Wrap Up London

Every morning last week I set my alarm for 5.30am and arrived at Waterloo station two hours earlier than usual to volunteer for Wrap Up London. Why? We were asking fellow commuters to give us their coats. Not literally the clothes off their backs - although a few generous and impulsive souls did just that - but old coats, unwanted ones, long forgotten winter warmers, tucked away in the backs of wardrobes or buried beneath layers of new fashion.

We spent two days telling people the plan: you donate unwanted coats on the way to work, we pass them on to London's most vulnerable so that they can keep warm this winter. It's an easy ask. All you have to do is spend five mins rummaging when you get home, then the next day carry your toasty treasure halfway to work. If you forget on Wednesday, you've still got two more days to remember. Many people got involved, often bringing bags full of ski-jackets, parkers and overcoats which they'd collected from house-mates and family members.

It's a great system. The ask and action are both simple and tangible, while the small lift of feel-good achievement experienced by donors is quite palpable. The whole transaction feels like a kind of magic. You can spot the givers in the crowd.  They're often carrying an extra bag or just moving towards you with purpose. You meet their eye and smile as the bundle is trust toward you. There's often a look, either a smile of happy benevolence or a quizzical 'is that it?'. This is the point at which I think it's my responsibility as a volunteer to convey gratitude on behalf of those who will be unable to do so themselves.

In a way it's all quite detached, because none of us meet the people who benefit at the end of the chain, but as the cold, wet weather sets in it's good to know that there are over 10,000 coats now ready to be redistributed to London's most vulnerable in shelters and refuges across the capital next month. This is all thanks to Hands on London, the organisation which manages the 100+ volunteers for Wrap Up London each year. It's a great way to volunteer because it's rewarding, it's flexible and you don't need any qualifications.

When I speak to people about volunteering, many don't know where to start. Others cite lack of time or a need to prove experience as barriers (unpaid volunteers should never require a qualification). Talking to volunteer managers, the biggest problems are often retention, finding the right people for the role and reaching new groups.

I joined Wrap Up London last year after a colleague told me about his experience. Since then I've been volunteering one evening every other week with my local Mencap. Hopefully some of the thousands of people who donated coats last week might now be inspired to look up Hands On London and give it a go.

handsonlondon.org.uk

Yoga for People Who Can't Be Bothered to Do It by Geoff Dyer

By the time this collection was first published in 2003, the idea of ‘going travelling’ had become a middle-class cliche and gap years were big business. Geoff Dyer seems to have made rather a habit of it in his late thirties, flitting from New Orleans, Miami and Chicago to Cambodia and Thailand, via Amsterdam, Paris, Rome and Libya. 

The romantic notion of travel is that you go ‘to find yourself’. Dyer certainly visits a lot of the places this is supposed to happen, Buddist temples, the Santury on Ko Pha-Ngan, full moon parties, Burning Man. He also spends a fair amount of his time getting stoned, but as the titles suggests he’s not your typical new age type. He’s got more literary pretensions.

By focusing solely on moments of travel, Dyer is able to give the impression that he spent this part of his life meandering from place to place, doing not much else other than pondering deep questions of civilization and antiquity. More often than not, this takes place in the company of a beautiful, intelligent girl with whom he enjoys witty exchanges and insightful observations.

Sounds idyllic doesn't it? At this point, it's probably worth noting the proviso in the intro: “All of the things in this book really happened, but some of the things that happened only happened in my head”. I suspect that this includes the dialogue, but it doesn't matter because the exchanges are eloquent and the writing is excellent. A fair amount of it even manages to achieve the goal of being both thoroughly entertaining and profoundly astute.

Dyer's at his best when he elucidates some of his more abstract thoughts, the kind that I suspect we all often have and never quite grasp, and weaves them as themes throughout the book. In the end I’m left more jealous of his writing than I am his exploits. Based on how much fun he seems to have had, this can only be a good thing.

Rating: ***1/2
Read: On return from Burning Man. Mostly in bed and on trains. Left in bag on train to Newcastle, recovered a month later and finally finished.