Category: Volunteering

As most of you know, I volunteer, just chatting to people on the phone each week.

Many of us are still isolating – have done so since February – so people cancelled any plans they nurmally make and stayed home instead. For me, while I normally have a short break I have just carried on this year. After all, it doesn’t really feel like Christmas this year, does it?

But there can sometimes be a funny side. We’re all relying on online grocery deliveries to keep us stocked up, though of course sometimes the stores can’t supply things.

So I had this one client, the supermarket couldn’t get hold of a turkey for him. So the poor chap had to go without.

They did, however, supply the jar of cranberry sauce he had ordered. And he’s, like, wtf am I supposed to do with this????

Here is another take on Fandango’s FPQ yesterday. If you remember, we talked about whether we’re governed by technology.

One of my regular calls for my charity is to phone somebody to remind them to take their meds.

Don’t get me wrong, I don’t mind doing this. It is 2 seconds of my time and it helps someone, so it is a no-brainer. I’m around anyway.

My point is: think of all the mechanisms that you have for setting a daily reminder. Really obvious stuff. Set something up on your phone, on your computer. Maybe set an alarm on a good old-fashioned alarm clock? Or even just tie a knot in your hankie? I’m sure even I have a half-dozen ways. Simple, huh?

Not for this client. So, they ask someone to call them.

Governed by technology? You must be joking!

A weird one today. The charity I volunteer for has asked me occasionally to compile lists of events in certain locations. Just, basically, so that if somebody comes to us, we can signpost them to events in their area.

A couple of weeks ago, they asked me if I would look at an existing list, and check whether the contact numbers on it were still good. By the looks of things, the lists were from around 2018, and I just spent the afteernoon making about forty or fifty phone calls to check things.

All was uneventful until I spoke to one woman. I’m sorry, if you would like any information, I will not divulge it over the phone – you will need to write to me instead. So, I thanked her and said my goodbyes.

The thing was, I wasn’t actually asking for information. Not much, anyway. The entry was some kind of special-interest group, meets in such-and-such a location on the first Tuesday of every month, something like that. I obviously had the phone number, plus details about the group, alreeady, and I just wanted to know whether the number I had was still a valid contact point for the group.

I mean, it is weird. Undeer normal circumstances, someone calls cold, my advice would be just to tell them to p*** off. If someone ever cold calls you, I would advise exactly the same. Or better still, just don’t engage at all. If you have a machine, all’s the better – if it is a bona fide call, they will leave a message.

But if somebody does run one of these groups, wouldn’t you have thought they’d want people to know about it, and at least be prepared to divulge information about how to contact it? Quite seriously, if this woman did not want to confirm any information to me, theen it is unlikely that she would want to divulge anything to one of our clients either, so the entry is probably best off just being removed from the list altogether.

Reminiscing a little about my hospital visits, which now look as if they are in the past.

One of the things for which I am most grateful is that I think I have seen what true love actually is.

If you’re interested, true love, for me, is not flowers, chocolates, hot dates or even hotter sex. If that is what somebody thinks, good luck to ’em, but I don’t think they’re even out of diapers yet – they’ve got a way to go.

I actually met Brenda professionally in a previous life. She was a lawyer, she drew up my will when all the shit was going down with my daughter. Brenda had a stroke in August last year, only in her late fifties – I guess she’s only five years older than me. There were complications and setbacks, and she is still in hospital today. She doesn’t speak yet, she can’t eat solids, but she has a tiny amount of movement through which she can communicate, as long as you know what you’re looking for.

She is unreecognisable from the smart, confident woman I once met. In fact, I only recognised her because of her unusual surname – one I had never come across before. When she was first in, the name clicked and I couldn’t resist asking her husband whether Brenda was a lawyer, and explaining to him my connection. He was a guy I got on with immediately.

In the run-up to Christmas I didn’t see Brenda or husband for a while, and I assumed they had been discharged somewhere. The hospital tends to do that – when someone is out of danger, and the staff don’t feel they can do any more, then the patient is moved on somewhere less acute. It was my own fault, I suppose, because I tend not to check the patient roster. I don’t really like to find out too much about patients, their first name is normally enough. In general, the less I know, the less complicated my life can get.

But I saw Brenda’s husband again in a corridor in January, and realised that Brenda was still on the ward. That’s about seven months, so far. She’d had another setback and seemed to have been jolted backwards, not forwards. Since then, I have made a point of seeking Brenda out each time I visit. I doubt that Brenda recognises me, I was probably only one of thousands of clients, but that’s not a big deal. Every time I see her, her husband is by her bedside, plus at least one of their (grown) children.

Love? Look no further.

The date is still in my diary. Thursday, 2nd March, 2017. I had had the stroke a year before, I had been volunteering with the Stroke Association since christmas, and they suggested I attend a seminar. Always willing to learn some more, I agreed.

When I went along, I found role-playing instead. Let’s pretend we’ve had a stroke. So, how useful do you think I found that? Still, I like to be polite, so I thanked them, and went on my merry way, not betraying my thought that the event had been a complete waste of my time. I did, however, make a mental note to be more judicious in future.

And, in fact, in those early days, I was burned again. Not only by the Stroke Association, but also by people at the hospital, where I was meant to be training alongside the staff. People seem to feel generally that, when you do something voluntarily, that your time doesn’t matter to you.

2020. I’m a lot firmer now, in both what I think and what I say. I’m a lot more able to say, Nope, I will not allow you to waste my time.

About a month ago, the current co-ordinator said she would like me to attend another course. I felt lukewarm toward the idea but played along. She said that they wanted to talk about the GDPR. General Data Protection Regulations. On such a topic, I do actually need to be up to speed, so I showed willing. I was a bit baffled about the timing – the Regs came into force in mid-2018, so why leave it until now to say anything?

Yesterday, I received an agenda for this course/meeting. Item One: who are the Stroke Association? Item Two: what doees volunteering for the Stroke Assiciation actually entail? In fact, the meeting had also been entitled Volunter Induction Course. Induction? For somebody who’d been working with them for more than three years? For someone whose last stint of voluntary work was just last week? And, I’m sure you will have guessed by now, not a mention of the GDPR, although I’m sure it would’ve come up as a five-second aside.

There was another funny. A lot of stroke survivors, myself included, are left disabled. Climbing flights of stairs can be a problem – it is for me and thank goodness I live in a single-storey house.

The agenda for this meeting also said that it was taking place in a room on the third storey, and that the building had no elevator. So there is a problem straight away – how am I going to get there? It is not just getting up there – I would make it eventually, I’m sure – but what if the building had to be evacuated while I were up there? By the time I got out (if I got out), I can pretty much guarantee I would be somewhat crispier!

So not only am I left thinking that the course actually isn’t relevant, but that the charity has made it unncessarily difficult for me to attend. So, I declined the meeting. This is voluntary work, after all, I am doing it because I want to be involved. There is no obligation on either of us.

I got a very flippant email this morning, saying that the GDPR bit was included, and it was important that I go. And besides, they would provide lunch so what more could I want?! (Honest, she said that.)

So I was left a little incredulous. They organise this meeting that they say they want me to attend, and yet they put obstacles in my way to prevent me from attending. I mean, I could understand the public at large being ignorant of a stroke survivor’s plight, but not really the main stroke charity. And that last line tipped the balance.

I decided that there was no point pussy-footing around here, One or two things these last few months, I feel like I am almost on a collision course with them, so I have just said outright that I’m not prepared to volunteer for them any more. Solves their problem, solves mine. So that is that. Fini. No more Stroke Association, no more GDPR*. In fact, I spent a pretty sleepless night last night worrying about it, and this is just voluntary work, it has no right to stop me from sleeping.

* except that I need to be aware of it for my other charity stuff.

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I suppose on a practical note, there are a couple of things I now need to update – this blog being one. There are a few notices I put on the site about volunteeering for them, which I’ll need to fix as I find, and put into th past tense.

😥