Take Off Your Running Shoes

Teach trial

I'm posting this link to a trial for women with early stage breast cancer - i.e. cancer that hasn't spread outside the breast - to be given tykerb (lapatinib). Tykerb is the drug I'm taking at the moment for cancer that has spread, but it's clear from this new trial that they're now looking at seeing whether it can help women who aren't yet in dire straits - which has to be a good move.

I know the link says it is for women in Canada and the US, but in my experience, in this country - England - you have to be very proactive and just hustle to get the newest drugs, and knowing what's available in the rest of the world is half the battle...so that's why I'm passing on the link.

Dealing with cancer

This is columnist Pamela Bone talking about dealing with "the sniper".

This blog's first baby

Thrilled and delighted to announce that Tami Jeffay, who didn't let pregnancy stop her donning running shoes for the CTRT appeal, has now produced a strapping seven pounds and ten ounces baby boy!!! (And Nathan helped...)

Second hand Adele

Dove Grey Reader comes across Adele Geras's memoir in a second-hand bookshop. This is great, because now we all know about it, and can access a second-hand copy of Yesterday off Abe Books, or Amazon or wherever, but what surprised me was to hear that DGR and Adele have never met, because they are intertwined on the blogosphere, always commenting on each others' blogs and cross-referencing each other and so on - I thought they were old friends, but like some of the folk on this blog, they've only ever met in cyberspace.

I can't tell you how many bed-ridden days I bless this wireless age and its blogs for bringing the world and all its connections into individual bedrooms.

Hurrah for Meg...

...Rosoff, whose latest teen book is chosen as one of the Observer's top ten reads (of all books out this autumn, adult and kids') here.

Siobhan Dowd

here and here.

Grace Paley, given more years, also died this week of breast cancer.

A week of active women being taken.

That's my boy....

The following is from the New Republic review of the Tina Brown book about Princess Diana:

The divorce in 1996 freed her from the routine humiliations of being married to a man who loved another woman. Finally she was sprung from the palace. Determined to get a good settlement--partly because she had seen the terrible deal that Sarah Ferguson got in her divorce from Prince Andrew--she purged any shreds of the nice and pliant girl from her psyche and hired a smart and learned lawyer named Anthony Julius. He appears fleetingly in Brown's book, but he functions as one of the few moral reference points in the story. He insisted on a professional relationship, including payment. Julius did his job well, and Diana matched his efforts with her own great fortitude in resisting the royals' massive pressure. She walked away in 1996 with a fortune.

Always nice to be married to a moral reference point...

Well, mostly nice, I should say. Just this evening I've been hassling the moral reference point about letting me scan some of the billions of cards and stuff he has from Princess Diana onto my blog, so I can try and generate some more money for the CTRT appeal. I definitely thought he would prefer that to me posting more embarrassing photos of moral reference points, and so I could finally get the two Mishcon's lawyers who promised to double their money each quarter to keep their (now long overdue) £50,000 promise. But as of so far this evening, my powers of persuasion are proving no proof at all against the moral reference point's reluctance - and who can blame him - to exploit, for whatever cause, an old friendship. So, I guess it's back to the old family albums....

British Seaside Holiday

The setting for girls-tolerating-British-holidays inside wet castle is Deal, a small, pretty, clover-shaped affair where, bizarrely enough, Allenby (also of the British Mandate in Palestine time), appears to have been posted before managing to get some sunshine in Israel.

Hampstead Theatre, 11th October

I am doing a talk at Hampstead Theatre on the 11th October.

One of the wierdest cancer side effects is that I'm now frightened (and I'm one of the lucky people, one of the ones getting the newest drugs) to do all kinds of things that used to hold no terror at all - hey, who am I kidding, I'm actually scared most mornings now, wondering just what each day is going to present in terms of what I can cope with. So, this afternoon I managed to go ice-skating with Elon - something that would have been all in a day's holiday activity some four, even some two years ago, but today took an entire bag of serious munching on pear drops to sustain blood sugar and courage.

Then this speaking commitment appears on my computer, and I realise I'm terrified all over again: will I make it out in the evening? will I be able to talk the talk? They tell you cancer is frightening, but they don't tell you that it sets you up with whole new sets of fears; it's not just the cancer fear - you know, what's ahead? - but having cancer makes you (or has made me) a far more timid person. Odd.

Everything you ever wanted to know about crocs...

....here.