ALISON KING & ARTHUR HOLDEN
Volunteer dog walkers
Battersea Dogs & Cats Home
For the inmates of the Battersea Dogs & Cats Home in South London, Christmas Day is like any other. The dogs still need walking and the charity’s loyal volunteers, including Alison King, a former civil servant, and Arthur Holden, an ex-litho printer, arrive early to take the dogs out for exercise in nearby Battersea Park. Last year, 10 volunteers turned up to help out.
‘There’s always a party for the volunteers, but they don’t put up Christmas trees because the dogs would start cocking their legs on them,’ says Alison, 56.
While many of the staff and volunteers wear baubles in their hair on the day, some favoured dogs also get to wear a strand of tinsel. One year Arthur, also 56, who has helped out three times at Christmas, tried bringing in some canine Father Christmas hats. But the dogs made short work of those.
‘The problem is trying to keep the hats on the dogs – it’s as if they are self-conscious about their appearance and that’s why they’ve ended up tearing the hats to shreds,’ he says resignedly.
When Alison inherited her sister’s South London home, not too far from Battersea, she was able to give up her job in the Home Office and dedicate her time to working for charity. Last year she volunteered at Battersea for a total of 1,105 hours of dog walking, making her the most dedicated member of Battersea’s 400-strong team of unpaid helpers.
Alison says rescue dogs are now her life and her family, so seeing them on Christmas Day, as she has done for the past four years, feels entirely natural. ‘This is my pack,’ she explains. And helping out at Battersea on Christmas Day is never without incident.
‘One Christmas I was taking a nice young female dog to the park and a gentleman dog took too much interest. He became a little too amorous and I had to call out sharply to his owner, “Can you get your dog off my dog? I know it’s the season of goodwill but that’s taking things a bit too far.”
‘Then there was the occasion when I tripped over and the leash went from my hand. The best remedy is to get down and peer intently at something on the ground, which never fails to work as a retrieval technique as dogs are naturally so inquisitive.’
They’re clearly not the only ones, as Alison soon found herself joined by other walkers on their hands and knees asking what she’d lost.
Arthur, who is originally from South Africa, says he’d far rather be in the company of dogs on Christmas Day than ‘sitting around the table yapping away to people’. For him, ‘a day without animals is a day not worth having.’
He became a Battersea Dogs & Cats Home volunteer in 2006 when he was diagnosed with a tumour in his leg and was made redundant at around the same time.
‘Exercise is the best form of recovery,’ he says. ‘But I’ve had some very close calls with other dog owners letting their animals run amok. The smaller ones are the cheekiest of all. A 2kg chihuahua will see a 60kg akita on a lead and for them it’s like a challenge… and believe me, some of them don’t show too much peace and goodwill to other dogs on Christmas Day.’
Visit battersea.org.uk, 020 7622 3626
MARGARET MITCHELL
Volunteer chef
The Pilion Trust, London
Professional chef Margaret Mitchell has worked as a film and TV location caterer, though she’s currently a special needs maths teacher. It was a family friend who asked her if she would cook Christmas dinner for 25 homeless teenagers in London for a charity, The Pilion Trust.
Convinced that the experience would also be good for her three twentysomething daughters, Margaret, 63, agreed. She had little idea what she was letting herself – or them – in for. ‘Normally our Christmas day is very relaxed. We have breakfast in our PJs with champagne and smoked salmon. We open presents, and the girls each have a stocking. Then we go to my sister’s for a late lunch or early supper. Every few years, I have the family over here.’
Last year her festive enthusiasm led Margaret to over-extend her hospitality. ‘Before going off to spend the day cooking for the homeless, I had to cook a goose for 10 guests I’d invited to Christmas dinner that evening.’ It might have seemed like a good idea at the time, but when Margaret arrived at the shelter it quickly became apparent that the day was going to be even more challenging than she’d imagined.
‘The cooker was a small domestic electric four-ring affair – and I hate cooking on electric. Plus there was no heating in the tiny kitchen in the basement of the church where the event was being held. So I cooked with my beret on, a thermal vest, a jumper and a cardigan, and my apron over that. Oh, and sheepskin-lined boots. Then I hadn’t taken my cook’s knives with me, so I ended up having to cut turkey off the bone with a bread knife.’
Despite these setbacks, and with the girls helping to prepare and serve the food, Margaret succeeded in producing a memorable Caribbean-themed Christmas lunch for her appreciative guests in the shelter, which had been beautifully decorated by local schoolchildren. ‘Although I had to make do in that church basement, I really did enjoy it and everyone had a great time and loved the food.’
Her menu included poached salmon, Trinidadian stewed turkey with sweet potato and plantain fritters, and a Christmas cake using a traditional Guyanese recipe.
‘When I got home I headed into the kitchen to get on with my dinner party. My daughter said, “Mum, you’re mad, we should have gone to Aunty Connie’s for Christmas.” She was right: I couldn’t eat a mouthful.
‘I’ll help at the shelter again, but I certainly wouldn’t cook Christmas dinner afterwards for any number of people, not even for one.’
thepiliontrust.co.uk, 020 7700 2498
JIM BYRNE
Santa Claus
Gloucestershire Royal Hospital
My overriding fear is the kids catching hold of the beard. It’s on elastic and when it twangs up it makes your eyes water,’ says Jim Byrne, an artist, who will spend part of Christmas Day visiting the children’s ward at Gloucestershire Royal Hospital as a jovial, much-loved Santa. ‘My only fee is Jaffa Cakes. I have a passion for them.’
This month, as he has done for the past 25 Christmases, the 72-year-old ex-RAF man will don red suit and white beard, and stay for as long as it takes to entertain the children and give them all a present from his sack of gifts.
‘My wife Jean is a domestic at the hospital and I first got involved there after the kettle on the children’s ward blew up. When she told me, I went out and bought a new one, which the nurses were very pleased with. Then I found that one of them dressed up as a fairy to cheer up the hospital on Christmas Day, and I offered to give her a hand. I hired the outfit and turned up with a bag of goodies, and that was that. I love kids to bits and it was brilliant.
‘I’ll sit on the floor with all of them, but once I get down I can’t get up as my knees are knackered. It’s like raising the Titanic. If I say, “Come on, kids, give Santa a hand,” they come over and try to lift me up.’ Jim, who came to the UK from Ireland in 1962, will march into the ward and shout: ‘Hello, children! How are you getting on? I was on my way back to the North Pole when I heard there were some kids here I’d missed.’ One year, he was nearly rumbled. ‘This kid called Ben, who suffers from cystic fibrosis, had asked me to do him a painting a few weeks earlier. Come Christmas morning he’s back in there as he’s had a bit of a turn, and he pipes up, “I know you!” So I shot over and whispered, “You’re not going to let me down now, are you?” And luckily he didn’t.
‘Another time, I went into a utility room to change and the nurses had covered up the glass door all the way down to about six or seven inches from the bottom. I took off my jacket and boots and was just about to take off my beard and wig when I saw a tiny pair of brown eyes peeping up through the gap in the door. I heard an anxious voice down the corridor, “I’ve just seen Father Christmas taking his clothes off!”’
After he finishes at the hospital, Jim has another call to make. Still in Santa costume, he walks to his eight-year-old granddaughter’s house and sneaks a few presents through the front door. ‘I might get another year out of her, but when she twigs I’ll get her an elf uniform and ask her to help me sprinkle a little stardust down at the hospital.’
Photographs by Murdo MacLeod