Dark

I have spent the darkest day of the year fundraising. First I rattled a tin and called my plea about homelessness to heads-down Christmas shoppers in Oxford’s wet, cold streets. I don’t blame the 99 percent of people to whom I was invisible – there are many calls on their money and I’m sure that a lot of them have little to spare.

I then raced home, took off my thick wool socks, my damp jeans and my several top layers, moved up-market in black and raced out again, this time to steward a performance of Messiah by the excellent Orchestra of St John's Smith Square. This fundraiser for ‘Music for Autism’ was in Dorchester’s high-roofed, 12th-century abbey. Cold, and when I wasn’t selling programmes I huddled under my outdoor jacket. I was too far back for the first half, but near enough the performers in the second half to be mesmerised by a desperately sad rendition of ‘He was despised, rejected of men, a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief’. Took me right back to where I’d started the day.

Many thanks for far more appreciation of yesterday's than I expected.