Primal Sneeze

I won’t be around most of today. I had Charity pleading with me for hours yesterday. Pleading and begging for my body.

Now lads, before you go getting hot under the collar, this Charity is a real charity, not a pretty lady. But as with pretty ladies, I always end up giving into their demands. So today I’m off to deliver fixtures and fittings to a respite home two hours from here. Two hours in my little jalopy, Harrison*, loaded to the hilt with everything from clothes hangers to tablecloths to knives and forks, is not my idea of fun. It is at times like this I wish I had Eolaí’s bicycle.

There is also a reserve supply of coat hangers etc. in storage. These are replacements for when items are stolen. What, you cry! People availing of a respite home would steal from it?

Short answer, yes. I am running the risk of getting flamed for saying this. In much the same way that suggesting global warming is part of the earth’s natural cycle, some things seem no longer open to debate.

It was many years ago that I first gave my time to this charity. Like most, I started out with great enthusiasm. Not in a change-the-world way – I’m too long in the tooth to believe that – but nevertheless believing I could make some tangible difference. And like most, I had this belief that people struck down with a debilitating disease and indeed, those closest to them, develop a different view on life and by virtue of having to rely on others, for things we take for granted, become better people. That belief was quickly shattered.

At the first function I attended I phoned a wheelchair cab to take a lady home. The driver refused when he saw who it was. She had an account with this company which was three months overdue. I called another firm. Her account with them was overdue six months. She had been using one until they began to insist on their money then switched to the other. With great difficulty I got this large, inebriated lady and her chair into my little car and took her home. With even more difficulty I pushed her up the sloping drive with constant warnings not to scratch her husband’s new car.

At another, a man and his wife volunteered to sell raffle tickets. Hours later I found them at the bar. Not a single ticket sold. They bought one each to appease me. The wife won the grand prize – a holiday. And it fell to me to smile for the camera while presenting it. My friend, the photographer, kept singing Beautiful South’s Little Blue to me the rest of the evening: When most think that you’re holding back, I know you’re holding bile.

Then there was the guy who temporarily moved into the area because he figured this branch had more funds in the kitty than that in his own area. He applied for a grant for a treatment known even then to be experimental, ineffective and unapproved throughout the whole EU. He was refused on those grounds and ran a fundraising drive of his own. The treatment didn’t work and the clinic providing it was later closed down by the authorities. His allusion to the charity’s name in his campaign confused the public and regular donors gave to him thinking they were supporting the charity.

I became disillusioned and considered giving up. So many seemed to expect to be let away with things the able-bodied would not. But I stuck with it and came to realise that there are bad eggs in all walks of life. There are just as many wheelchair-wankers as walking-wankers. But for every bad egg there are so many more good ones. So that’s why Harrison is straining on his axles and I’m away for the day.

* Harrison because it’s a Ford and was used in the movie, Man about Dog. It got paid more than I did for that one.

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