Charity Work

To you they may look like two slices of moist, tasty carrot cake. Beautifully baked, and with a layer of thick buttercream icing. Perfect, delicious and self-indulgent. The height of luxury and decadence.

But that’s where you’d be wrong. To me they speak of self-sacrifice and duty: the willingness to put others before self. In this case, it’s the willingness to put the welfare of Ryedale’s dogs before any thoughts of my own welfare.

As you may know, I do some volunteering for my local dog rescue charity Ryedale Dog Rescue. During the summer months we normally raise the bulk of our funds to help rescue and re-home as many dogs as possible. Like many charities, Covid 19 has hit us badly: most of our fundraising is done face-to-face at our pop-up shop and various events in the area. Now they have gone, so has most of our opportunity to raise some cash.

But, we’re a doughty bunch. Forced indoors, we’ve turned our hands many ingenious ways to raise cash, including a safe and self-distanced ‘stall on a wall’ outside someone’s house, selling on Facebook and an online dog show. 

The cake is the creation of one of our volunteers. Anne decided we all needed cheering up, so offered to bake cakes for the other volunteers: anything we liked, as long as we made a donation to the charity. I settled for the carrot cake. So spare a thought for me as I tuck into the cake. To show my devotion to the cause, the slices in the photographs were yesterday’s breakfast. The cake, by the way, was gorgeous.

Totally selfless. I wouldn’t be surprised if there’s not an MBE in it for me somewhere.