? Fund-raisers in ball gowns and grand auctions and gold credit cards.

  A friend at school who used to be a council leader round here asked me what I was busy with the other day, so I told her and she got it straight away when I said I could have made more money climbing Mount Kilimanjaro and getting a few mates to sponsor me. She said, ‘Yes, but you’re trying to engage people, aren’t you?’ And I said, ‘Yes. Big mistake.’ Why didn’t I just climb Kilimanjaro? OK, I’d have had to do some training, and there’d have been a bit of preparation like buying a Thermos flask and a woolly hat. There’s a chance my mates would have rolled their eyes when I emailed round my JustGiving page details, and when I droned on for the next three years about how I-haven’t-recovered-feeling-in-my-little-toe-after-the-frostbite-but-it-was-worth-it-for-the-view-from-the-top-which-made-me-feel-like-I-was-entirely-insignificant-but-somehow-fundamentally-‘connected’-to-the-bigger-picture. As it is, this Jam Jar Army thing could quite clearly eat up my entire life if I let it. I wouldn’t actually mind letting it, but for the small matter of three kids, husband, elderly parents, house to keep, need to earn money, desire to write books and the fact I’m committed to doing a good fucking deed every fucking day.

  Good deed no. 161.

  Saturday, 11 June

  Youngest son’s first Communion class. During the parents’ preparation, the TV preacher on one of the videos we have to watch spoke about how basic it is to eat with people. How it’s one of the first things we say to someone when we are getting to know them and we want to know them better – come round to eat with me. And how eating together as a family or with friends is almost sacred, a celebration of love, and that Communion is an extension of that – a way of saying Jesus Christ is with me. We were allowed to comment during the breaks in the sermon this time (I’m guessing because I fed back to the nice catechist that this should be more of a conversation and less of sit there and listen to the TV preacher and then listen to the priest). I said how valuable I had found that: it’s too easy to think of meals with the kids as being little more than catch-up and ketchup, a chore to get through before you move on to the chore of clearing up and washing up. Then one of the other parents – a dad this time – intervened to say they didn’t even have a kitchen table because they had decided they didn’t need one. That shocked me. They must eat on their knees. Maybe there’s a breakfast bar the kids eat at? I wanted to run out and buy them a table. I wanted to say, ‘You don’t know what you’re missing. Sit down and eat – together.’

  Good deed no. 162: made cups of tea for the mothers and fathers at the Communion class.

  Sunday, 12 June

  Brought tray-bake and crisps along for younger son’s football presentation. (I could have made a cake, but give me a break.) It took up the whole afternoon, but my younger son did at least walk away with three trophies. I have never won a trophy for anything sporty in my life. Nor have I ever won a medal or certificate – the medal from the hospice the other day is my first. The best I did in swimming was a certificate for three lengths – I never even got far enough to be trusted to come back up with a brick from the bottom of the swimming pool – so it is a constant source of wonder to me to have a child who triumphs on the field. I was proud of him, but I was prouder of his older brother, who loves football with a desperate passion and who watches while his younger brother picks up trophy after trophy and who never says a word other than ‘Well Done’ and ‘Good for you – you worked really hard for that’ and pats him on the back. And I know how very much he wants to hold that trophy and to score those goals, and I know too that his big brother’s golden words mean more to his little brother than all the silver-painted football boots in all the whole wide world.

  Good deed no. 163.

  Monday, 13 June

  A couple of months ago comedian Ricky Gervais ‘died’ as host to the Golden Globe
s; after Berwick High School, I know how he felt. I was due to speak at the Year 9 assembly of thirteen- and fourteen-year-olds. Around 180 teenagers sat slumped in their chairs in the hall. They had already sat through an in-house assembly on friendship after staff became convinced I might not show, or at least arrive too late for the assembly. I had 128 jam sandwiches wrapped in cling film ready for the kids (I hadn’t realized there would be so many of them, but I reasoned that 128 was safe enough because not everyone would want one; how right I was). I’m standing outside the hall ready to go in when the teacher with me suddenly announces that the 128 jam sandwiches aren’t a good idea. This potentially utterly wrecks the presentation. I am relying on the jam sandwiches as a way into the Jam Jar Army and because Sophie has assured me that if you are selling something (which I am), the best way to get someone to buy it is to give them something first (something like a jam sandwich). At the look of wild-eyed panic that moves across my face, she concedes I can give out one jam sandwich. I shake my head to clear my brain and start making rapid calculations about what I have left to say – which is basically, ‘Give me your money’ – and suddenly I’m on.

  I talk about me. I talk about emptying a jar of jam and filling it with cash. I talk about the Jam Jar Army, and the good cause that is the hospice. I ask whether anyone would like a jam sandwich, and there is silence. The teacher has said I can make one jam sandwich and give it to someone. Nobody – not one kid among the 180 kids – wants that jam sandwich. I am dying. I hold fast to my conviction that someone will crack – there is a jam sandwich and 180 teenagers – someone is going to be hungry. It turns into a war of wills. I offer it along the front row. It is made of soft white bread and bramble jelly. There are half a dozen girls in front of me, and I offer it to each. The girl at the end of the row is not a healthy eater. I move swiftly on: there is no way a fat lass is going to say yes to the jam sandwich, however much she wants it. The blond boy next to her is equally large. I have great hopes of this lad. He bulges out of his blazer, his sizeable thighs spread as he leans forward. He shakes his head. His friend shakes his head. The boy next to him shakes his head and I eye the tousled-headed boy at the end of the row with the final shreds of hope. He looks at me. He looks at the jam sandwich in my hand – the purple jam shyly peeking from its white and doughy hiding place. He shakes his head. Not one taker. The teacher tells me she’ll have one later. She says it out of pity. I shrug as if public humiliation was nothing new and say, ‘Well, I’ll have to eat it then,’ and take a bite. I contemplate making them wait until I have eaten every scrap. I contemplate chewing slowly but I am unconvinced the staff will let me get away with this, so I decide one bite will have to do. The bread and jam immediately and for all time sucker themselves to the roof of my mouth. I try to scrape the bite of sandwich off the roof of my mouth with my tongue and fail. One hundred and eighty adolescents watch my jaws contort with what might be their first spark of interest that morning as my tongue does battle with the bread and jam. I shrug for the second time as if I have not been engaged in a public battle of wills with 180 adolescents and lost and am not now engaged in a battle of wills with dough and losing that too.

  By the end of the assembly I have twenty-odd commitments from people (four of whom are staff) who claim they will start collecting in a jam jar at home. At £3 a jam jar, that is roughly £60. They troop out of the hall, leaving me humiliated and still the proud possessor of 128 jam sandwiches. I watch them go, and with my tongue finally prise the bread and jam from the roof of my mouth.

  Good deed no. 164.

  Tuesday, 14 June

  One of the worst things about yesterday’s humiliation was the sure and certain knowledge I’d have to come back today and do it all over again with Year 10. I decided against jam sandwiches. Instead, I boned up on some gen on giving and decided to blind them with fascinating facts about the super-rich – people like Roman Abramovich, the owner of Chelsea who is worth gazillions of pounds and has a super-yacht complete with a helicopter landing pad and a roof that opens to the stars in the master bedroom. After that, I planned to make the point that unfortunately we aren’t all multimillionaires, which is why the Jam Jar Army is such a good idea because it means we can all afford to give what we can at a time when we can afford to do it. I expected them to stop listening round about the moment I stopped talking about Roman Abramovich and started talking jam jars.

  To drive up to Berwick yesterday I had to drag in a neighbour who was up for a few days in her holiday cottage to see my eldest son onto the school bus, which allowed me to take the little ones to their school early. Last night, to complete my joyous day, both boys opted to take up projectile vomiting as a hobby. Unusually my husband was around, so he cleared up and I put one back to bed in our bed and slept with him while my husband camped out in the older boy’s bedroom. Going to Berwick this morning consisted of bringing in the expat to take my little girl to school, delaying Al’s plans to go down to London, and feeling very guilty at leaving him with two washed-out boys clutching plastic bowls who refused to budge from the TV on the grounds motion made them queasy.

  I rehearsed all the way up the A1, trying for a Jerry Maguire cocktail of engaging sincerity mixed with a large dose of inspirational charisma. By the time I arrived at the school gates I was almost plausible. I sat in the car for a minute or two, breathing deeply as I clutched the steering wheel – a vision of 180 ‘go on then, impress me’ adolescent faces swimming in front of my eyes.

  I’d parked in a disabled spot because I couldn’t see any visitor parking and I’m doing good deeds and I figured someone could cut me a break. I walked into the reception and the teacher who had witnessed my humiliation yesterday greeted me with the words ‘Bad news’. I figured she meant, ‘Bad news, you can’t park there.’ She didn’t. She meant, ‘Bad news, bit of a cock-up, your assembly is cancelled.’

  When I’m under a lot of pressure and have several zillion things I should be doing all running round my head screaming at the same time, sometimes I can’t speak. I have never met anyone else who does the same thing – till I met this woman. Her words ran into each other, so that I could scarcely follow what she was saying. The assembly was booked out for me – she pointed at a piece of paper stuck to the wall – but the Year 10 kids were busy with an exam. It went through my brain that the assembly the day before had been so bad, they had decided to effect a mercy killing on today’s, but she was so very apologetic that my ego and I opted to believe her. She’d rung home to tell me but I had left early in order to arrive in good time. She brought me up to the staffroom to meet the Year 10 teacher. I wheeled out my engaging sincerity and inspirational charisma, dialled it down and mixed in some outright pleading. I asked her if she thought the high school could deliver on a hundred jars and she said she would hope so. Many of the children taking exams aren’t in school any more, but I calculate there are still more than 500 of them left; one in five seems like quite an ask from where I’m standing, but then I was at yesterday’s assembly.

  Aside from the jam jars, I’d also asked yesterday’s Year 9 to ‘Like’ the Jam Jar Army Facebook page. Last night, seven out of 180 duly Liked it. My maths isn’t brilliant, but I reckon that’s 173 who didn’t. I took comfort in the only one to leave a message who told the world ‘I too like jam’. His profile picture, taken with a mobile phone, was of him with his third finger raised in salute. I’m hoping no one accuses me of grooming.

  Good deed no. 165: helped Kirsty work out a plan to move from Edinburgh to Oxfordshire (where her husband has a new job). The plan is to rest up from her attack of severe fibromyalgia, stay in hotel, find house, pack up, move. At one point she said, ‘What would I do without you?’ I am absolutely sure she meant it.

  Wednesday, 15 June

  THE PHILANTHROPIST

  Youngest son now vomiting with stomach migraine triggered by the tummy bug. Since Al is now back down in London, the small vomit monster had to come with me to drop my daughter at school and to pi
ck up some migraine medication at the doctors. Four bowls of vomit later, we got back home.

  Al has been at an extraordinarily posh dinner down at the National Gallery, where a philanthropist called Michael Hintze has donated £2m to refurbish Room 8 of the Gallery. The room, with its grape-coloured walls, blooms with tender Madonnas dandling lustrous, fleshy, child-Christs, and boasts work by Raphael and Michelangelo, altarpieces and massive gilt-embossed frames – here a crucifixion, there an entombment and there a resurrection. I can guarantee Al was the poorest guest at the table – except, perhaps, for the priest from the Vatican Museums, who presumably took a vow of poverty upon his ordination. Apparently, one of the National Gallery people said when the dinner loomed into view that you never saw gilt capitals spelling out the names of Hintze and his wife Dorothy appear on a wall so fast.

  So here am I on the one hand busting a gut to get everyone to put coppers in a jam jar, with a target of £10k, which we may not even make, while Michael and Dorothy Hintze plough millions upon millions into worthy causes. Because I have foundation envy, later I met up with Hintze myself. Philanthropy intrigues – not because of the noughts on the end of the cheques, but because of its contradictions, its tangle of the individual and the collective, personal ambition and sacrifice, acquisition and generosity, self-belief and altruism, of acquiring money only to give money, because it prompts both envy and respect. Hintze is worth £550m according to the Sunday Times Rich List, who have him as the joint 138th richest person in the country. He has given away £25m to good causes, much of it through the Hintze Family Charitable Foundation, and turned giving into an art form, as arresting and creative as anything on the walls of the Hintze room in the National Gallery. ‘I give because I can,’ he said when I asked him why he does it. ‘I feel an obligation – it’s something that’s innate. Some people might feel an obligation to dance or to paint. I feel an obligation – and a desire – to give.’