Today I did something totally out of character. I was actively nice to a telecanvasser. Her reaction was so appreciative that it brought me up short and I realised just how little it takes to make people’s days better.
I felt ashamed of myself.
So I have decided to do One Nice Thing For Someone every day. I will see how long I can keep it up
I don’t plan to turn this into one of those (vomit inducing, holier than thou) random acts of kindness self-help journeys that feature in novels but I do honestly think that it might do me some good as well as my fellow men. Or women.
As things have been getting a little unpleasantly heated on SF recently (is it the weather? Brexit? Visiting in-laws? Who knows?!!), I thought it might be a nice idea to encourage others to join me, so lets all be nice, play nice and if you fancy sharing your good deeds here, I’d be delighted to hear about them.
My random act of kindness wasn’t actually from me but my garagiste who sold me my first LHD…who when I asked him “combien” to scrap my uk French registered Volvo replied “nothing…x
We had a direct lightning strike yesterday (apologies to those who know this already from other posts) and once the problem was fixed (21 hours later ) we had to reset the fuse box so that all the switches were up.
Two people in the apartment building didn’t realise what they had to do so I went to their apartments to do it for them. One is an older lady and I went round her flat with her making sure everything worked. It took me just 2 minutes but she was very grateful.
I would like to think i’m nice to people every day, it was the way I was brung up.
Tele canvassers come in all shapes and sizes, some are polite, some are quite agressive though most blandly read from a well worn sheet. Most don’t exude positivity but occasionally a gem comes along who really tries to sound friendly. It’s a heck of a job and I wouldn’t want to have to do it to earn a crust but some of these people clearly aren’t cut out to do the job.
But, I do try to be polite to all telecanvassers, before I cut them off !
My next door neighbour made his regular tour of inspection of the vegetable plot, telling me the petit pois will be ready to pick in two days or they will go hard, showing me how to rake the cracked and crusted soil between the rows of beans I planted ten days ago (he treats the soil with such tendresse it almost brings a lump to my throat) and then launched into a passionate disquisirion about the Coupe du Monde, the sinister motivés of the referees, the tactics of the Uruguais, and much more that my internal translator just threw up her hands and prompted the usual Brit clichés of agreement d’accord vous avez raison mais naturellement c’est vrai…
Hé has twice congratulated me on a small garden gate I constructed out of pallet to keep the chickens away from the veg. He told me it was une vraie barrière Normande because I fashioned it out of wood and hung it on ‘gonds’- such testimony is heart-breakingly kind, but probably I’m an old fool to see it that way.
My wife and I went for a two hour walk through the valley of the Sée with its many moulins, and at an ancient crossing we were surprised by a young man who appeared from nowhere to tell us that he had last visited the spot fifteen years earlier. I didn’t have the presence of mind to ask him what had brought him back, but I took a photo of him with my wife at the mill-race before he disappeared. He was tall, dark and handsomely bearded. We think he was perhaps an angel.
) we had to reset the fuse box so that all the switches were up.
