Cultureshock

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Video transcript

Forty years ago I was a member of the local Salvation Army corps. I played in the band, I sang in the songsters and I was a very active member. One of the responsibilities that I had was that of goodwill secretary and the goodwill secretary was responsible for organising programmes within the community.

One of the things we did was food parcels at Christmas, another one was late night shopping for disabled people which we organised with Woolworths. But the gem of that year was the sponsored 24 hour table tennis. I gathered together some members of the band and they all agreed to play table tennis from six o’clock on the Friday until six o’clock on the Saturday. They all thought they were fit enough for it so off we went. At the end of the time I was not quite sure how fit we all were but the point was that we completed it and we raised a considerable amount of money.

The aim was to buy televisions for old people and we had list of nine old people who were anxiously waiting for their Christmas television. When we counted the money we found we had enough for ten, so we bought ten televisions, second hand ones of course. I’m not quite sure if we actually bought a license as well but maybe we’ll forget that. Anyway, we had an extra television and I knew of a family that lived down in one of the villages fairly close to Consett at High Westwood. I knew it was s ingle parent family and there were four children who went to the local village school with no television.

So, on Christmas Eve I was very pleased to drive down from Consett through Allendale down to Westwood to deliver the television for this family. I took the television in ad the children were absolutely delighted, a television in their home! So the television was switched on and this was Christmas for them. But as I looked round the house, it was fairly obvious to me that there wasn’t a great deal of Christmas decoration or sweets or fruit for the children. So I quietly had a word with mum and asked if she had any sweets for the children or stockings or so on and she admitted that she didn’t have very much at all. We still had a little bit of money left so I quickly drove up to Consett, found a local sweet shop on Medomsley Road, went in, explained the situation, gave them all the money that I had and said can you give me as many sweets as you possibly can for that. So I finished up with this huge bag of sweets.

By this time it’s almost half past five and I’m due to be back playing Christmas carols with the Salvation Army band as six. So I drove down through Allendale, and as I’m going through Allendale, out comes a dog and I hit it. I didn’t kill it, I just hit it and stunned it. So I had to stop the car, then go and try and find the owner and explain what had happened and then straight back down to Westwood. Having arrived back at Westwood, I was invited back in with my bag of sweets and to my absolute astonishment, instead of four children watching the television there were fourteen! When I asked ’Where do they come from?’ she said ‘Mr Jackson, they don’t have televisions either’. And so fourteen children all sat on the floor, all looking up, four of them having been just recently bathed because that’s what Mrs Stirling had done with the children. They were absolutely delighted and there was a super Christmas programme on I remember quite clearly. I then came out, wished them all a happy Christmas, got into the car and drove very quickly back up to do our carol playing stint on that Christmas Eve.

The years have passed, of course, and I have a memory now of just over fifteen months ago, on Christmas Eve 2008 I had a telephone call and the result of that telephone call was that the local Salvation Army captain and myself delivered toys to a family at two o’clock on Christmas day. That family had been burgled of toys on the Christmas Eve, the day before. So, as I think back to the memories of Christmas and the things that we did and all of the Christmas carol playing that I’ve done since it doesn’t seem top matter which decade or which year. If we look there’s always need at Christmas.