Take Off Your Running Shoes

Canny Annie

I'm sure I've said this before but I never expected the fundraising to get past the £10,000 mark, and here we are close to £70,000. How? Because every week somebody comes up with a new way to add to those coffers.

Latest fundraiser in chief, Anthony's eight-year-old niece, Annie, daughter of famed fundraiser Russell Julius.

Annie ran a garage sale of her old toys and stuff for the CTRT appeal, but brought in the money with some deft Julius touches: anybody who spent more than a pound got a sticker. A girl who understands incentives. I once tried to interest the children in selling stuff on our driveway, but the few people who walked along our Hendon road all averted their eyes. Annie foresaw this problem, and forestalled it - in her much ritzier neighbourhood, and so you might have thought, a harder area to crack - by plastering the local lamp-posts with signs about the sale, so people walking past had already been exposed to the pre-sale publicity.

Thank you Annie.

Thank you Sheelagh Barron!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Yes, multiple, bultiple, trultiple huurahs - thanks to Sheelagh Barron, who crusaded for this, and made this happen: the following news comes from Simon and Schuster:-

Hello Dina

I'm delighted to confirm that M&S has selected Take
Off Your Party Dress for their Charity books range.
They are taking 3000 copies of the book and will
sell it at a retail price of £5. It is expected the
promotion will be effective from mid October. They
are also taking copies of The Luxury of Time by our
now, much-missed Jane Tomlinson. We have been told
'at least 100 stores' will run the promotion,
although we don't have details as to which ones they
are. 'Party Dress will be stocked in the lingerie
section of the shop.


This is a real boost for the book and a good order
quantity too. We hope you are as pleased with the
result as we are.

Don't buy a scrap of underwear until October, anybody!!!

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....

TOYPD Best Friends (2)

Yes, thanks Kate, aka Ms Baroque in Hackney - this is the IPC advertising 'screen grab' although you can't see it moving on the page in this still photo...but still, a blog triumph, managing to post it.

If you type the IPC magazine name into Google, e.g. Web User, you get to the magazine site, then click on anything to enter the on-screen magazine, and the whizzing, moving ad comes up!! Very exciting!!

And all this done by Angie o' Farrell...people are really good.

Arsenal tickets, anybody?

Dear All,

Please find below details of a superb way to watch "Premiership" Football

ARSENAL “DIAMOND CLUB” TICKETS
FOR SALE TO AID CANCER CAMPAIGN



Bids are invited in a blind auction for two exclusive Diamond Club tickets for the Arsenal v Portsmouth game on Sunday 2 September 2007 at 1.30pm.

Arsenal’s Diamond Club offers football’s finest seats at its new Emirates Stadium which are usually only available to the 84 people who pay £25k a year to enjoy the luxurious facilities.

Successful bidders for these tickets will enter the club through the stunning art deco marble and bronze entrance hall. They will make their way via a private elevator to the Diamond Club where they will be greeted by a personal concierge from Quintessentially – the world’s leading private member club. They will also enjoy a fabulous dining experience with food prepared by none other than Raymond Blanc of Manoir aux Quat’Saisons. And there’s every chance of rubbing shoulders with a few Arsenal legends at an exclusive bar.

Proceeds from these tickets will go to the £1 million “CTRT Appeal” which is raising money for a new chemotherapy research unit at the Mount Vernon Cancer Centre.

Bids, including your name, address and telephone number, should be sent by e-mail to Brian Abbott at abbott3@ntlworld.com by 10am on Monday 20 August. For further information, call 07758 739185. The CTRT Appeal is registered as charity number 1053338.

Another evening outing

Made it out of the house for a second evening, in however many months - always exciting to smell the summer evenings!

To Lisa Gittelmon, who's initiated a series of fund-raising dinner parties to boost the CTRT coffers, and with sun-dried tomatoes in tiny home-baked pastry cases, and chicken and sweet potato, raised £150 plus last night. Lisa's somebody I only just met when Elon started school two years ago, but she's been really swift to become involved. She started thinking about fund-raising because of my book, but, as is the way with this illness - every minute somebody's being diagnosed - no sooner had she started planning the dinners than one of her very close friends - with whom she goes much further back - found a lump, and is currently being treated at Barnet and Mount Vernon, by the same doctors I had.

Why we're raising money

This article from the New York Times says an awful lot about why we are raising money, particularly this paragraph:

She has come to think that survival may depend on money and access, and, she said, on “your own drive and motivation — are you Type A? — your education and your ability to sort through the medical world and the insurance world terminology.”

It's clear to me that not just in the States, but here too, not everybody is equal in the cancer world, not all treatments are equal, and not all access is equal. The point about building a trials unit, such as the one which our money is building, is to make sure that as many cancer patients as possible are seen in the same building, with access to the same top pool of doctors, and to all the possible trials. Also, there is a lot to be said for sitting in a waiting room with other patients who are having the same treatments, and finding out, firstly, that you are all getting the same, and how others are dealing with and reacting to the drugs.

Back home

Had to go to hospital unexpectedly Sunday night for more blood and stuff, but back home now, and update from Daniel on fundraising:

Hi Dina, this should have come last week, but with some more money in today, it is worth waiting. We have received more money in from both the film show and also your general fundraising. Income direct to the appeal - £235.00 (including £35 from League of Jewish Women) Filmshow extra income - £6,231.24 Extra book sale income - £67.02 Total to add to your offline income - £6,533.26 Plus the £5,000 donation I told you about last week, equals £11,533.26 which will push you over the £60k mark. Interestingly, the overall appeal is about £600,000 now, so let's hope as you approach £100,000 the overall appeal can keep pace and reach £1million.

So we're at £60,000 approx and have raised ten percent of the total amount!!! And that's not counting the extras: Mishcon's amount, Sam Jacobs, girlsontherun, David Masters, and new and very pregnant entrant Tammy Jeffay.

Fundraising updates...

News from Daniel Fletcher: The Edith Piaf evening has brought in so much money - I really think we will make that £100,000!

Hi Dina, we had a letter come in today which was actually for you, probably from someone who attended the Edith Piaf film show, Anita Zublodowicz.
She has sent a card and a cheque for you personally for £5,000 for you to do as you chose.
I'm sending it all on to you in the post today. Can you let me know that it has arrived.

BTW. There have been more cheques coming in from the Edith Piaf event, so I'll have to update you later this week in order to move the JG site on. It should put you close to £57k by now.

I was at the hospital today for navelbine treatment, and all the talk was of how expensive all the new cancer research is - but how necessary too. Although, like me, everybody wants to know what is causing all this cancer?

By the way, if anybody from Mishcon's is reading this, please let the "match our money each quarter" givers know that we've passed the £50,000.

I'm getting sponsored!

Sue Hayman, bloggee in Hong Kong, and long-time correspondent to my Guardian columns, is sponsoring my walking back to health, to add to the CTRT coffers! Here's her plan...

Ok what about this, if you drop me an email once a week to tell me that you have wallked on 4 out of the 7 days I will put in an envelope a 100 Hong Kong dollar note. If I put 100 dollars into an envelope each week by the time I next come to the UK which will be in late November (about 20 weeks) there will be 2000 Hong Kong dollars - about 150 pounds. I can give it / send it to you then. So pleased that you are feeling better.

I am feeling so smug - I have the best bloggees on the planet. Thank you Sue!