Sweet encounters (of course)

tl;dr - humans are just great

It started last night on Freegle where I found a small desk just the unusual size I need for the front bedroom. Could I have it? Yes I could. The donor, C, was working all today so put it outside her front door before she started work at 7.30. I got there shortly after 9, called a cab to take me home with it and discovered that one company won't carry furniture and the other had no available cabs with big enough boots. On the bus back home without it I wondered whether I was brave enough to hire the CoWheels van at the end of my road. I wasn't. I was only brave enough to text my next-door neighbour to ask whether she'd help me with her people carrier. No reply and gradually I worked up the courage to hire the van.

It just so happened that when I got to C's she was taking a short break so she helped me load the desk. Gravity helped me unload it into the street outside my house then as I was parking I saw Z smiling at me from the front of his car. I met Z when he praised my guerilla gardening in June last year and we've often had conversations since but I haven't seen him for six months. We were both thrilled to meet again. He's been in Jordan with his aged and ailing father. He had two minutes before his next food delivery so I asked him if he'd help me get the desk from the street into the house. Of course he would.

Then I got a message from my next-door neighbour to say that of course she'd help me. I thanked her and said it had turned out fine as I'd now got my van-confidence back.

I've been wanting to buy some baklava as a thank-you present for S, who helped me move bookcases last week (one of which has been stuck at the bottom of the stairs ever since, now joined by the heavy desk). At the market last week I couldn't find A, the Syrian baklava-maker who I helped a few years ago to get a grant for cooking equipment then helped find a commercial kitchen and whose business I have since promoted (I helped get his pastries into a Kurdish supermarket round the corner when it opened a few months ago and was very disappointed when I went in to buy some for S to find that none of their baklava was branded with A's business name). So I emailed him. Of course he would deliver some to me this evening.

When I went out for my flu vaccination there were three young men building a garden wall at the end of the road. I stopped to admire the brickwork and of course we got into a conversation about bricks. Turns out one of them loves bricks and is about to move to Manchester where he has discovered a Brick Shop. In the GP waiting room it dawned on me I could offer them some beer money to move my furniture upstairs after they'd finished work. Yes, of course they would.

At 4.30 just one of them turned up and said the other two (Polish, incidentally) had had to go to price another job so they'd do it tomorrow. But when he saw how 'small' the furniture was he said he'd do it by himself straight away. Then he saw my piano. Turned out he is a pianist (a stereotype of mine came crashing to the floor). He played and we discussed chord progressions and the tone of the piano. He loved my light, airy, 'Scandinavian' house - he was expecting it to be dark and cramped and full of dingy carpets. Another stereotype bounced onto the floor and smashed. I took him outside to see the bricks and he'll be coming back tomorrow after work for tea, piano and brick conversation.

Then A turned up with his baklava and flatly, totally, utterly refused to take any money for them, whatever I did or said. I was delighted when he told me his pastries are still in the Kurdish supermarket - but by the tray-load not by the labelled plate. So after he left I went round there to buy some to add to the plate he'd brought me. Which I took round to S's wife who demonstrated how to accept a gift with grace. Something I must learn.

I am surrounded by humans at their kindest.