I need your help.  I am not asking for your money or for more than a few seconds of your time…please just keep reading the next few paragraphs. 

You may have realised, I like trying to make people happy.  I’d like to make more people smile through this blog of daftness, but to do this I need you to tell your friends about it, send them the link, to maybe click on a few of the entries you’ve not read yourself so you can recommend a ‘good’ one.  That would be a bit selfish though as the onus is all on you.  So… 

…in return, this is what I will do:  For every 10 clicks on the site between now and Christmas day I will donate £1 to Crisis, a UK charity helping homeless people (up to £233.50).  I’ve set up a Just Giving page so that you can check up on me and you can see the blog hits on the right of each page you view (sometimes it takes a while to show up in this view, don’t think your clicks haven’t counted!).  At the time I have published this, that figure is:  1725.  I’ll blog each time I add some pennies, but I will aim to do so every few days.

Times are tough for everyone at the moment and I said I’d not ask for money so I am not – the only person who has to give is me.  Should you want to though, please feel free!  I’ve researched the homeless charities and Crisis is a damn good one. They do a Crisis at Christmas appeal, which you can read about yourself, but £233.50 will allow 10 people to access the service over Christmas.  Ten smiles from being out of the cold (and it is so cold right now, I just cannot imagine it).

I just want to leave you with one little story which might help you understand why I think this is a particularly worthwhile group of people to help:

A few years back I was privileged enough to meet a lovely bloke, about my age.  Let’s call him Joe.  Joe was homeless and had been for a while.  He was also addicted to crack to cope with the fact that he had no shelter, slept on and under cardboard and frankly, I couldn’t blame him.  At the time we met I’d taken to wearing a sweatshirt over my PJs when I went to bed as it had got so cold.  His feet had started to rot because his shoes were always wet and the night before I met him he’d taken them off to try to help them heal.  While he’d slept they had been stolen.  I was so upset for him, I gave him £10 to go to and buy some new (admittedly cheap) shoes.  Five minutes after he left I was kicking myself so being so gullible and falling for his story. But, an hour later Joe ambled up, the biggest smile on his face and a pair of dry shoes on his feet.  He’d been to Oxfam and bought shoes and a jumper.  He even offered me the change.  I felt awful that I’d doubted him and admitted it to him.  His answer was something along the lines of ‘if someone trusts me to do the right thing, I will.’

It would be great if we could all help a few people like Joe and spread smiles over Christmas…just click on the link then pass it on – that is all you need to do – I’ll do the rest! :o)