Hello.

 

On November the 1st, I am running the New York Marathon. The last organised run I did was I Ran The World in 1986. I came last out of everyone in the Blackheath and area. As I puffed my little unfit child self across the finish line, they were dismantling the barriers. I am, as you can imagine, pretty terrified.

 

The charity I'm running for is Help The Aged. Anyone who's ever heard me talk about my granny will know I was close to her. When she died, I had countless people telling me, "I never met her, but I always used to tell people the story about when she...". If you want to read some of these stories (or look at funny pictures), I made her a myspace here. 

 

The idea of old people being cold, lonely or in any way desperate utterly breaks my heart. One in five  pensioners live below the poverty line. Nearly 50% of them consider the television to be their main form of company. 500,000 of them spent Christmas Day alone last year. Hearing this kind of stuff makes me want to cry.

Help The Aged is an international charity that does everything from providing Christmas meals to lobbying the Government about age discrimination. They campaign to free disadvantaged older people in the and overseas from poverty, isolation, neglect and ageism. If you've ever known anyone old, or have any intention of being an old person one day, this charity is relevant to you.

 

If you're bored and fancy making me a running compilation cd, I can't tell you how amazing that would be - address is here. If you include your address, I'll send you one of mine in return.

 

One more thing: every penny of the money I'm raising here goes to Help The Aged. I'm paying my own airfare, race entry and am staying with friends. I promise this isn't one of those, "Sponsor me to do a charity walk that's actually nicely paying for my trip of a lifetime!" affairs. Now, here comes the science bit:

 

Donating through JustGiving is simple, fast and totally secure. Your details are safe with JustGiving – they’ll never sell them on or send unwanted emails. Once you donate, they’ll send your money directly to the charity and make sure Gift Aid is reclaimed on every eligible donation by a taxpayer. So it’s the most efficient way to donate - I raise more, whilst saving time and cutting costs for the charity.

 

Anything at all that you can donate would be awesome. Even a couple of pounds is better than nothing. Please feel free to be anonymous if you'd rather. Just think of poor old people alone on Christmas day. Or suffering daytime TV as their only friend substitute.

 

Thank you. Seriously, anything you give at all is massively awesome and I really appreciate it.

 

xmarsh

 

PS if you are too, I'm on twitter: www.twitter.com/marshamusic