Wilfred De’ath

‘Want to borrow it?’ asked the Aged P. ‘No, thanks,’ I said sniffily (only to change my mind upon reading an entry about Princess Diana sending Sarah, Duchess of York to Coventry after Fergie revealed in her autobiography that she caught a verruca from Diana’s shoes).

This particular copy, I noticed, had originally been a gift from Laura to Jenny in 2002. The handwriting seemed familiar. So I texted a photo of the dedication to my old friend. ‘Is this you?’ ‘Yes,’ Laura said, ‘How utterly bizarre. Where on earth did you find it?’ ‘At my mother’s care home!’ Just as bizarrely, the book’s recipient was the same Jenny who used to occasionally childmind my son Fred in Teddington when he was a baby. ‘What are the chances?!’ I remarked to the Aged P, who seemed to find this only mildly interesting. Minutes later, she offered a superior coincidence of her own when my brother phoned to ask if she had received a book he had sent her on the serial killer Neville Heath.

‘Isn’t that an incredible coincidence? Only just this minute I was writing Edward’s birthday card!’

‘That’s not a coincidence,’ I said tersely. ‘It’s his birthday tomorrow and he phones most weeks.’

Increasingly, the Aged P thinks back to her Bradford childhood. Within half an hour of arriving last week, she vividly recounted her 1932 tonsillectomy, right down to the single-strap, black patent shoes she wore. I can’t remember what I had on my feet yesterday.

She recalled memories of her Auntie Gladys and Uncle Wilfred, followers of The Mazdaznans, a vegetarian health movement which enjoyed a vogue in the North of England between the wars: ‘They lived in a single-decker bus near Flamborough Head and worshipped the lemon.’

Then she recalled her girlhood political scrapbook. ‘Handsome but dangerous,’ she wrote beneath a cutting of von Ribbentrop.

She remembered how her mother had her not-quite-right uncle committed to Wakefield Asylum: ‘She used to take me as a shield, so he wouldn’t go for her.’ And the day her grandfather was committed to the same asylum for chasing her granny around the house with a carving knife.

On the way home, I wondered what scandalous nuggets from my childhood I could reveal to Fred and Betty if ever I reached the Aged P’s great age.

‘Brown Owl chucked me out of the Brownies for being lazy in 1975’ doesn’t really cut the mustard… Why does Dr Charles Moseley, MA, PHD, FSA, FEA, FRSA, Fellow and Director of Studies in English at the University of Cambridge, spend his nights ministering to down-and-outs at Little St Mary’s Church? (Part of Cambridge Churches Homeless Project – CCHP)?

He gave me this interesting reply: ‘I was in Rome and, outside a church, there was a beggar. I looked into his eyes – very blue – and I saw the eyes of Christ. From then on, I knew that I would have to volunteer to help others.’

Not all the replies I received during my recent inquiry into ‘volunteering’ were as profound as this. One volunteer I met told me, ‘Well, I didn’t have anything better to do…’ At least that was honest.

Broadly speaking, volunteers admit to two main motives: 1) to help others less fortunate than themselves, however disgusting they find them (altruism); 2) to give themselves a feeling of wellbeing at the end of their shift (self-indulgence).

At CCHP, the volunteers have it easy – there are often more of them than there are clients. They get a free dinner (very tasty, especially at the Methodists on Wednesdays) and if there are no customers to talk to, they can talk to each other.

I shall never forget the young couple, clearly on the verge of a student romance, who totally ignored me, ate their meal and then cleared off. ‘We just come for the food,’ they said.

I have nothing against volunteers (in France, they are known as bénévoles, which the rough sleepers translate into bénévoleurs – robbers – because they feel they are being robbed of their precious freedom to sleep where they like). But some of them are smug and officious – because they are so thoroughly pleased with themselves for giving up their time for other people.

I exempt the many cooks from this criticism – they are invariably genuinely unselfish and polite and very good at catering for their disgusting clients.

The volunteers in the various churches always ask you the same (boring) two questions:

1) How do you come to find yourself in this situation?

a. Answer (in my case): divorce; loss of employment; loss of income. (They say you are only one mortgage repayment failure from the street – every tramp’s history is different, of course.) 2) What did you do today? a. Answer that’s usually supplied: wrote an article for The Oldie. Honest answer: nothing.

The nicest reply I got about why people volunteer was from Adam, who is studying English at Sidney Sussex College. He said, ‘I know I shall never have so much time on my hands again – and it is flexible. So the least I can do is to show an interest in and help others.’

Good on yer, Adam. Keep it up!