Collecting for charity

 

Here is something a little different. It is not written by Kate -  nor is it written by Jos.

It is written by ‘Miss Mackintosh’ (but eventually typed with a very little editing by Kate, needless to say)

 

 

 

Well. It’s Jos who calls me Miss Mackintosh, which is certainly not my real name!

For example, the phone rings at home:

‘Hallo?’…………‘Miss Mackintosh?’

‘Jos, dear, I told you not to call me that over the phone. Supposing my daughter was here and answered the phone? She often does, you know’

‘Well, I know your voice and anyway, she’d just say wrong number and ring off, of course.’

He’s probably right.

 

A few years ago, coming out of the big new supermarket in the town, I noticed a woman collecting for charity (there’s always someone there, these days). She was however a little different, being dressed in shiny black mack and sou’wester. Ha! I thought, the Lifeboats. So I dug out some money and went up to her. It wasn’t a seaman’s type coat. I could see that. Far more fashionable, rather like one that I had still at home, bought for me years ago by my husband who had certainly liked that sort of thing.

I stood there about to put the pound in the tin but actually found myself stroking her sleeve and saying, “My, deary, I didn’t know you could still get macks like that. My husband used to love seeing me in one like that, so he had bought me one.”

She replied “Well, that’s my brother over there and he’s got one too, look!”

I gave her the pound and then crossed over to where he was standing and, without a word to him, gave him a pound as well.

 

I didn’t think any more about it until, perhaps a year later or perhaps longer, I just happened to spot her, similarly dressed doing the same collection in the same place.

This time, before I gave her some money, I asked her what she was collecting for. It was the Missions to Seamen, not as I had thought, the Lifeboats. I asked her where her brother was as I hadn't spotted him around. She explained that he was doing his turn the next day and she was by herself. Pity, I said, I’d like to see him dressed up like he was last time. Perhaps I’ll come down tomorrow as well.

“Oh! I remember you now. You spoke to me a year or so ago, didn’t you.” And, after I had put some money in her tin, she added “I’m nearly finished. Let me buy you a cup of tea and have a natter, say in about twenty minutes. Will you be finished by then?”

Yes, I certainly would be".

Twenty minutes or so later, I found her sitting in the café next to the supermarket wearing, I was just a little surprised to see, a nurse’s uniform. Her mackintosh was folded on the chair beside her. It didn’t take her long to notice I hadn’t got any shopping with me and I explained that, as I lived so close, I had taken it home and brought back something for her to see.

I had been home and hurriedly found a photo that was stored away in an old shoebox, amongst photos that never would find their way into the family albums. “There!” I said, “Now I’ve shown it to you.” I had been a little worried about it.

I needn’t have been. “Why, that’s just lovely!” she said.

It was an old black and white print, browning round the edges, of me standing in bright sunlight at the bottom of our garden next to a row of runner beans, wearing my shiny black rubber mackintosh, tightly buttoned and belted despite there being no sign of rain.

“And did you say that you’ve still got that mackintosh,” she asked, “I’d certainly like to see it.”

I suggested she came back with me and had a look, not only at the mackintosh itself, which was a newer one than the one in the photo but also some other photos that I could probably find, with a bit of time. She had to go into Norwich for her next nursing duty (she was working week-end shifts for an agency in a private hospital) that evening so she had a bit of time and agreed to come.

 

As we got near the house I found myself asking her to put her mack back on, since the neighbours would start talking if they saw a nurse in uniform coming home with me. She did so, apologising for not thinking of that herself.

 

So I found the old mackintosh and, at her request, even put it on. It was a bit creased but after a while the creases dropped out and it did look quite respectable. I explained that my husband just liked to see me in it, so much so that he had later bought me this newer one by post from a specialist supplier. It gave him certain urges, I explained in a round-about way that she certainly seemed to understand, but, in answer to her question, I said that he did not really want to wear such things himself. She said she wished she had been lucky enough to have a husband like that who just liked to look at her in her mackintosh. At my request, she put hers on again for me. So, while the two of us sat at the kitchen table, both wearing our mackintoshes, she, Kathleen as I now knew, then told me briefly about her and her ‘brother’ and before I knew where I was, had persuaded me to help him with the collection the following day. There had been a pause when she was obviously weighing me up as far as her brother’s roving eye was concerned but, as I am probably old enough to be their mother, it soon passed. She would leave me with her sou’wester and I should wear my own mack and find Jos, her brother the next day. He no doubt would also buy me a cup of tea.

Well, I pride myself on being quite an active and reasonably broad-minded old lady, so it all happened as planned, and when I invited him home for a cup of tea afterwards and showed him the other pictures, which really got him interested. He told me how they came to be collecting for the charity in the first place.

 

Jos had an aunt who lived here, not far from me, although they lived however about about 20 miles away, and they would all come and visit occasionally in their youth. On one such occasion, she told Jos and Kathleen, just in passing, that she had inherited the job of organising the street collections for The Missions to Seamen charity and that it was hard work finding volunteers to do the collecting for her. Needless to say, Jos and Kathleen were immediately volunteered for the task by their Mother and for many years after that, one or both of them once a year collected money in the High Street here and became a permanent part of the rota.

Their aunt eventually gave the task up and passed it, and Jos and Kathleen, onto a new organiser. This new lady had the bright idea that her collectors should dress themselves up as distressed Seamen and organised some bright yellow oilskins and sou’westers!

So, for a few further years, they found themselves walking the streets dressed in yellow oilskins and sou’westers. They gathered some collectors had objected to the idea but, needless to say, Jos didn’t. Then, after a few years, that organiser also moved on and apparently took the gear with her and they were back to collecting in more normal outfits – or were they?

They had owned their own shiny black mackintoshes for a few years then and Jos suggested, first to Kathleen and then to the next new organiser, that they believed that the dressing up actually increased the amount collected. This was supported by the fact the total collected did actually drop that first year without the dressing up! They, he said, would continue to dress for the occasion even if others didn’t.

And so they have, now for quite a few years, done just that. When they first started, Kathleen didn’t mind at all putting on black rubber mackintosh and sou’wester and parading up and down the High Street in a town where, they were reasonably sure, few, if any, people knew them. The date always varies from year to year, sometimes in February even, when it is cold and rainy and thus quite sensible wear. Sometimes, however, as when I first saw them, the collecting day falls in the height of summer and then they look the part, especially the sou’westers, and attract a certain amount of notice and donations. Of course, the nicely tailored cut, the belt and the double-breasted style of their mackintoshes is not really that of mariners, distressed or otherwise, so they start off wearing them loose and unbelted. However, by the end of their stint, they have usually belted themselves in and turned up collars and have attracted at least a few lewd remarks.

People do still notice! Jos said.