Author’s Remarks:
This poem was inspired by a four year old Asian girl of Indian extraction and a total stranger to me as was her father who were both waiting in a queue that I was at the head of in a well-known take-away establishment waiting to be served at the same moment my purchased transaction was in the process of coming to its conclusion. I had just paid for the items that I’d ordered and was about to receive my receipt for them from the sales assistant who’d served me when in the process of him doing so the receipt accidentally slipped from his hand - an occurrence that he immediately apologized to me for which was pleasantly very nice of him but in actual fact there was absolutely no need at all for him to do so, since what had happened was really no one’s fault and simply just one of those things – and landed on the floor on my side of the counter that separated us.

Both the sales assistant and myself fully cognizant of what had happened and also where precisely the receipt had landed and I motioned to him that I’d pick it up just as soon as I’d safely and quite securely replaced my debit card, which I had used for that particular transaction, back into my shoulder bag that was now opened and also on the counter. However, before I could do so I felt a gentle tap on my leg and on glancing to where it had come from became aware of this smartly dressed and also beaming with a most enchanting smile young girl of Asian extraction who’d in the process of her own volition and quite unbeknown to me at the time had picked up the said receipt and was now presenting it to me with the words: “You dropped your receipt and I thought I’d pick it up for you.” Immensely charmed by what she’s voluntarily and altruistically done I instinctively thanked her with the words: “Thank you young lady; that was most kind and very thoughtful of you.” She smiled engagingly and returned to her father.

I then thanked him although it was entirely his daughter’s doing; but that said such behaviour from one so very young had to be derived from somewhere, and not emerge purely from thin air, as every intelligent and conscionable person in Britain well knows that such unselfish behaviour even from supposedly mature adults is extremely rare and very akin to trying to getting blood out of a stone; and so I warmly and genuinely and thanked that little girl’s dad too for being the kind of father that he obviously was. And with my own thoughts on the contemporary Britain that I routinely observe when I’m there I was buoyed up with hope for its future, although not from those who delude themselves that they alone are exclusively Britons and no one else has any right to that supposedly on their part exceptionalist distinction. So thank you again young lady, and here’s to the future and significantly too the kind of civilized, diverse, compassionate and thoroughly principled Britain that you and others like you, regardless of their race or background, represent.