Loadsa Work for Charrriddeeee – Don’t Like to Talk About It

A couple or three themes have come together recently which have prompted me to set myself a brand new bloggy-type hillwalking target.
Thing #1 Relates to St Cuthbert. This may seem unlikely, but for a while now I’ve been nagged and even haunted, if these are the right words, by the prayer which is written before the shrine of St Cuthbert in Durham Cathedral. I find this odd in a couple of ways, one of which is the fact that I can’t, or, rather, don’t claim to be a Christian, mainly because, to be frank, I just don’t “get it”. Anyway, be that as it may, one of the aspects of St Cuthbert’s prayer, is to “…care for those who are lost….”  I don’t think this has anything to do with navigational difficulties, or the fact that the prayer relates to sheep. (St Cuthbert may have originally been a shepherd) The prayer is more complex than this, but the rest of it refers to bringing those who are lost back to the fold and so  on, and , I’m not really sure if there is a fold at all…

Thing #2 Is the fact that quite recently, as dedicated blog readers will testify, several people threw money at me for taking my clothes off and tiptoeing carefully into the North Sea at dawn on the autumn equinox (i.e. just before it froze over for the winter) Donators raised £370 and I was, as I reported recently, quite chuffed about this. Notice that I didn’t say that I ran into the sea and any plunging or diving was right out.

Thing #3 Is the pieblog. Now the pieblog attracts a series of commercial offers, often based around people who want to give me hillwalking kit “for review” and the reward for this is a link to a retail website and some key words. Others are just a bit more vague about what they’re offering. A certain shop selling strangely industrial walking kit recently asked me to write a piece about what gear walkers should have and, looking at their website, a number of well-known bloggers have already made contributions.

Basically, pulling these three things together, the target that comes out is to raise charity money through hillwalking and blogging activities, or activities which may have some vague link between the two. I’ve chosen Mind as the charity, although a phone call immediately prior to writing this post coincidentally (although I’m starting not to believe in coincidences where this subject is concerned) pointed me toward the Samaritans. Both of these charities seem to fulfil the definition of “caring for those who are lost”

The first attempt at this was to reply to the shop who asked me to write a piece about whatever hiking gear they would need to go hiking without dying and I replied in terms which said that I would indeed write a nice piece including a pic of superdawg looking specially cute if they bunged me fifty quid. After an initial interchange whereby they claimed not to have a budget and in any case they supported Help For Heroes, they went quiet. Very quiet, in fact.  To save their embarrassment and, in the hope that they’re still thinking about it, I won’t mention their name. But the principal is established. I will use any free gear offers or requests for support for marketing efforts (cheeky buggers!) as a tool for raising charity cash.

But I need other ideas. I’m short of ideas. I don’t specially like sponsorship, although I could do one sponsored event during 2014 I suppose. What I’m really after is something where I either get paid for doing something (e.g.writing something) on a commercial basis , or something where people actually receive some kind of service or benefit.

An example might be Cafe Akto, whereby I set up the tent on a popular TGO challenge route and provide some refreshments for a small contribution. Its unlikely that this would raise any significant cash, but you get the idea. Cafe akto will probably be operating in Glen Mazeran for a few days in May 2014. Basically, I’ll do pretty much anything overground, underground, wet, dry, warm or shivery….
My target for 2014 is £1000 for MIND. It’s modest, yes, I know, but its three times more than I managed this year!

Thinking caps on, readers! Retailers can have a link or a plug for a spot of cash. Tight-arsed retailers who think that bloggers are so up their own bottoms that they’ll do anything for the fame of getting their drivel printed on a shopkeeper’s website need to reconsider the true nature of commerce which is not just to make money by any means possible, but by their activities, contribute in some small, or, preferably, significant way to the sum of human happiness.

Anyway, I’m off to Wales for a few days after the weekend, so there’s plenty of time for thinks..  I think..