S The unseen heroes we mustn’t take for granted

ITTING in the kitchen watching the rain belt down and wondering why the world has currently lost its mind, I have reached a conclusion and it’s this: in this life people are divided into two sorts: the takers and the givers.

Of course very few people are entirely one or the other. Nobody is all monster or all Mother Theresa.

We’d like to think we’d all lend a helping hand to the bloke with the flat tyre or the mum with the burst bag of shopping and the screaming toddler.

Equally, who hasn’t felt the glee of beating a fellow motorist to the last parking space or the thrill of getting served before your turn at the bar?

But the current pandemic has somehow polarised the differences between people who naturally fall on one side of the line or the other.

Look at the shoppers who panicbought toilet roll and pasta. Takers, I’d say. Quite low on the scale, but takers nevertheless.

The day-trippers currently littering our beaches with their rubbish? Self-entitled takers, all. And the scammers who have exploited elderly people in lockdown. Hmm. Less takers more scumbags – but you get my drift.

And then there are the givers, those people who, without question, just do positive things. The neighbour who will fetch shopping for the pensioner at number 14, the teen who serves behind the counter at the charity shop, the friend who will send flowers just because.

But top of the tree when it comes to the givers are volunteers, that army of unseen heroes who abandon their spare time to do good things just because that’s who they are.

Before the current Covid crisis, these were the people who helped plant flowers in public places or ran the bar at a community hall; they might have volunteered to show hospital patients the way to a ward or made cups of tea for the bereaved or manned stalls at summer fairs.

Tens of thousands of them across the country, all doing their thing

Volunteers handing out food to homeless people

without payment or sometimes thanks, just so others benefit.

Now, almost three months into lockdown, the true worth of these kinds of folk has been magnified ten-fold.

I would venture to say that this country, weighed down with anxiety and illness, fear, panic and a paucity of leadership, may well have buckled under the strain if it were not for our army of volunteers.

These are the mums running the foodbanks and the dads fetching prescriptions, those manning helplines and chatting to the lonely, supporting frontline care staff and, of course, making masks.

Many of them won’t even know the good they have done and the joy they have brought – the sign, of course, of a true giver.

This week is National Volunteers Week, a chance to say thanks to all those who never say they’re too busy or too tired or can’t be bothered and when we needed it, stepped up to the plate.

They’ve gone under the radar for far too long and, in the depths of darkness, they shone.