VPaterson

Last updated 00:00, Friday, 04 January 2008

THE New Year honours will have come and gone by the time you read this and I am sure that my name isn’t among them.

It’s not that I don’t deserve one, of course. It is just that I know I will have been overlooked again because I am a modest, unassuming sort of person who does her good works in quiet.

It’s MY column - I can say what I like about myself and you’re not allowed to argue.

I love scanning the honours to see who has got them; sometimes I think ‘well done’ and other times I am horrified.

To avoid being horrified this year, I’ve decided to give my own honours. The recipients won’t be getting anything concrete but this is the list I would just love to see:

My Helpful Service award would go to an assistant at Sainsbury’s in Cockermouth who went out of her way to live up to her name and assist me when I went to find some Ecclefechan tarts the other day.

Another Helpful Service award would go to two young men at the Vodaphone shop in Workington. I traipsed around the telephone shops trying to get someone who could retrieve a photo from a mobile phone.

Everyone else told me, politely, that they were sorry but they couldn’t help.

These two young men thought they couldn’t help but they kept trying anyway and eventually they succeeded.

I would give a Bravery award to the lady who cleans our office in Maryport.

Her daughter was very ill during the year but mum never lost her faith or her determination to ensure that her daughter got better.

This story had a happy ending and I am sure a mother’s faith went a long way to securing that outcome.

And I guess my own mother deserves a medal of some kind, too.

She has been told that her memory has been affected by Alzheimer’s or by a series of small strokes.

Despite that, when I was in hospital earlier this year, she managed to use a stupidly overcomplicated system each day to phone me in hospital.

She was the only one who could figure out how to do it!

I would like to give a Good Citizen award to all those teenagers who don’t spend their time hanging out aimlessly on street corners.

This year I have reported on so many young people who have helped others or raised money or overcome difficulties.

And, while on young people, I would give young carers the highest medal of all.

I would urge us all to support West Cumbrian Carers - the support group that cares for these young carers, who because of their dedication would not have time to hang around street corners even if they wanted to.

Maryport police would get a medal en masse.

I say Maryport, well aware that there are many police officers all over the country doing a good job.

But because I am based in Maryport I see, every day, how the emphasis here is on stopping crime and not just reacting to it.

I am especially impressed by the way they think outside the box and don’t grizzle about the influx of Eastern Europeans or of young people creating a nuisance.

They try and work with people, to educate them. They have an excellent approach.

A Service Above and Beyond award would go to the man who fixed my back when it packed in a couple of days before I was due to go to Italy.

Thank you, Barry Jackson.

Service awards, too, go to the people I work with in the Maryport office who keep me supplied with coffee and answer my phone when I’m not here - and to Edna down the road who brings toast in the morning.

And finally, to all those volunteers who work in the background - those hundreds of people who never get any recognition but without whom organisations would simply cease to be.

To all those who make the place as great as it often is, congratulations - you are knights and dames without shining armour but you are an example to the rest of us.

Arise, Sir and Madam, and add you names to my list of honour.