Dear Friends,

 

Happy New Year for those of you I have not yet spoken too. I hope you all had a wonderful Christmas with family and friends.

 

Firstly, I’d like to apologise, I realise how unsolicited emails drive everybody mad and just get thrown in the trash but I hope you will find a few moments in your day to read this and lend your support.

 

As many of you are aware I have a great interest in boxing and up until now have used boxing in order to try and stay fit. This usually happens more frequently at this time of year after two (or maybe three) months of lunch meetings in the lead up to Christmas that leaves me as big as a house and gasping for breath. I have until this point merely trained on the bags and at most sparred with my PT and a small band of others.

 

Some of you may also be aware that during my recent spell ‘back home’ I was involved in several dance events indulging my other passion of dj’ing. These nights were organised by a good friend of mine David Sharp in order to raise money and awareness to a great charity/organisation Cancer Connections. Like me, whose best friend died of cancer a little over two years ago, David’s good friend had also recently died. We have both seen at first hand the devastation cancer causes, not only to the individual sufferer but, to their entire network of family and friends. Cancer Connections provide a myriad of invaluable help to the whole family including dedicated telephone help, a ‘drop-in’ venue, counselling, complementary therapies, family support, financial advice and a whole list of other support, invaluable to those suffering with cancer and their families but is too long to name.

 

So where do you come in? After several house nights  (and over £100k raised) it was realised that the good people of South Shields were getting a little tired of partying all night (most of us definitely being the wrong side of 35 and some over the big 40 mark) and thought it was time to organise a more mature event. So ‘blue collar boxing’ has been arranged and guess who is getting the gloves on? Yes you’ve got it, little old me! 3x2min rounds of pain, suffering, sweat and tears is about to be thrown on me come March 1. I am currently in training for perhaps the most daunting experience of my life and I am reaching out to you wonderful people for support.

 

There are many ways you can support and I truly hope that some of my closest friends will be there on the night having paid for tickets etc. I know friends from my home town will be there and hopefully a few of you from here in London will take the short train journey up to Newcastle to watch however, I am aware that this is a lot to ask for most. So hard cash is the next best thing and I would really appreciate it if you could make a small donation using the justgiving link below.

 

Thank you all for listening and hopefully generously giving to a very worthwhile cause! I’m off now to get my head kicked in by my ruthless trainers!

 

Sincerely,

 

Mark

PS If any of you do want tickets and travel details then let me know and I’ll get the information to you ASAP.

 

 

 

http://www.cancerconnections.org.uk/