Earlier this year, I had a phone call with a woman named Debbie about one of her toughest days as a parent. While she was carting her two sick toddlers to buy medicine, one abruptly vomited across the floor of the local shopping mall. A passing stranger stopped, grabbed a roll of paper towel from the display in front of the chemist, and sopped up the mess – then went inside to pay for what she’d used, insisting on footing the bill. It was a small but lovely act that spoke to the decency of other people.
Working as a journalist often involves speaking to people on, or about, the worst day of their life. But for the past year I have had the tremendous pleasure of interviewing Australians (and the occasional Briton) about something very different – the acts of kindness they’ve received from a total stranger. Guardian Australia asked readers to send in these stories, and we have been publishing them in our weekly kindness of strangers column.
