I remember being told when I was five years old that under no circumstances should I accept sweets from strangers. Fair enough, this is common sense. But what if you are that stranger?
Recently I missed my train and was stuck on the platform for an hour. It was unseasonably warm and I had in my bag of groceries a pack of ice-creams — the kind that look like an icy pole but are in fact filled with vanilla ice-cream.
I was quickly overcome by a panic next only to that feeling you get at a buffet when you realise you're full and you haven't even started on the desserts yet. My ice-creams were almost definitely about to melt into a sad soupy mess at the bottom of my bag.
If there is one thing I can't abide it's wasted ice-cream.
Now I could have made a pretty good go at eating ten in an hour, but it wouldn't have been pretty. And since I was planning a dinner containing enough cheese to give me (and my cat) nightmares for a week I thought it wise to abstain.
But throwing away these treats was not an option. So if I couldn't eat them, then somebody else bloody well better.
I reasoned that if someone offered me an ice-cream on a hot day I would be chuffed. I'm reasonably well turned out, clean-ish and in no way resemble the child catcher in Chitty Chitty Bang Bang. Surely this could be classed as a random act of kindness? I don't want anything from anyone — I just don't want to waste food and it would be lovely if someone else could enjoy these goodies.
I looked around and spied a teenage boy in school uniform.
'These ice-creams are about to melt — would you like one?' I chirped.
He looked up from his phone, shook his head and grunted.
I tried a woman standing nearby.
'Would you like one? They'll only go to waste!'
'No thank you dear.'
'Oh. Okay then.'
By this time my face was red with embarrassment and rejection. It dawned on me that I was the weirdo on the platform offering sweets to strangers and it was not a good look. There was no going back: I'd broken the strict rules of platform-stranger etiquette. I was an outcast and a fruit loop.
It was at this point