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Recently, we have been discussing the idea of some of us at the shop taking part (or trying to take part) in Movember this year. Movember is a fantastic cause where you grow a moustache throughout the month of November, to raise money and awareness in aid of mens health. 

We all felt like this would be a fantastic idea for us to do and we hoped we would be able to spread awareness across our social media channels and through the store. 

However, we thought that we want to do this in memory of our dear friend and colleague Martin "Johno" Johnson, who sadly died earlier this year. Martin was dedicated to his work here, customers loved him, we all did. He had been with us at Peach Guitars since the start of 2016. Earlier this year we had learned that Martin's health was in decline and in March he received the diagnosis that he had stage 4 lung cancer. Martin tried several treatments throughout this year to cure his illness, he came in to see us at the end of May and really we couldn't believe how well he looked and how high his spirit was. He was convinced and so were we that he could really be on the mend. After this, he had more bad days than good and he came back into work one last time in June to give us the update that the tumour had grown in size. He still fought on until he passed away at the end of July 2019.

It is for this reason that we want to take part in Movember this year in our own way, in aid of St Helena Hospice. St Helena Hospice is an amazing hospice local to Colchester, where they took care of Martin and, who are dedicated to "help local people face incurable illness and bereavement, supporting them and their families, friends and carers".  We feel like doing this in aid of St Helena Hospice is the best way for us to pay tribute to our friend Martin, and by doing so we hope we can provide some help to this amazing local hospice and their patients. 

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