The team
Angela Hicken
Madelaine - the book thief
Penny- Rose Ratcliffe
Rachel the editor- Jane the Archivist
Cordelia Gray- Friday Next
- Jacky Percival
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HOW TO BE A BETTER PERSON Find!
'How to be a better person' published in 2009, is Seb Hunter's fourth book, and follows his attempts to improve himself by signing up for as many different types of volunteering as possible. The book sets out firstly to entertain, and secondly to educate a little on the charities he worked with. It is written in a journal-entry style which allows the reader to dip in and out; it is quite funny in places, but with some serious points to make. On his website Hunter says that 'It's been an ODYSSEY. Like Homer's, only with more pensioners'.
It all started following a phone call from the National Blind Children's Society: they were looking for volunteers to collect money in their own neighbourhood, delivering envelopes and returning later to collect them. In a moment of what Hunter describes as 'sudden madness' he heard himself say: 'Yes, why not.'
Although he 'couldn't be arsed' to deliver the envelopes, Hunter decided to spend some of his spare time on a programme of self-improvement through volunteering.
Over a period of two years, he worked in a charity shop, picked up litter, taught pensioners, entertained pensioners, became a hospital radio DJ, helped asylum seekers, worked with the homeless, walked twenty-five miles to highlight climate change, became a porter on a steam train line belonging to the Mid Hants Railway, and much, much more.
Hunter's volunteering takes him to various locations in London and Hampshire. The reader is given an often humorous insight into the sometimes difficult process of enrolling as a volunteer and the less appealing aspects of volunteering, not least the petty power struggles between some of the characters involved.
Hunter, during a stint as a volunteer with the Winchester Litter Pickers asks Hermione, the leader, (described as looking 'fabulous - like Twiggy'll look at eighty-five') whose 'floppy green hat matches her diamond-cushioned Barbour perfectly', why they meet 'specifically' at the railway station every week. 'Flinging a wet, soiled nappy into her bag', she tells Hunter that 'The railway station is vitally important because this is the first thing that visitors see when they arrive in the city'. She adds: 'And we want it to look nice for them; we don't want it to be all filthy'.
A later stint finds Hunter litter picking in Winchester Cathedral grounds, where, sporting a 'new, official, laminated Cathedral Volunteer badge', he is questioned by 'a large Indian family group' who ask him: 'Who is buried in all these graves?' To which he responds: 'Doesn't it say on the tombstones?' They then ask: 'Are there kings and queens buried here?' Hunter gives the same response. But when he is asked: 'Where is Jane Austen buried?' he is able to tell them: 'Inside the cathedral! Inside!' The group, 'reluctantly begin to follow the point' of his outstretched finger.
Hunter lives in
Read a review by Phil Hogan of the Observer
10 August 2009 from Cordelia Gray
Finds
- And here is one we missed
- And, finally, one for Hallowe'en
- How did we miss this one?
- John Wyndham's Hampshire connection
- Reading the countryside
- New Milton's new Milton
- Heywood Sumner in South Gorley
- PG Wodehouse in Emsworth
- Walking In My Sleep
- Nicola Slade's Victorian Mysteries
- England's Lost Eden
- June Tate
- Bullington
- Speed The Plough: A Country Song
- A Hampshire scarecrow: Worzel Gummidge
- Queens Arms
- Haslar Hospital Memories
- Magical writing for children
- Inspired by the Tichborne Claimant
- Gypsy Girl Trilogy
- Rev. Gilbert White (1720-1793) and The Natural History of Selborne
- Coffee with Date and Walnut Loaf
- The Play Room
- Kipling's dislikes
- Deadman's Plack
- Netley Abbey Ruins
- Portsea Sagas
- Lilian Harry's Family Connections
- Crossing the Bar
- John Betjeman and Bevis Hillier
- Growing up in Portsmouth
- More Edward Thomas
- Two blokes and a shed
- In the shadow of the Cathedral
- Hampshire Days
- Mr Hardy Writes a Poem
- "Steep" is apt
- Thackeray in Fareham
- Forgotten Favourite?
- Daniel Clay's 'Broken'
- Pell and Tess
- Edward Thomas and Froxfield
- Betjeman explores hidden corners of Hampshire
- Rebecca Smith
- Right of Access
- Hampshire songs, poems, and ditties
- In this house
- Words & Walks
- England, Their England
- An Ode to a Road
- The story of a house
- Crime Connections to the City
- John Keat's Ode to Autumn
- William Lisle Bowles, poet
- Future Princes of Winchester
- Spike Island by Philip Hoare
- The marriage of souls
- Rural Rides: William Cobbett
- Elinor Brent-Dyer remembered
- Dornford Yates' Hampshire connection
- The Marlows, their maker and stealing a corner of Dorset
- Saint Cross: England's Oldest Almshouse
- Winchester the whole day through
- HOW TO BE A BETTER PERSON
- Otterbourne's Enid Blyton? Charlotte M. Yonge (1823-1901)
- Odo's Hanging is missing
- The Warden
- Charles Kingsley's Letters
- Owslebury Bottom
- See it My Way
- Introduction to Melesina Trench
- Some Hampshire road signs read Jane Austen Country
- Flora Thompson: published poet
Recent posts
- Virginia Smith remembered
- Mary Sumner
- A272: An Ode to a Road (by Andy)
- The hunt continues
- Winchester MP Mark Oaten to publish book
- Chalet School
- Bags of Books and Enthusiasm
- Chalet School author
- Poetry in the pub
- Wealth of words in Winchester
- Hampshire Gets Going
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