Charity, we all agree, begins at home. But the crisis in Ukraine has thrown us a curveball: whose home, exactly?
The householders generously throwing open their doors are obviously the focus, and it is rightly a source of great pride that tens of thousands have already volunteered to take in a family fleeing the warzone.
I, for one, salute them for doing battle with the bureaucratic lottery of finding a named refugee themselves, and then overcoming the additional barriers to get them over here.
It is shabby and shameful that this Government has seen fit to introduce such a caveat emptor, do-it-yourself resettlement scheme that ought to be centrally co-ordinated and a lot more thought through than chucking £350 a month at the problem – and only for the first year, despite their stay in the country lasting for up to three years.
The reluctance of the Government to get properly involved is presumably because the Conservatives fear some host-refugee relationships will go horribly wrong. Is it any better that they are contriving to be both obstructive and hands-off? Absolutely not – but we must have faith that the human spirit will endure.
Assuming that both parties can be matched, then comes the business of settling them in and trying not to ruminate over what happens next. Are they to be moved on after the requisite minimum six months’ rent-free stay, even if it works out beautifully, or will they remain for the full three years even if it doesn’t?
I do realise they are our Home Front heroes – and my neighbours have put their names on the Homes for Ukraine sponsorship list – but does that make the rest of us who aren’t in a position to provide board and lodgings a bunch of selfish meanies? The suspicion is hard to escape.
I’ve lost count of the passive-aggressive exchanges I’ve both encountered and witnessed. After much deliberation, I have nailed the most effective response to the dread question “You must have room at home… are you hosting?”
Now, if you were hosting, you would have said so. It’s like being vegan: you are obliged to tell everyone, all the time. The unpalatable truth is that your interlocutor just wants you to squirm.
You could, of course, launch into yet another excruciatingly defensive account of why you are not, in fact, a bad person, and it is only family circumstances that make it impossible. Far better to simply lob the enquiry back at them: “Are you?”
Ha! Let them be the ones to squirm. Unless they say they are, in which case the game is well and truly up, so just give them a hug, gush with genuine admiration, offer to help out in any way you can, and feel terrible for misjudging them.
Without wishing to sound querulous and make it all about us, the rest of the country – those of us who don’t have holiday cottages, space or empty nests – care passionately, too. We just want a way to show it, if that doesn’t sound too needy.
I have pledged to do what I can if a Ukrainian family moves into our street, whether that’s dusting down our trampoline and digging out the Barbies from the basement, providing essentials, or simply a warm welcome and a sense of community.
Is that enough? I have to believe it is, or I won’t sleep a wink. And this brings me on to the second curveball: what sort of charity is the best sort of charity?
On the one hand, we have doughty citizens conspicuously driving truckloads of mattresses to the Polish border, to great – and justified – fanfare, with photos all over social media.
On the other, we have the silent masses quietly transferring money to the Disasters Emergency Committee. To deafening, below-the-radar silence.
It’s not a competition. But it also sort of is. At any rate, it’s human nature not simply to help but to be seen to be helping – pour encourager les autres, and also to stop gossip.
Before you castigate me for thinking the unthinkable, or, rather, saying the unsayable, have a quick shufty at the first series of the gloriously scurrilous Derry Girls again.
In episode four, the city welcomes the “Children of Chernobyl”, teenagers affected by the Soviet nuclear disaster who have been sent to Northern Ireland to, as the priest says, “give their wee lungs a clear-out”.
Schoolgirl Erin Quinn is desperate to share her lofty benevolence and wisdom with the “poor wee Ukrainian” she is hosting. But sophisticated, self-aware Katya turns out to be a lot less grateful than she expected.
“Erin, stop hogging the Russian – give Orla a go,” her father reprimands her.
“She’s Ukrainian, actually,” snaps Erin as she continues to monopolise scowling Katya. Everyone continues to get her nationality wrong as they crane their necks to have a look at her.
Meanwhile, lumbering Artem finds himself literally tied to his bossy little Derry schoolgirl host, “because he kept wandering off”.
Nobody will be making those mistakes this time round, although I have no doubt that with the best will in the world, there will probably be cultural blunders and misunderstandings on both sides, which I hope will be met with forbearance and good humour.
Does it matter if our virtue-signalling is all a bit performative? Probably not, as long as we remember we are rallying round the same cause.
Cash donations may feel more coldly detached than cuddly toys or blankets, but they are by far the best way to assist. The Red Cross, for instance, is not accepting unsolicited items such as clothes, food or medical supplies for Ukraine.
“Thank you for the kind offers,” its website states, “but we can only accept money for emergency appeals. Items have to be sorted, cleaned and transported, which slows down our response. [Cash] donations are by far the quickest, safest, and more direct way to help people and to support the work of the Red Cross in Ukraine and neighbouring countries.”
All we can do now is to keep giving what money we can, and look forward to the moment we can hand over those precious teddies to the newcomers in our neighbourhoods.
