What To Do… or Not To Do.

A tricky one for you, this week,

One of my better qualities, I think, is my ability to see opposing sides of an argument. I may feel pretty strongly about something but that rarely seems to stop me from seeing how the other side feels about it.

This has its downside too. It means I can often be wishy-washy about things. I can dither over reaching conclusions and, sometimes, in matters where I patently should have stood strong from minute one, I have wasted time vacillating.

But enough about me… what do you think about me?

No, No…

I’ve been mulling over a question this week, it’s a fair example of how I tend to go at things from different angles. I’ll tell you about it and if you want to suggest to me what I should do, that would be nice too…

…although I may not do it.

Right. There’s this Lady, you see, and she sits on the main street of our town every day and she plays her wooden flute. She’s not from this country originally but that’s neither here nor there – I only mention it to colour the picture in a little bit. Six days a week, she sits on the ground from 9.30am to 6.00pm and she toots her flute.  She doesn’t do much harm. Perhaps she blocks the footpath a bit, perhaps her crutch sticks out a bit further than it needs to – a ploy to get attention, maybe – nothing really troublesome.

The main issue one might have with this Lady is that she can’t actually play the flute she toots. She just pipes out a series of tuneless random notes, all day, every day.

And here’s the thing, here’s my quandary; I never give her any money.

Am I right or am I wrong?

That, as the man said, is the question…

The case for giving the Lady a few pence is fairly straightforward. She has some need, lest she would not be there. I can afford to give her a few pence. It wouldn’t kill me. My moral code tells me I should be mindful of those less well-off than myself. Therefore I should give.

The case against is perhaps less clear but it is the one which currently sways me. I have it on good authority that the Lady is quite severely arthritic. That crutch is not just for ‘show’, when she finally wends her way home at six in the evening, she hobbles on her way. This Lady was there in the coldest days of this harsh season. In temperature of –8 degrees, she was on the pavement, tooting her flute, seeking alms.

That last bit, that’s the crux of why I don’t give her any of my money. I believe that she is encouraged to sit there every day, by person or persons, who see her getting money from people. I believe her suffering of the endless days on the pavement and the bitter, bitter, cold is a direct result of her receiving money and, if there was no money, she would not be sent to sit there.

So, that’s my case, if I give her money, her painful days will continue. If I don’t, and everybody else doesn’t too, perhaps those who tell her to sit there will stop doing so.

But that’s all a bit easy, isn’t it? I’ve made up a little moral reason for me not to give.  But what if I am wrong? What if the Lady is sitting there of her own accord, freezing, because there is nothing else for her, no other way to get money of any kind. What if I am walking past her, my pockets jingling, as she starves?

And I’m putting myself across as some kind of bloody saint here – pondering the fate of the Lady we all ignore. Trust me, I am no bloody saint. If I am to be honest, this Lady, with her incessant tuneless tooting, annoys me.

“She sits there for ten hours every day,” I say to myself, “why doesn’t she teach herself a tune to pass then time… and then have something coherent to play.”

Yeah, and that crutch of hers sticks out so far and makes me walk around it… and she never asks me for money, she only asks the Old Folks, the ‘Easy Marks’ and… and… and…

Yes. I’ve got high motives, I can reel them off when I need to… but are they real?

What is the truth of my not giving any money to the Lady in the street?

If you know, let me know.

Charity Shop Stalwarts

I love browsing the books in Charity Shops.

It satisfies my occasional requirement for retail therapy. I can march happily home with some books under my arm having only spent a couple of quid.

It’s interesting to me, though, how some of the same books keep cropping up again and again no matter what charity shop I happen to venture into.


It’s funny, isn’t it?

Mind you, it probably doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure it out. Everybody gets the more popular books but not everybody keeps them, thus these books end up on the Oxfam shelves more often.

Easy.

It’s just I can’t help but think that there might be a more useful analysis of this phenomenon which could reveal deeply hidden patterns and teach us much about the undercurrents of the society we live in.

‘Bullshit’, I hear you cough into your fist and who am I to argue? So rather than trying to solve society's ills, let’s just look at some of these books which are charity shop stalwarts. Perhaps you can add one or two of you own to my list and then we at least will have a useful document for when the great social research finally begins…

… or not, as the case may be.

The Da Vinci Code: It’s always there, usually in multiple versions. I read this book in its entirety on a train journey to and from Dublin one day. Crass, yes, simplistic, yes but I kept flicking the pages and the chapters kept rolling one into the next. I know people who reckon this is the best read ever. Good luck to them. I don’t want to sound pretentious though, I enjoyed it on the day.

Angela’s Ashes: Frank McCourt sadly died recently. His Pulitzer Prize winning book must have sold to every household in Ireland so it’s probably no wonder that copies abound. It’s actually an excellent book in my opinion, written with a clarity that I often envy. I got the opportunity to ask Frank a question once and, thankfully, I was brave enough to ask the silliest question because as it turned out, all the theories I had read were quite wrong. “Why,” sez I, “is it called ‘Angela’s Ashes’?” The posh theorists had it that the title referred to the metaphorical ashes of the mother’s life or perhaps the ashes she received on her forehead in the church during the Ash Wednesday ceremonies.

Nah! Much more practical than that.

Frank explained that the book had originally been twice as long and ended with Angela’s Ashes being returned to Ireland for burial. When the book got spilt into two volumes (the second called ‘Tis) they kept the title for the first part even though the event it referred to didn’t turn up until the end of the second one. It’s on the charity bookshelf if you want to read it, you can count on that.

James Bond: There’s always a Bond book. Not only that there’s always one of those old Pan versions of the bond books. I always check in case there’s a first edition but that hasn’t happened yet. I did buy a first edition of Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone (yes, the American version) in hardback in Oxfam last year but it turned out to be the fifth reprinting of the first edition so it wasn’t the goldmine I thought it was. Ah well…

Agatha Christie: They all did it you know! Never mind….

Catherine Cookson: She’s always in there. I can’t tell you anything about them, I think there are bodices and I think they get ripped. You’re on your own from there, I’m afraid.

Captain Correlli’s Mandolin: I hear it gets really quite good, if you can get into it a bit. Like beyond the first hundred pages. But I never could. I think it was actually me who gave this one to the Charity Shop, so that explains that.

Inspector Morse: There are always a few of Colin Dexter’s archetypal detective. I really like these. They are written with a lovely sense of mischief. Try one if you haven’t. They’re good.

So, can you add to my list?

All donations will be gratefully received.

The Four Settees Challenge

It's that time of year where lots of people are out straining themselves for good causes. 'BBC Children in Need' has a bunch of celebrities off climbing Mount Kilimanjaro... or is it mounting_ no, never mind.

Even here, locally, there's a gang of fine folks about to climb our lovely mountain Croagh Patrick for seven days running. That's it in the picture and that dot on the top is a church) I mean seven days in a row, they're not actually running up it, though that's been done too.

Not by me though.

Am I the only one who thinks it's a pity that all the really good fund-raising activities have to be directly related to extreme physical activity?

People run marathons, swim bodies of water and generally knock themselves out in the name of making a little dosh for good causes.

I would like to join in and perhaps engage in an activity to raise some money for such things but, believe me, I ain't gonna make it the end of anything calling itself 'The Four Peaks Challenge'.

Perhaps somebody could organise a 'Four Settees Challenge' where people are sponsored to sit on a variety of oversized soft furnishings for an extended period?

I could give that a go.

Or how about the 'Four Very Long Subtitled Foreign Movies Challenge' wherein the protagonists have to sit through... well, you get the idea.

I want to help... really I do.

I'm just not up to much at the moment.