About

TL;DR: Whoever donates the most money to War Child gets to cut my beard off. For about four years now I have been growing my beard. It is not a good beard but it is, now, a long beard. I never had a real goal for its length, I just decided I would keep going until I got a job or a girlfriend that required me to remove it. Predictably, I got a new job. Many, many people have declared their intention to remove my beard over the years (often by assaulting me in my sleep, trapping me in power tools or something equally disturbing) so I decided that I could try and do something good with this and went looking for a charity that I could help. After a fair bit of consideration I decided that the best charity was War Child. Beards are a something of a right of passage, something that teenagers try to grow unsuccessfully but, when they finally can grow one, become a symbol of that transition into adulthood. The children that War Child help never get to live that transition. They have to learn far earlier than anybody should what it is to rebuild a home, to lose family, to fight a war or to be treated like property. So the way this is going to work, assuming that I can work out a way of keeping track, is the following: Whoever donates the most, gets to cut off my beard. Simple. That person can choose to do it themselves or nominate someone else. They can choose the method of it coming off and how much facial hair comes off (it has to get down to a respectable length but beyond that it's up to you, I just need to be able to walk into schools without being immediately kicked out. Also, nothing that's going to end up scarring me or anything like that). They can choose what happens to the former facial hair after we're done (assuming there's anything left). I have heard people wanting to frame it but I'm guessing there would equally be people wanting to burn it, bury it or just unceremoniously bin it. I will allow people to put their donations together if that's a thing that makes sense and they let me know about it beforehand. As for where and when, I am going to say this fundraiser will finish on the morning of Friday 26th of September 2014 and the removal of the beard can happen any time between that Friday evening and Sunday night. I am willing to travel up to an hour from Maidstone if the winner wants me to come to them or has a good location in mind. So there we go, if you ever wanted to have the honour of removing my beard, you know what to do. Even if you don't or you know you can't win, donate anyway because it's not a bad cause.