On Thursday (the 13th of December) I popped into Bath and had a tasty dinner with my good friend David Tubb. I had an extremely delicious three cheese and cranberry pie and then the pair of us headed up to the university campus in order to do a few things. Once finished on campus, we headed into town in order to look in bookshops and other such fun pastimes.
Now, in Bath, there are lots of different kinds of people out in the streets: musicians, human-statues, Satan and lots of others too. On this particular day, David and I happened to run into a charity woman. She asked me whether or not I’d like to spare a few minutes to hear about her charity, and I thought she was from Concern Universal, so I told her that I already donated to that charity and carried on walking along with David. However, I was wrong, she actually came from a charity called ActionAid, and she told me so. As such, I began to slow down a little to hear what she had to say, David, on the other hand, did not want to hear what she had to say, so he grabbed my arm and started pulling me quickly away. The charity woman, in retaliation, grabbed my other arm and started pulling me in the opposite direction with equal force. For a short while, I was just stretched out between the pair of them as they played this strange tug-of-war game.
“C’mon, let him stay, he wants to!” the woman said to David.
David then decided to relent, and let go of my arm. For the next five minutes or so, the woman told me the facts about her charity and the poverty that they helped fight. Most of it was stuff I was already aware of, but I decided I’d listen anyway, perhaps I would learn some utterly shocking fact which I had been previously unaware of (I didn’t, but…). Once she’d finished, I thought there’d be no real harm in making regular donations to another charity, so I started to sign up.
“So what’s your name?” she asked.
“Adam Randall,” I replied.
“You’re supposed to tell them your real name!” said David.
For a moment, the woman looked a little concerned, but then David added “I’m joking.”
After another five minutes or so of getting down my information, such as address, phone number and bank details, she asked me my date of birth. When I told her 11th April 1993, she told me I was too young to donate, so it seems the whole thing was quite a waste of time. But that’s not quite the end of the story.
After that was all over, David and I visited a bookshop and looked around for a little while. Once we were done we headed back the same way we’d come. There was another charity woman there now, roughly in the same place.
“Excuse me, how old are you?” she asked me.
“Unfortunately, I am 19 and so I’m too young to donate. Sorry!” I told her.
“I know, I was only joking!” she said. Which is a bit confusing, had she watched the previous encounter play out and then planned this little prank for us? I guess we’ll never know. But now it’s the end of the story.
