Planning, not the strong point of "a seed"

A heartwarming story on the BBC website about the problems Mark Boyle faced recently during his walk from Bristol to India. It started well, "he was given two free dinners on his first evening away in Glastonbury. Later, he was joined in Dover by two companions, and the three managed to get to Calais." One assume that they didn't walk across the Channel or stowaway but we'll let that pass. Unfortunately for some reason the French thought that Mr Boyle who set out on his journey "with only T-shirts, a bandage and sandals (and) hoped to rely on the kindness of strangers for food and lodging." might have been "free-loading or an asylum seeker". I don't think that Mr Boyle was helped by the fact that neither he or his colleagues spoke any French.

Mr Boyle is a member of The Freeconomy Community whose philosophy includes the following "It's about making the transition from a money-based communityless society to a community-based moneyless society.
It's about helping others and providing an opportunity for others to help you.
It's about sharing the skills you have learnt through your life and learning those you haven't.
It's about sharing your tools so you all can have access to all the tools under the sun without it costing the earth.
It's about using any free space you have to either benefit positive, ethical and local projects, or to enable volunteers to keep doing their amazing work for free.
It's about sharing the land you don't need in order to facilitate a local food community."

I particularly enjoyed this piece of magic prose "Right now freeconomies are the minority. This is unimportant. Soon they will be the overwhelming majority. Each one of us is a seed. The regenerative power of one seed cannot be underestimated. A forest can grow from the germination of a single seed, and similarly one simple act of generosity can give life to an infinite number of others."


A world where such "seeds" would be in the majority would scare the hell out of me were it not be for the fact that people this naive are unlikely to achieve world domination.



Mr Boyle has a plan to prevent this from happening on his next attempt; "He now plans to walk around the coast of Britain instead, learning French as he goes, so he can try again next year."

Who wants to be the first to tell him that France doesn't have a border with India and so he may need to learn some other languages. Maybe Mr Boyle should purchase a map, or obtain one in a Freeconomy approved way, and see what other countries lie on his route from Calais to India. Then maybe he could see what languages they speak in these countries and plan accordingly.