cancer fundraising
In December 2017 I met Nicola Bryant for my bowel cancer charity book The Record. She is perhaps best remembered for playing “Peri Brown” in Doctor Who during the 1980s.
A year ago I travelled into London to meet with the BBC political presenter and journalist Nick Robinson. He currently presents The Today Programme on Radio 4, which means him getting up at 3.30am!
Gina Irlam took Sergio, her #14 Love Hope Strength Reindeer, to the Mike Peters Hurricane Of Change concert in Darwen, Lancashire. She managed to get a photo with Mike, which now makes three of these fundraising reindeer to be photographed with Mike, the lead singer with The Alarm, who also co-founded Love Hope Strength, and someone who has lived with cancer for over 20 years.
The online store at rivers2cross.com has a variety of items including books, bears, reindeer, art, t-shirts and wristbands with 100% of the profits donated to Bowel Cancer UK and Love Hope Strength. These items would make ideal Christmas gifts for adults and children.
I tend to do a lot of posts about the people who feature in my books. These incredible people take centre stage, but let’s ease them to one side for a moment, and talk about another very important group of people who are the friends that I’ve made as a result of my fundraising.
The reason why Bill and everyone in the book is taking part is to help raise funds for Bowel Cancer UK, and to help raise awareness about this awful disease. My Mum died of bowel cancer in August 2016, having been first been diagnosed with cancer back in 2012. Bowel cancer claims 16,000 lives each year, making it the second highest cancer killer in the UK. Yet if detected early it can be successfully treated in over 90% of cases.
The chapter in The Record on Jeremy Cunningham and The Levellers was done in two parts.
It’s over seven years since Mum was diagnosed with bowel cancer, and my fundraising journey began. To date around £10,000 has been raised. Mum’s death in 2016 has only served to drive me on with the fundraising and raising awareness. In 2020 I am hoping to concentrate on fundraising at events. The idea being that
Chapter 8 in The Record features my meeting with Rupert Moon the former Welsh rugby international at The Principality Stadium in Cardiff on an unseasonably warm October afternoon in 2018. It was one of those occasions where the whole experience just could not have been any better.
I’m really grateful to Derek Rusling for sending me some amazing photos of bowel bear at the Imperial War Museum at RAF Duxford, where the teddy actually got to fly in a classic Hawker Hurricane, which played a major role in World War II.
