Honesty boxes are having a tough time in some rural parts. In the busier bits of the Loch Lomond and Trossachs National Park, my neck of the woods, locals set out water and chocolate at the roadside for passing walkers.
There’s a tin box for the money. Some people ask £1 for a bottle, some just suggest a contribution. Some walkers are better off than others. In terms of more intangible benefit, the simple little transaction amounts to far more than the sum of its parts. Demonstrations of kindness and trust are rather appreciated these days.
But there are always those who don’t understand feelgood, and last week, perfectly timed for the school holidays, the money was stolen, tables overturned and, worse, water bottles were emptied upon the floor. At one farm entrance, where eggs are sold, someone put 20p in the honesty box and removed all the eggs. Perhaps we must be grateful they did not smash them.
Of course the answer is either to put up CCTV, or end the service, but this somehow misses the point. Are honesty boxes a test that we can just no longer pass?
Oh dear, I sound like a vicar.
Advertisement
Painful theft
The grotty detail about despoiling unopened bottles reminded me of the occasion, a few years ago, when my walking frame was stolen from the taxi rank at Euston station. A standard NHS aluminium walker. Its purpose — surely? — unmistakable. Its value, negligible.
We realised we’d left it when we reached the hotel, and asked the driver to circle back, but the frame had gone. Lost property didn’t have it. I pursued my inquiries with the station for a couple of weeks, in case it turned up, but it never did.
People nick stuff all the time. But I never quite shook off the callousness of that.
Nursing ambitions
My district nurse arrives on her monthly catheter visit and I have a great chat with the student nurse accompanying her. She qualifies next month and the world is her oyster: the Royal College of Nursing has obtained figures showing 40,000 nursing vacancies in England alone. Which area does she fancy going into, I ask. She’s only sure of one thing — it won’t be A&E. Her time on placement inside one unit, and outside with the paramedics, finished her off. The worst, she says, was witnessing paramedics trying to cajole abusive drunks up off the floor of their homes and either into bed or into the ambulance. The medics couldn’t leave the people as they were. And they knew the odds were that they’d get called back out to the same house later.
To pastures new
On happier hobbies, I have discovered a website,Fred Shed, set up by a horticultural therapist and featuring garden tools for weak or disabled hands. A growing market. There are easy-grip trowels and rakes and — delight — even a mechanical weed puller-upper.
Advertisement
Best of all is a tiny cordless Bosch grass trimmer, the size of barber’s clippers, either handheld or attached to a light pole with wheels. I bought one and am like a toddler with a toy on a stick, pushing mine round grass and shrubs. The biggest frustration is only having 40 minutes’ fun before the battery needs recharging.
Seeds of love
Feelgood doesn’t get better, either, than “Seedboms” — papier-mâché mini-grenades, packed with flower or herb seeds. Darren Wilson, a Glasgow-based entrepreneur, has revived something called the guerrilla gardening movement. For the price of a coffee you buy your grenades, laden with poppy, cornflower or forget-me-not seeds and, in an act of subversive beauty, seed-bomb places that need them. Throw it, grow it. And balance out some of the horrid stuff.