Hello everyone,

Most of you who know me will know that my dreadlocks are a massive part of my life; in fact many people will only ever have known me with dreads. There is however a person under all those wild knots, and it is with a mixture of sadness, fear and a bit of excitement that the time has come to lose the locks!! I’m going to be cutting them off during the first week of August, and will be raising money for the “Thomas Read Bursary”.

Thomas was a family friend who passed away suddenly and unexpectedly at the age of 25 in January 2015. Thomas had cerebral palsy but this never stopped him from pursuing his passion for sports journalism. He studied Geography at the University of Exeter and then gained a place on the prestigious Broadcast Journalism course at Cardiff University in the School of Journalism. After some time freelancing he joined the Sky Sports News team as a Junior Producer of Sports Bulletins. He was living his dream and had a very bright future ahead of him.

His family have set up the Thomas Read Bursary in his memory, which aims to help those with a disability to reach their ambitions to become a journalist, by offering financial support so that disability is never a factor in achieving goals. To read more about his story and the bursary please visit the website: http://www.thomasread.org

I am aiming to raise as much as possible for the bursary, and am asking people to “sponsor a dread”. Any donations are welcome, you can either sponsor per dread (I have 50 so just choose how many you want to sponsor), or give a set donation, however big or small would be amazing. Equally if anyone feels like chopping one off- I’ll be in Kent from the 30th July to the 9th August de-dreading, so get in touch and collect your souvenir :-)

Thank you in advance,
Me X