#300GoodDeeds - Day Three - Music, Food-Banks and Gift-Giving

Advent began "properly" today, four Sundays before Christmas, and we've been busy decorating Christmas biscuits and sharing in the annual reading of "Children of Green Knowe"... but that's not all we've done.  Back in late summer when we first came up with the idea of the #300GoodDeeds it seemed like it was going to be the easiest thing in the world to do but, now it's come to it, getting the right number of things can be a bit tricky.

Our nativity set, welcoming all the visitors. (Picture: SC)

All the same, we're pleased to say that we have three good deeds to report for 3rd December.

Firstly, it was standing in to play the organ at church (Saint John's).  The regular organist was away today and, rather than sing to the CD backing track, we were able to stand in.  Despite a speedy onset of nerves, it was great to play some of our favourite hymns and really set the scene for the next few weeks ahead.

There is a collection at the bank of the church for the Caithness Food Bank, a vital and valued outreach in the local community.  In the current social climate the call for food banks across the country has increased exponentially, and giving to one of these is a real boon to supporting local people.  So here was good deed number two.  There was some discussion over what to give, be it tuna or soup, but the tuna won out in the end!

Three Gifts of Bookish Goodness

The final good deed was looking a little further afield.  Being self-employed and having no work colleagues at all, I'm saved the difficulty of that dreaded Secret Santa moment when you pull a name out of the hat and find that you're holding a piece of paper with your boss' name on and have to weigh up the temptation to get something outrageous using the cover of "Santa", against the idea of buying something really useful and/or meaningful.  But giving books to a book-lover is a great idea, and this is exactly what the #SecretSantaBookSwap - which is now in it's second year - does.  So our third good deed was completing this Secret Santa.

I'm not going to lie: good deeds are exhausting!  So I'm off to bed now to try and regain the strength for more good deeds tomorrow!

V x