The supermarket always seems to have a collecting point for toys for children, or cans for cats, or tins for pensioners. There are flag days and coffee mornings and evenings where you pay 10 for a glass of wine and a sausage roll so that you can spend some poor African to college. And that's all before you open the post and all those envelopes with pens in. It's not that I grudge any of it really. We all know that more good causes need more dosh and they have to be more brutal to get it.
Most people pay up, if only because it's easier to give than to get out of it.
But sometimes, just sometimes, as I'm hunting through my purse yet again, I'd love to know the secret of those hard-hearted one in three. Men are not as good as women at shopping. Women are not as good as men at drinking. We all need to practise more.