Take Off Your Running Shoes

£50,000

Hi Dina, I've been doing some routing around and realise there is more to add to your offline total as follows:

Books sales at my end (online and at MVCC) - £197.71
Gift Aid on non-Justgiving donations - £1,024.70
Extra money trickling in from Tuesday night - £419.98

That totals - £1,642.39 putting you just £4.27 short of the £50k total, and I haven't made this up!

To get past the halfway mark, I'll add a fiver at this end, so please add £1,647.39 as offline income. Its all money you've helped raise.

best wishes

Daniel
Daniel Fletcher MInstF(Cert)
Head of Fundraising Development

Ordinary cancer day

I did an interview this week with BBC radio (programme goes out July 11th - I'll post a link) about growing resistant to cancer drugs. The programme's editor, Deborah Cohen, came over the same afternoon Blair and Brown were changing guard, and unpacked her square bits of equipment on my dining room table while the edgy reporters on Downing Street were desperately trying to fill empty bits of space while Brown had his extra-long time with QEII.

The programme's really about herceptin and growing resistant to it, which feels kind of last-yearish to me - I'm worrying about getting resistant to tykerb now. But while we were talking, I realised that what's really new with cancer is this sense of living longer. So, for example, right now, the other mothers at school - most of whom haven't seen me for several weeks now - have no sense of what kind of illness this is. Is this cancer you die from? Recover from? And the truth is I don't know either, and none of the medical people answer these questions either. This is the unknown of now - so everybody just says, take each day as it comes.

Today, maybe because I did too much this week, I find myself unable to get out of bed again, which is a surprise after a week of getting up and getting dressed. So I do my bed things: I've started attempting the Guardian Quick Crossword, which was a stimulant for a bit, until every time I got stumped Nina said, 'just look that up on the internet' and now I do that - too tempting not to - and you get the quick fix answers, but less satisfaction! Still anybody know a famous controversy, five words and seven words - second letter A, fourth letter S, eighth letter L, tenth letter B and last letter G? (always supposing I got the other clues right...)

TOYPD reviewed in the TLS

A review in today's Times Literary Supplement, by Sarah Curtis.

The week in which Dina Rabinovitch was diagnosed with breast cancer, she emailed the Guardian, where she reviews books for children and interviews their authors, asking for a column in which she could tell her ongoing story. Other journalists have done this, notably the late John Diamond in the Times, winning acclaim for their candour and courage in revealing the details of their treatments - Rabinovitch's includes the controversial new drug Herceptin - and the kaleidoscope of their changing emotions.

Everyone who suffers from cancer has a unique story to tell, but Rabinovitch's starting position was particularly distinctive. The mother of three daughters by a first marriage, she is also stepmother to the four children of her second husband, the eminent lawyer Anthony Julius, and she was still breastfeeding their son, Elon, who was nearly three years old. They live in a house with six bedrooms and five bathrooms, and she could afford to buy a Missoni scarf to hide her loss of hair after chemotherapy and Issey Miyake clothes after her mastectomy.

Money, however, could not help her with the organizational feats of continuing work and attending all those parents' evenings, or give her the ability to meet the demands of all those for whom she was responsible. She has unfailing support from their friends in the orthodox Jewish community of North London. Some of her most absorbing pages describe her worries and pleasures preparing for religious festivals or visiting the mikvah after her mastectomy. When the cancer returns, and then spreads throughout her body, she confronts every set-back with wry humour. This is not a book for the squeamish, and its brio may be daunting for other sufferers from breast cancer, but there is something glorious about Dina Rabinovitch's determination to live life to the full.

yup! perfectly happy with that as a review in top literary journal! And also, it comes at a low moment, so providing a boost, because having managed to get out to the West End (by taking a minicab) to go and find Sara-Jenny a nineteenth birthday present, only to get back home to realise that's it, I now need to go right back to bed - after one outing to a shop!!! So, Anthony phoning and saying his friend Dan Jacobson had just phoned him to say TOYPD is reviewed in the TLS is making bed a worthwhile place after all...!

Photos from last night

...if you click here. I am the person in the white coat with the blue earrings.

Summer evening out!

Made it out to the screen showing of La Vie en Rose, in aid of the CTRT appeal, last night! At 6pm I was still huddled in bed, but got up, got dressed and got out - hurrah, and did a reading, and signed books. Major triumph for cancer drugs over cancer!! And the evening, organised by Sarah Holder (soon off to Moldova with truck loads of supplies for the poor) and her cohorts raised £9,503 for the appeal, so you will soon see the amount on the right going up up up - and I am also adding the amounts from Nina and friends.

£50,000 is now in sight.

While I was in hospital today...

...having standard cancer care, this story about the next generation of cure was emerging. It's a fast-moving field.

Sheelagh Barron reels in Marks and Spencer's

Sheelagh Barron, who has been campaigning at Marks and Spencer's for decent post-mastectomy bras (i.e. soft next to the skin, wearable even), has also canvassed them about TOYPD. And here we have it: second big corporation to answer a letter...and it's positive! Stuart, btw, is Stuart Rose - big honcho.

> Dear Sheelagh
>
> Stuart passed your letter on to me - I work with
> Lynsey Fox and Laura
> Davidson in the PR team - and I wanted to contact
> you to let you know I am
> looking into what we can do and also to apologise
> for the time it has taken
> to come back to you.
>
> I need to speak to a few people in the business
> about stocking the book but
> hope that we might be able to do something
> especially with Breast Cancer
> Awareness Month coming up in the Autumn.
>
> I remember the article on Dina in Vogue well as I
> arranged for some more
> silk pj's to be sent to her after reading it.
>
> I will be in touch again soon to let you know what
> progress I have made but
> if you need to contact me in the meantime please
> don't hesitate to contact
> me by email or on the number below
>
> Best wishes
>
> Tania
>
>
>
> Tania Littlehales
> Head of Product PR
>
> Marks & Spencer
> 8th Floor East
> Waterside House
> 35 North Wharf Road
> London
> W2 1NW
>

Not running....

...me, that is. But, I have been out of the house for the first time in weeks, to a destination other than a hospital. I went up the road in Hendon, to find out that in my absence a musical instruments shop has opened (although it was closed when I went past, but there is a sign up), which is a really interesting shop for Hendon, more usually known for sleazy kebab joints and bagel bakeries. And I drove to pick Nina up from school. Baby steps.

More fundraising...

David Masters, just the latest of those who can't keep away from those running shoes, has just passed the first thousand pound mark... David works at Goldman Sachs, so this is one space on which it will be interesting to cast a beady eye from time to time.

Fundraising updates

Nina's amazing friends have collected their money now: Talya Mullish raised £723 and Adina Sacofsky raised £434.80, so that CTRT total is really creeping up now. Thank you so much girls, for that amazing run through the rain - you guys are valiant!

Also, tomorrow night is the film screening at The Screen on the Hill, to raise money for the appeal, and in advance of the night they've already cleared over £7000.

This is all really exciting.