I am beginning to worry that life is really just an algorithm written by Googe. Every page I go to recently on the Internet has an advert for iZettle - something I recently searched for when investigating taking card payments at our naturist swim. I was not happy with the Terms and Conditions, for instance you can't process Membership fees, so no amount of advertising will get me to buy it - but it's very annoying.
However, it's not just the fact that Google tracks everything you ever did on the Internet https://www.cnet.com/how-to/google-collects-a-frightening-amount-of-data-about-you-you-can-find-and-delete-it-now/ . Coincidences keep popping up for me, even in lockdown.
So I was chatting to a friendly textile via Zoom a few days ago (yes they do exist) and she asked if I had been for a walk, checking up on how much exercise I am doing - I am taking part in a local project designed to improve the wellbeing of local residents. So I said that I had been out in the wood at the bottom of my garden for about 20 minutes in the nude. The lady does cold water swimming but was still surprised as it was only 6C that day. I said it seemed warmer that when we did the poster photographs form the Naked Heart Walk although that was 8C in November 2019.
It then occurred to me that for the last few months I have been walking around barefoot indoors since I had my first attack of gout last October. I make it a point to take the rubbish out each day and one morning I decided to go barefoot even though the front is gravelled. Now my feet were always quite tender and I recall being very uncomfortable walking on pebbles on Fairlight beach one time. The gravel did not cause me any pain at all - I was surprised.
So I think that I have got better adapted to being naked all day as a result of going barefoot and this includes not worrying about the temperature outside. Sitting at my computer still makes me feel cold after a while, but that is a hazard of not getting outside and exercising more.
Today I discover an article via the French Facebook page https://www.facebook.com/groups/Handinat/ that says that going barefoot is very good for you. (This is the coincidence, if you were wondering).
"What if I told you shoes were causing you to lose brain function? What if not wearing shoes meant decreasing your risk for Alzheimer’s? What if stripping down the clothes meant adding up the years?
According to Dr. Norman Doidge, “Going shoeless is now recognized as an anti-Alzheimer’s, brain-boosting activity because the sole sensation entices your brain into growing extra, efficient neuron connections.”
It seems arbitrary, but walking around barefoot increases brain flexibility. It doesn’t just make you feel young again, it makes your brain feel young again." https://www.elitedaily.com/life/scientific-reasons-just-always-naked/971796
The same article tells you that clothes are bad for you too - harbouring many forms of life, some detrimental to our health or upsetting the temperature balance of our bodies. This is a subject that I have written about in my blog before.
Here is another page about going barefoot https://wellnessthroughwildness.com/going-barefoot-in-public/ If you want to know about self-wilding this is the place to go. Appropriately the editor is named Forest-Jones. I was attracted to this article by the list of the benefits of going barefoot, but above all by this quote:
"Across Australia, I have been unable to find any legislation explicitly forbidding driving barefoot or requiring you to cover your feet in some way."
It seems a parallel to naturism - here are people campaigning for the barefootism to be regarded as normal. Don't think barefootism is a word? Try out this video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GLlgypmEnOY which explains the benefits of this philosophy. If you think it's all a bit mad, then reflect that this may be the way naturists are viewed by some.
Finally here is evidence that that textiles are unhinged. The Daily Mail reports that Shoe Aid want to see snaps of your bare feet using the hashtag barefootselfie. That's right - to help the world's poor who are forced to go without shoes, people who love to go barefoot can raise funds by posting their bare feet or taking part in the Barefoot Walk.
To add to my lockdown anxiety, I discover that the Barefoot Walk has a Facebook page. Not only is there not a single image of a bare foot (Maybe its a Facebook thing?). but the last entry is the day before the walk planned for Friday 13th May 2016! So what happened?!
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