Salaam friends, family and travellers on the waves of ones and zeroes. It's your old ka-mai Sul here, coming to you, beseeching money for a couple of charitable causes close to my heart.

About four months ago I woke up one morning and had an itch in my leg. Fortunately this itch wasn't from a parasitic infection causing inflammation in my soft tissue, nor was it from athletes foot, although I teeter constantly on the precipice of fungal infections eating me from the outside in, NO, it was an itch to do something, something in particular, I had memories of a marathon I'd watched, an athlete named Paula Radcliffe, a pile of runner's doo-doo steaming at the side of the road. I thought to myself, 'I could do that.'

So I decided I would do it. But what, I hear you ask, am I actually talking about doing here? Running a marathon or pooping part-way through a marathon?

I can't lie, at first the latter held more appeal, simply in comedic value, but as I started to run more and more, I realised maybe I could run a marathon WITHOUT the need to offend a large, gathered crowd of onlookers. The more I ran, the more I came to see it's actually a lot easier to keep running without stopping to defecate. It's tough having to build momentum up again, and in some strange way, it feels good to just pound away, mile after mile, down the road, or the river, or the Fallowfield Loop, or around Fog Lane Park at night (until it starts to feel too spooky in there), without stopping, it feels good.

So I'm running a marathon, and I don't intend to stop for anything, and I'm raising money for a couple of charities. See below for what and why, but before you donate please take a moment to look at how much has been raised for each cause and if possible try and give to both, or to the one that has less money raised, thankyou:

1. The Booth Centre. This is a charity based in Cheetham Hill that helps homeless people and ex-offenders gain the skills and confidence they need to get back in to work. Don't ask me why a charity has to do this, really it sounds like the kind of thing the Government should be interested in doing, but that's the world we live in. I came to Manchester in 2009 and have lived here for 12 of the 14 years in between now and then. In this time I have seen the number of homeless people in the city skyrocket and it just seems like something that shouldn't happen in a civilised country, if people were given the right opportunities, provided with the resources and support they need to lead a decent life then they wouldn't end up on the streets. My Dad volunteered at the Booth Centre for a while, helping the clients with applications, CVs, and advising them on routes into work, I thought that was a good thing and though I haven't been down there, it sounds like the kind of place that deserves more money in order to give people an opportunity they didn't get earlier in life.

2. Yemen Appeal (through Islamic Relief). This war is continually swept out of the Public's eye, could be something to do with the billions of pounds worth of UK arms being sold to the Saudi-led coalition - out of sight, out of mind. Regardless of who's in the right, and who's in the wrong, and who's profiting from the appalling violence in Yemen, there are civilians caught in the middle of it all, being blown to bits by drones and missiles, starved and dying of thirst and disease. This has been going on for almost 10 years now. 377,000 people dead of which 85,000 were children who died of starvation. 4000 people dead from a cholera epidemic. I doubt most people reading this can even imagine just how fucking awful it must be to live in Yemen right now. If you want an idea just google image search "Yemen War".