London, Innit

Highgate Cemetery charitable arm-twisting

Highgate is run by a charitable trust, which raises about £250,000/year to keep the operation afloat. I work for a charity, and appreciate the labour the importance of fundraising, but these folks have got some weird ideas about squeezing pounds out of the likes of me. They have a sign by the gates of the cemetery that explains that the £3 fee we're paying for the tour is getting us a service that's actually worth a fiver, and to cover this discrepancy, we should really, really, really stick two quid more in the green box on the way out (remember: the charity has to pay VAT on the admission, but the donations are tax-free; won't you please help us screw the taxman out of his due?)

Well, that's weird: is it a £3 tour or a £5 tour? Acutally, it's a £4 tour, because there's a one-pound "camera fee" if you plan on taking pictures -- a weird bit of nickle-and-dimery that really raised my hackles: charging for photo-taking? Really?

The woman who admitted us after a substantial wait at the gates (don't go on Easter Monday if you want to be able to simply duck in and get the tour) was so frosty that we in the queue violated English Queue Norms and began to nervously joke about it all -- especially after she insisted repeatedly that we read over the extensive rules-sheet, warned us that we would have to present our mobile phones and demonstrate that they were indeed turned off (we were getting a break: the rules said that mobiles would be confiscated and returned at the end of the tour -- though doctors could "advise" of their on-call status and get a reprieve from this; lucky them, "journalists and other representatives of the media" were expected to "make themselves known to the person in charge" -- I was off-duty, both as a Doctor(ow) and a media-whore, so I declined), and gave us a stern lecture about the money, the money, the money.

Other signs advised of the cost to be guided to a specific grave (say, of an ancestor), with the admonishment that this "is not a tourist attraction" -- despite all appearances to the contrary!

It was a really stark contrast with our tour-guide, who was sweet as honey and even apologised for the "greeter" -- one of the people on the tour confessed that she'd been ready to turn around and leave after watching this woman do her thing. I nearly did the same thing when she sent back an American tourist girl who was wearing a moderately-sized backpack (no doubt stuffed full of hard-to-replace valuables) to set it down in the chapel because it was "too big" -- presumably, if she turned around really quickly, she might knock over a crypt.

And when it was all over, the same woman barred the way out, holding out her green bucket and virtually demanding a donation.

It was pretty off-putting, but the cemetery and the tour-guide were so breathtaking that it was all forgotten after ten minutes. I've been amusing myself by imagining the committee meetings with this old darling, tiptoeing around her pathological rigidity while trying to keep the volunteers' spirits up. Posted by Cory Doctorow at April 13, 2004 12:52 PM | TrackBack