The Collection

I'm just back from doing the Christian Aid collection with my pal Mrs Heathbank. Because we are relatively lithe and active (I know, but that's church for you...) we undertake an area with a hill in it. On the very outskirts of town. This year's collection included not only the hill, and its strangely bleak little community in a new development which is unfinished and half empty, but also some new houses on the shore that we'd never visited before, so the afternoon promised some variety and a bit of interest.

In the event, there was much with which we were all too familiar. The people who had no money (it's Sunday). The man who said "I'm afraid I'm the only one in," and shut the door. The people who had already been given an envelope by their own church (come on, chaps, they're for door-to-door collections, you know - not for an easy way out for all concerned). Less familiar were  the lovely people who gave us these envelopes for our bag notwithstanding, and the people who invited us in for a chat regardless of our hiking boots (you go prepared for anything in this part of the world). Most annoying moment of the afternoon was reserved for four persistent and  very rude small boys who dogged our way round one group of houses making such a racket that we were sure the forewarned denizens of the place lay low as one man. It's the difficulty of remembering that I'm a Christian Aid collector and therefore must bite my tongue that really gets to me in these moments.

And then there were the dogs. I don't care for dogs. Fortunately Mrs H does, and fielded most of them. I had one great success in ordering one beast back into his house; it went, and its owner offered to hire me to complete the animal's training. I declined.

All this time it rained. Most of the time it was a fine, wetting drizzle, with occasional outbursts of something more substantial. As we trailed up the half-made road to the last houses in our patch, we reflected on how different it is doing this sort of thing in a city. I once helped a friend in a residential area of the Edinburgh suburbs; she did one side of the road and I did the other and the whole operation took us half an hour and yielded a heavy haul of filled envelopes. Where we collect in Dunoon, we have to reckon on at least two hours to get round our allocated houses, and will be lucky to have half the amount of the city collection. But I'm not complaining - not really. Except about the churches who make our journey a waste of time.

And next year I'd like it to be warm and sunny. Please?

I'm collecting ...

Collecting in Bullwood
Originally uploaded by goforchris.

This is Christian Aid week. All over the country church people are slogging round allocated districts delivering and then collecting red envelopes in which - they hope - householders will have had time to put sensible money (as opposed to all the coppers they want rid of) and fill in the Gift Aid declaration. That's the theory.

In practice, the experience is more haphazard. Mrs Heathbank and I were covering the area known as the Bullwood, the main road south of Dunoon. I suspect we get these odd places because the Episcopal church is not so readily associated with a parish, but whatever the reason this is our patch. Only this year we doubled "our" bit of road because of a shortage of able-bodied Piskies willing to take it on. And so it was that on Sunday we covered about 3 miles of road and drives and hillsides as we delivered the envelopes, and this evening we again covered the same 3 miles collecting them. As you will see from the photo, it involved some ingenuity and energy to retrieve some of the envelopes.

I actually hate doing this. Most of all, I hate the dogs. I think there are more dog-owning households down the Bullwood than anywhere else in Dunoon. I was on my second house when the door opened to reveal a large German Shepherd on the step above me, so that its face seemed alarmingly close to my own. It was accompanied by a totally inadequate small girl with golden hair. I found myself gibbering at her. Not a good start. After that, Mrs H got all the houses where I remembered that there were beasts, as well as the ones where there was barking.

Another hazard is the people you meet. One woman yelled (above the barking of two ferocious hounds) that she gave money to her own religion. Reasoning that the money goes to help poor people and is merely collected by Christians didn't work. No luck there. Then there was the old boy who took an age to come down his hall, past washing on a clothes horse, then laboriously unlocked the door. I switched on my brightest smile. "No," he said, lugubriously, and locked up again. And there is the Grumpy Woman in the Dolls House, who waved a minatory finger at us on Sunday, so that we didn't even try to leave an envelope. We've tangled with her before and it wasn't pretty.

You do see some places you never knew existed, though. Some of the houses lurk up huge long driveways, and others have bungalows sprouting in their enormous gardens. Some people have built expensive-looking conservatories and then filled them with junk; others houses have strange smells. I was reminded yet again of Larkin, talking about "the smells of different dinners" - by this time it was well past my dinnertime, but I was glad I wasn't dining at some of the houses we visited.

But the hardest thing of all is remaining polite and cheerful. Mrs H is much better at it than I am. I have an insatiable urge to say "sod off, then" when rejected, or told that I'm doing a grand job but "we have our own charities, thank you." And when people on "my" patch tell me that they've given their contribution to their own church, I have to fight down a snarl. Especially if they've used the envelope I left them.

I have, however, to record that some people are delightful, with their envelopes filled and waiting for us, or rushing off apologetically to find money to put in it as we wait. And most deserving of mention is the former pupil who didn't hear us at her door as she was putting her children to bed when we called. She appeared in her car just as we were setting off back down the road, waving the envelope out of the window. She was going to drop it off at my house if she hadn't caught us. To her, and to all the others who kept the smile on my face - thank you. Till next time ...