Q: Why should archaeology be free? A: It shouldn't.

Inspired by Emily Johnson's post on volunteers in archaeology and heritage from March 25th, I wanted to explore some of the facts and figures behind the industry. Bear in mind, I am no accountant or mathematical expert. I'm a liberal arts student to the core, and I work much better with pictures than with numbers. That being said, I'm interested and somewhat incensed by the way funds are allocated to the arts in Britain, and I think we need to make more noise about it. In light of the fact that George Osborne's budget stormed onto the scene just under a week ago, I thought now was a good time to talk hard cash.

Britain is, undoubtedly, a hot spot for tourism. Anyone who has been in a major city or a picturesque village during the summer will have experienced this first hand. I've had the... pleasure, of working at Buckingham Palace, one of the busiest tourist attractions in the country, during the height of tourist season. Thankfully, I got paid and fed for my pains (I also got given a beautiful uniform, but no more on that topic) but there are people working in the tourism sector who aren't quite so fortunate. In a public facing role in a heavily trafficked environment, you put up with a lot of shit. I apologise for the profanity, but I have to be honest here. It is often not a particularly pleasant experience. Working in a beautiful historic environment is somewhat lost on you when you're being yelled at, trodden on, rained on, spat at and treated as if you've been scraped from someone's shoe. Believe me, it's bad enough when you get paid for it, so why the heck should anyone do it for free?

VisitBritain reports provisionally, that overseas tourism in January of 2013 is up 11% from previous years, and spending from overseas tourists is at around £1.24bn. Just let that figure sink in for a second. Tourism is one of the largest industries in the UK, valued by Deloitte at £115.4bn. It contributes £96.7bn to the economy in England alone, that's 8.6% of the GDP. A large proportion of the pull for tourists is our heritage and our history as a country. We are ranked 5th in the world in the tourism "dimension" of "historic buildings and monuments". Let me hit you with some funky figures straight from VisitBritain here:

"In 2009 the number of inbound visitors who visited a museum was 7.7 million, with 4.2 million visiting an art gallery. Visiting heritage attractions is also a very popular activity for inbound visitors with 5.8 million visiting a castle, 5 million visiting historic houses and 6.4 million visiting religious buildings or monuments."

The top five leading visitor attractions are all museums and galleries. Do you know what museums and galleries need? Stuff. They need stuff. The stuff museums and galleries need comes from people. People digging stuff up, people piece stuff back together, people discover stuff was made by important dead people. People study stuff, people put stuff on display, people interpret stuff for other people. Stuff + People = Heritage. Heritage + Visitors = Money. Good equation, I feel. But the funny thing about people is that they aren't self sustaining. People need other stuff, like food and shelter, in order to function. That stuff costs money.

People working in retail, catering and hospitality, the other major big-hitters in tourism income, are not expected to work for free. I have never met a volunteer waitress or a volunteer store assistant. Having worked in the soul destroying field of retail, I can understand why. Working in the equally draining field of front-line heritage and arts tourism, I can't understand why we expect people to work for free there. Being in a beautiful, historic place is not payment. It's a perk, and it's similar to the discount retail employees get in their shops and the free food you often get as a waiter or a waitress. Although, I'd love to see a poll on how many people in retail and catering who really enjoy those perks. When you spend all day looking at the same clothes, serving the same food, how likely are you to wear or eat those things on your time off? The shine of that perk wears off pretty quick. I love Buckingham Palace. It's a beautiful and incredible space to work in. But even the lustre of the gilding and the gorgeous artwork is nowhere near enough payment for working there. Thankfully, the Royal Collection is aware of this. Other employers aren't as fortunate, and aren't invested in enough to be able to pay for their employees.

George Osborne's budget includes culture in the section marked "other", which receives £53bn of the £720bn being paid out, alongside sport and international development (and "others"). Even if it were just those three categories, and the amount was split evenly, that's just £17.6bn going into culture. In 201, tourism supported 2.645 million jobs, this is expected to increase to 2.899 million by 2020 (see VisitBritain). Obviously not all of those jobs are found in the heritage sector, but take a look at what has been said so far - a substantial amount of them are.

These figures are important, they show us how vital tourism is to Britain's economy. Further, they show us how big a part of tourism art and heritage is. To not spend a significant amount of time considering how to properly invest in this is ridiculous. The income brought in through arts and heritage tourism is substantial, and it deserves to be invested in a lot more. It is ludicrous to expect so many people to work for free in such a lucrative industry. Volunteers are brilliant, it is great to have people so inspired by their passion that they will work for the sheer joy of it. But for those of us who have invested personally in our passion, we should receive similar investment from our employers, who should be invested in themselves for the work they do.

I could have gone on a very long rant about my objection to the spending on defence, which is something I take personal issue with, but that isn't the point and it isn't appropriate. A redistribution of money is sorely needed. There are people who are grossly overpaid for what they do, such as politicians, and there are people who are grossly underpaid, such as heritage professionals. This problem can't be fixed overnight, that goes without saying, but it can't be something we allow to let fall by the wayside. We need to keep having this discussion, we need to not be afraid to shout louder about it. I want to talk seriously about this issue because it's the only way to fix the problem some of us have been foreseeing that heritage will begin to favour those wealthy enough to work for free. A similar problem is happening in education, and the two are very clearly and strongly linked.

So don't let this issue drop. Emily was brave enough to start this discussion, and we need to be brave enough to continue it, and continue it loudly. Rip this post to shreds if you want to, feel free to tear me a new one, just don't stay silent.

Heritage and Social Media: The National Trust on YouTube

Media, Memory and Heritage: A discussion and review of the current use of YouTube by the National Trust

How Do You YouTube?

Introduction

This post will assess the use of the social media website YouTube by the heritage organisation, the National Trust. In order to do this, it must first be established what the features of YouTube are, and how users interact with it as a medium. Then, in light of this, the success rate of the National Trust’s YouTube channels can be evaluated. To establish how YouTube is currently being utilised by its users, I have uploaded a “vlog” called “How Do You YouTube?” (see above) relating to this topic and the questions it raises, and have invited people to respond the video as they wish. Through this exercise, and review of current literature on the subject, I hope to establish how YouTube is and can be used. Further to this, I will examine how it might be better utilised by heritage organisations to engage with a wide and varied audience.

“How Do You YouTube?” – What does the medium offer its users?

In 1992, Skeggs and Mundy made the, then very accurate statement that “only certain groups have access to, and power over, media output.” (6). This was tied to an important discussion of the presentation and dissemination of ideas through media. With the introduction and growing popularity of social media, Skeggs’ and Mundy’s statement requires re-examination. What we consider ‘traditional’ media, such as Film, TV or newspapers is still run by a select group of people, but sites such as YouTube are changing the way we receive and interpret parts of these traditional visual media. YouTube launched in 2005 with its first video appearing in April of that year, and just over a year later more than 65,000 videos were uploaded every day (YouTube Timeline, http://www.youtube.com/t/press_timeline accessed 30/01/13). True to its name, YouTube is a platform for viewers to become creators themselves.  Full of home movies, movie reviews, and angry rants, it can be viewed as a somewhat egotistical phenomenon. However, to expose oneself to the fierce critics of the Internet is quite a courageous act. The most successful YouTubers evidently spend a great deal of time and money on their projects, but YouTube would not have the same feel without the grainy, slightly out of focus face and tinny, muffled voice of the amateur auteur. YouTube is an open market for freedom of expression; it allows a wide variety of people to express themselves in an open forum. They do so at their own risk, of course, but it seems worth the risk of the internet ‘troll’ for a few minutes of ‘fame’.

Why, one might ask, do people consider such potential for insult worth uploading a part of themselves for all to see? Michael Wesch in his 2008 digital ethnography study of YouTube suggests that it is to gain a sense of community, a sense of belonging. However, Scobie’s 2011 review of Wesch throws doubt on whether signs of community are actually to be found on YouTube (661). Indeed, the video uploaded by this author met with more comments through other social networking sites, notably Facebook, than it did through YouTube itself. This could suggest that perhaps it is less of a communicative medium and should therefore be utilised differently than other social networks. However there are plenty of instances to be found on the site of viewers commenting and engaging productively with the created content. As Benjamin Cook’s (ninebrassmonkeys) 2012 YouTube “documentary” series about YouTubers shows, many of the people who are considered “YouTube Famous” feel a great sense of community and friendship through the website that they don’t feel outside of the site. The lack of response on YouTube might therefore be attributed to the author’s lack of status within that community.

Personas and Performers – An issue of truthfulness

Alongside this sense of community, however, is the issue of authenticity. Wesch (2008) discusses this in detail in the last part of his study. Many controversies have arisen from people acting out personas completely different from their real selves and ‘duping’ viewers into believing in a story that is entirely made up. This reveals the great power of the medium. People invest in a person or a story as depicted through videos they believe to be created and uploaded by real people, by people just like them. YouTube is not like a television show or a film. Viewers do not engage with content within suspended reality, they engage with it looking for friendship and community. Authenticity has long been a debate within historic and archaeological circles, and it comes to bear strongly within discussions of what is considered “heritage”. Indeed, the Nara Document (UNESCO, 1994) was devoted to defining the importance of authenticity within heritage conservation. In the Nara Document, authenticity is intrinsically linked to value (UNESCO 1994, Article 9). This is perpetuated through our attitudes towards heritage, particularly tangible heritage. One only has to watch a few minutes of “Antiques Roadshow” to know that people feel deeply hurt to learn something they thought was a Monet turns out to be an elaborate finger painting. The same thing happens, although often with less restrained outrage, when a YouTuber is found to be a “fake” (see fig.1). People do not like to be lied to.

Fig.1 “LonelyGirl15” Also known as “Bree” as portrayed by actress Jessica Rose in the first vlog entry.

LonelyGirl15 is a prime example was the upset caused by LonelyGirl15, a young American girl with very strict parents who was often confined to her room. She was created by a team in New Zealand and filmed with a webcam to imitate a typical vlogger. In many ways, it was an early forerunner to the ‘reality soap operas’ such as Made In Chelsea, with the key difference that the audience was not aware of the staged element.

Despite this, however, YouTube is, at its heart, a performative medium. People make conscious decisions of what to film, what to edit out, how they look, what they wear and the impression they want to give. Even the most innocent and amateurish looking video has been somewhat planned out to give a particular view. This does not mean that every YouTuber is a liar, but it should cause us to question how viewers define authenticity and truthfulness. On YouTube, a person may deliberately take on a different identity for a variety of reasons, but when it is done intentionally to fool the viewer it is seen as a slight. Authenticity, then, seems to come from information. When a viewer is presented with all the information concerning a staged show, despite how realistic it may appear, they are happy to watch it. When this information is not provided until later, it prompts a feeling of betrayal. The Nara Document (UNESCO 1994) applies this same theory to the values of different aspects of heritage: “Our ability to understand these values depends, in part, on the degree to which information sources about these values may be understood as credible or truthful.” (2, Article 9). In heritage, authenticity is seen as a fixed point that cannot be altered. The Charter for the Interpretation and Presentation of Cultural Heritage Sites (ICOMOS 2008) states that: “interpretation and presentation should contribute to the conservation of the authenticity of a cultural heritage site by communicating its significance without adversely impacting its cultural values or irreversibly altering its fabric.” (10, Article 4.2). This implies that any ‘interpretative’ scheme is not interpretative at all, but rather perpetuates a determined authenticity. This makes heritage ‘interpretation’ appear positivistic. In a space full of creation and performance like YouTube, a positivist approach seems out of place. It must be asked, then, if viewers might be allowed to create their own interpretations of heritage through this medium, or if it will be used to perpetuate established views.

Vox Populi: The Power of the Public

The viewer holds a great deal of power in the use of YouTube, just as the visitor does in the financial maintenance and conservation of the heritage industry. Art does not exist in a vacuum, and uploading a video could arguably mean very little if there is no one there to watch it. Benjamin Cook’s 2012 “documentary” series brought this issue up in “Do views and subs [subscriptions] matter?” There were mixed views from the YouTubers questioned, but it was generally agreed that these numbers matter, although they should not be the main focus. This is mirrored in heritage practice in the ICOMOS (2008) Charter for the Interpretation and Presentation of Cultural Heritage Sites. Here, it was stated that “[t]he success of an interpretive programme should not be evaluated solely on the basis of visitor attendance figures or revenue.” (11). Creators of interpretations, whether they be films or guidebooks, should focus on quality rather than quantity when it comes to feedback. A ‘fanbase’, whether big or small, can also begin to take an active role in what is being filmed by their favourite YouTubers. Many video creators will ask what people want to see next and take video requests. YouTube provides a platform for fruitful collaborative creation between the creator and the viewer. This seems like a positive angle for heritage professionals to use. Alongside this, there is a large degree of voyeurism apparent in YouTube. Many people use YouTube simply as viewers, not as creators or even comment makers. How, then, might one engage with those silent watchers? Or, is that even the correct question; should organisations instead be using YouTube to engage with creators, rather than dictating to viewers?

How Does the National Trust YouTube?

People using YouTube, whether as creators or viewers, all seem to want the same things. They want to be a part of something, and they want that something to be genuine. On top of that, many of them want to play a part in something; that is, they want to participate, not merely observe. How does this apply to heritage, then? Heritage is a performative act, just as creating a video is: it is the interpretation of history for the present. Heritage is also both communal and individual. It forms identities on a personal level through both genealogy and lived experience, and it forms a sense of community on a wider level through shared experiences and national or international events. However, as noted, there are issues with what is considered ‘authentic’ in terms of heritage interpretation. Given YouTube’s propensity for performance and the twisting of accepted truths, can this somewhat narrowing view of ‘authentic’ heritage find a place within it? Most major heritage organisations have tried, and we now turn to an examination of the National Trust’s YouTube channels.

As an organisation, the National Trust has been protecting England’s buildings, gardens and countryside since 1895, and it is now Europe’s largest conservation charity (National Trust website, accessed 30/01/13). They joined YouTube in July 2007 with the main hub channel devoted to the National Trust Charity. From here, one can access twelve separate National Trust channels, eleven devoted to different areas across the UK and one dedicated to their magazine. The main channel has 867 subscribers and 609,023 video views. All of the videos presented are professionally made and edited, and presented as guides to various aspects of the Trust. These include properties in focus, ideas for days out and even recipes from property chefs. Public opinions and reactions are represented as caught by interviewers at various properties, and are edited in alongside shots of the properties being discussed. Each video also shows a great emphasis on aesthetics. Videos of properties are filled with inspiring views of the beautiful architecture or the stunning views and vistas of a garden or park (fig.2).

 Fig.2 A prime example is the “Be inspired by your Great British outdoors” from the East of England channel. Here, viewers are invited to show their love of the British countryside with their feet – take a walk.

All of this is to be expected from a professional institution creating promotional and informative material, but how does it fulfil desires of YouTube users?There is great encouragement shown for people to get involved with the properties and places owned by the Trust. However, the website, Twitter feed and Facebook page already encourage this. Could the National Trust be missing a trick with YouTube?

Identities and Memories: Sharing Heritage on YouTube

If YouTubers desire an interactive, open community, how does the National Trust fit into that? Most of the subsidiary channels contain a playlist of “favourite” videos. A YouTube viewer can create any number of playlists including their own and other people’s videos. The National Trust largely create playlists of their own videos, but some of the videos featured in these “favourites” playlists are from other users. Largely, these include similar videos to those which the Trust make themselves: beautiful views, virtual walks through the countryside and shots of the Trust’s buildings. The one notable exception, however, comes from the “NT South Devon Countryside” channel. Here, a video of “Kayaking from Newton Ferrers to Wembury Beach, Devon” (fig.3) filmed by YouTuber richb2403 shows a group of kayakers making the trip to Wembury Beach with a camera attached to one of the kayaks. Beneath the added music, you can hear the sounds of the oars on the water and with the camera mounted on the kayak itself you get a sense of how it would feel to make such a trip.

Fig.3 A sense of adventure and peril as viewers are given a taste of the dangers of kayaking.

Many of the responses to the “How Do You YouTube?” video talked about using YouTube as a place to rekindle memories. This was not always through personal videos, but through songs or clips from film and TV that had meaning to them. The entertainment appeal of YouTube’s is something we shall return to shortly. Some commentators responded with videos they had made of memorable events in their life. One such response was given by Kristin Rhine (theglidergirl19). She brought up the notion of YouTube as a repository of memories. She had vlogged her travels around the UK as a visiting student from the United States. When asked about why she had videoed the journey, she said:

“Well, I personally love watching them back because even though I'm only seeing bits of the day, it makes me remember how amazing the whole day was. I think it is a great way to store memories and to share them with the people that aren't able to go on these journies [sic] with you.” (Facebook comment on “How Do You YouTube?” from Kristin Rhine (theglidergirl19), 30/01/2013)

The videos she posted featured her and her friends experiencing various parts of the UK during their stay here. Each person would have experienced those days differently, and each person would no doubt have created a different video to commemorate the trip. Which, then, would be the authentic version? No two people will experience a day, an event or a site in exactly the same way, even when given the same information. Interpretation of heritage is personal, and there should be room for such personal reflection within the heritage industry’s use of social media.

To Show or Tell: Performing Heritage on YouTube

A large portion of YouTube videos are amusing home video clips. Many responses from commentators on “How Do You YouTube?” said that they used YouTube for entertainment purposes more than anything else. Britain’s heritage is often used for entertainment, too. The public have a penchant for period dramas, and the National Trust are often happy to provide the setting. One commentator on YouTube, Abigail Fisher, thought that interviews about these sets with famous faces might be an interesting angle for the National Trust to try. Certainly it might appeal to the elusive 18-24 demographic that Wesch (2008) notes are the key age group on YouTube. This might appeal to the quiet viewer more than the avid creator. One might go further to suggest an interactive period drama. Budding screenwriters could propose small vignettes relating to the biography of a particular site. A wider audience could vote for what they want to see, or what they want to learn. Even if they were professionally made, giving people the chance to ask for what they want to know about is more in the constructivist spirit of YouTube.

Conclusion

The National Trust provides a good service through YouTube. Their videos are informative and often visually stunning. However, they seem to fail to fruitfully engage with the large potential audience on the site. This could be because no one has realised the full potential that YouTube has as a social media site. Social media, when used by large institutions has a tendency to become positivistic and somewhat reductive. The National Trust should be using YouTube to enable more visitor reaction and interaction. Asking viewers what they want to see will aid inclusivity and broaden audiences. Encouraging people to make their own video responses to particular sites or events, rather than just showing them selected parts of it, would make them feel a part of the experience. Whilst some might see this as a threat to the ‘authenticity’ of heritage, in truth it would strengthen it. Heritage is made up of many voices, not just one, and this should be reflected within social media. This is what the YouTube community use YouTube for, to participate, and whilst the videos currently uploaded by the National Trust provide excellent marketing material, they do not engage with a broader audience that are so willing to use the medium productively.

Select Bibliography:

  

ICOMOS (2008) The Charter for the Interpretation and Presentation of Cultural Heritage Sites

Scobie, W (2011) “YouTube Review ‘An Anthropological Introduction to YouTube’” in American Anthropologist, pp.661-2

Skeggs, B and Mundy, J (1992) The Media

UNESCO (1994) The Nara Document on Authenticity

It is a truth universally acknowledged...

...That almost every woman in the UK who has the ability and inclination to read has read at least one novel by Jane Austen. You are in the simulated presence of one of the few who has not.

For many years I mocked fans of Austen - seeing them predominantly as women in their late 20's to early 30's, trying to maintain a "strong-working-woman" attitude whilst secretly harbouring all the anti-feminist desires to be swept off their feet by the rather dishy "Mr Darcy" two cubicles over and live happily ever after as a doting wife without a care in the world. For this assumption, I apologise; if only for the fact that it is highly hypocritical as I am one of those women (except I am still in my early 20s).

Despite this narrow-minded assumption, I have been convinced by a group of close, wonderful friends that I must read Austen's books. Most importantly because I am the only English member of this small group of women and it is a travesty that I haven't even touched one before, but also because I am assured I will love Austen's flare for character, wit and social insight. For these reasons, and so as not to be completely alienated and shunned, I have decided to begin reading the six completed novels of Miss Jane Austen.

I may be inclined to update this blog more regularly with views and opinions of what I read. But then again, I may not. I did, however, feel it was important to document this moment in history as it is one of those rare times where I swallow my pride and admit that my judgements may have been too hasty and I am now willing to backtrack and reconsider. I hope you can all appreciate how difficult that is for me, as a human being.

Under some very sound advice from many Austen-ites I begin my journey with Pride and Prejudice - the only book with which I am at all familiar having seen it on stage but six months ago. It should be of note that I have never seen any other dramatisation of Austen's work - not even the fabled BBC TV series of Pride and Prejudice, or the more recent film. And I have to admit, I will be a little sad when I can no longer make that claim.

John 17:19

It took me a while to realise why I'm having such trouble leaving; why I couldn't help but cry when we hit Gretna on the way home; why my chest is tightening and my eyes watering a little even now.
There are two reasons to my mind, one good and one not so good (although I wouldn't go as far as 'bad'):

1) I've been deeply inspired spiritually, more than I imagined would've happened at SH. I thought I had it figured out you see; I thought I'd be surrounded by oppressive dogmatic ideas wrapped up in a façade of open-mindedness and forward thinking. For some reason, that was my abiding memory of the place. It's possible that this is because there's a certain element of that in the way the children and young people are taught. But this year I felt inspired to follow the ideas I've been having; to educate myself on spiritual and historical matters, and explore my own relationship with God and with my own spirit. It was freeing, it was refreshing, it was relaxing. I haven't felt so at peace for so long. It was like coming home, like that was somewhere I should be. I'm now left with the question of whether it's somewhere I should be more often, or if it was just something I needed for that short space of time? I lean more towards the former because this feeling isn't new - I've felt drawn to leadership and ministry there for a while - but is that a genuine desire to spiritually lead, or is it a desire to 'perform'?

2) It was the first time I'd been really submerged in something that is very closely linked to my depression. I've managed to skip quickly through Kent a few times over the past year, but I have cut most of the ties. This wasn't Kent, but it was Kent people and it was a situation I have spent many years of my depression in. There's an odd feeling of safety being back somewhere like that, and this isn't (as I said earlier) completely bad: my experiences at SH are really the only completely positive memories I have of that time, so to be able to return to that place and feel an even greater positivity run through me is, in truth, a very good sign. But the comfort and safety I felt, almost instantly, is hard to leave. This hasn't completely left me yet as Irvine is a limbo space - I have no responsibility here, I can avoid certain things if I want to and justify that avoidance. This is why the thought of returning to Aberdeen scares me - I'm fired up in one sense and ready to push myself into more things, but I've managed to change enough in just two weeks that it's a different persona that is returning. I doubt I'll be rejected by anyone; probably the very opposite in truth, but how I'll deal with this change myself is a different matter.

This is a very personal post, I don't imagine it will be fully understood by anyone who chances across it but I'll thank you for reading this far anyway. I'll also apologise for not including any artwork - I'm saving that for next time. Possible updates on these feelings may follow, just so you're warned.

On an unrelated note: One of Vincent Van Gogh's doctors was called 'Gasho' - how brilliant is that!

Just one day...

As I scrubbed the muck and dirt off my feet on Thursday night/Friday morning, soaking the bathroom floor in the process, I said a silent prayer of thanks for the invention of the shower and the Scholl company. I also reminded myself, very firmly, just how lucky I was to be washing and caring for my feet; and, more importantly, how lucky I was to only have to have gone for one day.
Let me explain, as I'm sure some of you are confused - Thursday 8th of April was One Day Without Shoes an event to raise awareness for the thousands of people who go without shoes every single day. From what I can gather, it's a new event for this year but you can scour the website more thoroughly to prove me wrong if you wish. I heard about it on Livejournal, found a Facebook group and decided to do it. At Spring Harvest, surrounded by hundreds of Christians from all over the country I think I was the only one to do this. It didn't really surprise me - the organisation itself appears to be American so I don't think it's quite reached Skegness, Lincolnshire. I can also imagine a whole host of "Health and Safety" risks Butlins would be in for if we'd all gone barefoot en masse. What did surprise me a little was that only two people asked me what I was doing - one of them was a friend, and the other was just wondering if my feet weren't cold. It's not like people couldn't see I was barefoot - I was hobbling on tarmac quite a bit and with all the group work in seminars where you stare at the ground to avoid people's faces I can't see how someone didn't notice. Perhaps they thought it rude to ask in case it was linked to a psychological disorder (last week was a special week with events geared to people with learning disorders and "disabilities" [for want of the P.C term]). Or perhaps they were just being British. Alternatively, and we're talking long-shot here, they genuinely might not have noticed.
I wish people had asked, though, if they did see, so I would have been able to share the experience. It didn't matter to me if they joined in the madness or not; I'm never one to be uncomfortable being the only one doing something, but I was so excited about it! Firstly, it was so educational and liberating to really feel the ground beneath your feet and not just trample along not thinking about the terrain. But mostly it was deeply humbling to think, especially towards the end of what turned out to be the fullest day of the week, of the people who have no choice but to do this every day. People who just have to face whatever terrain they encounter with the soles of their feet. I know your feet toughen as you walk barefoot more often - it isn't an unnatural thing to do - but there's toughened and then there's ruined. As ODWS's website tells us:

In Ethiopia, approximately one million people are suffering from Podoconiosis, a debilitating and disfiguring disease caused by walking barefoot in volcanic soil.

Covering your feet for long journeys and especially tough terrain is such a wonderful privilege for us, but it should be a basic human "right" - something which is available to everyone. TOMS are working towards this goal - for every pair of shoes you buy from them they donate a new pair of shoes to a child in need. Not only is this a fantastic ethic to have, but their shoes also look pretty cool - I'll be saving for a pair of 'Wrap Boots'.
I encourage everyone to try going a day without shoes any day; it's a great experience and a moving one too. But, just so you all know, I'll be getting sponsorship for it next year.

On an unrelated note: Countdown has gotten much harder recently and I have a bunged up nose that went away for SH then came back just before we left - it's a pretty clear sign but, like Neville with his Remembrall, I don't know what of...

P.S Pictures of my feet to follow.