Conville & Walsh

Judith O’Reilly made a really stupid New Year’s resolution – to do one good deed a day. After all, how hard can it be?

It turns out, that it’s a pretty tough call. So far, O’Reilly has secured work experience for a jobless teenager (despite his best efforts). She’s mopped out a leaking toilet and cleared a trap of a rigor-mortised mouse (yuk). She is teaching a disabled child to write, has looked after other mothers’ children to give them a break (and tried not to resent it), buried the dead, re-buried the dead (it turned out they were in the wrong place) and consoled the grieving. She has checked on the welfare of the sick, baked a birthday cake (when baking is against her religion), and given away snowdrops and hyacinths and books. She has picked up litter on the beach and lobbied MEPs to make cycling through cities safer. She has also launched a campaign to persuade people to ‘Join the Jam Jar Army’ – and fill empty jam jars with loose change for charity (it remains to be seen whether this is one of her best ideas).

“Doing good” is deeply embedded spiritually and culturally in our society from the cub scouts to the Wizard of Oz, from the Bible to Sikhism. How to better oneself is always of interest to anyone who isn’t perfect – which is everyone. Unrelenting virtue would make for a dull book. Struggling to be virtuous when you are very definitely not, is much more interesting. O’Reilly has had her failures – she tried to rescue a lamb from slaughter but will probably have to eat him, she’s been rejected by the coastguards, and in between the good deeds, she’s bitterly resented the calls on her time. She had a crisis of faith, but bribed her eight-year-old son into making his First Communion anyway. Oh yes, and her nearest and dearest have begun avoiding her for fear of more good deeds coming their way.

Disappointingly, as yet, she is not a better person.