I'm raising money for The New Normal, a community-focused, peer-to-peer mental well-being charity connecting adults through their experience of grief and loss.

The charity was formed in 2018 when Ben, a barber, was cutting Jack’s hair. The two started chatting about life and realised both their dads had passed from cancer. That’s when the two decided to form TNN, which has now hosted ~950 free meetings in 25 countries to over 8K people. Yet Jack’s not had a good haircut since (lol jkz xx).

Sadly 2023 has been a tough year for TNN, resulting in an emergency appeal to raise £20K by the end of October, or else closing up shop.

I'm attempting 10K swim; that's 400 lengths of a 25m pool, 30 laps of an 11-a-side footy pitch, just under half of the Victoria line for you Southerners, or Manchester to Stockport for you Northerners.

You get it, it’s a long way, my longest swim to date (my longest being 5K back in 2018), but hopefully not too long with your guys' support.

Spookily enough, my deadline to raise these funds is the 31st of October. Halloween - my late Nanny's birthday. On this date, I'll take to a silent pool to swim the 5 hour slog, potentially dressed as something as horrifying as the swim itself.

Please donate what you can to help the charity continue to provide life-changing support to people like you, me and countless others who have or are overcoming periods of grief throughout their lives and in the years to come.

Thanks, Strugs x

* Target updated to £1.5K - thanks all! You da best!