Charity Begins at Home

So, more news of progress for the big day, which is in two weeks time.

No. I am not talking about a Royal Wedding, thankfully.  Just the charity event I am organising for the 14th May.  If you are new to this blog, you can find out what we are doing and why by clicking on this link and reading the post.

I still have no caterer. This is causing me mild levels of hysteria.  The only person I have found so far wants to make a guaranteed £200 from the day or will expect us to pay the difference.  This difference will have to come out of donations, so we are declining his offer.  I understand that people need to make a living, and there is nothing more disheartening than turning up to a gig and making no money, but £200 is a lot of money, and as I have no way of guaranteeing how many people will turn up, or indeed even if many people turn up, whether they will all want to eat this man’s fare, I am going to turn him down.

Jason is scamping all weekend.  The place where he scampers is full of catering units.  He is going to ask around for me, and I have a few other leads to follow next week when everyone is back at work, which is why I am only mildly hysterical about this.

The children and I spent most of the afternoon and evening yesterday making a prayer board, thus:

I am very happy with it.  It is however, rather large.  I got enthusiastic and did not think it through properly.  I now have transport problems.  I think I may have to rope my dad in to help me. He has a significantly larger car than me.  All will be well.

I varnished the board today. It is only made out of packing case cardboard reinforced with duct tape, and collaged to within an inch of its life.  It needed a bit more protection.

The idea is that we will supply postcards and pens and push pins, and for a donation, people can write messages and prayers on them and pin them to the board.  I think it is a cool idea.  It is not my idea. It is Keith at Zen Mischief’s.  Not only is it his cool idea, but he is donating 100 Tibetan prayer flags so that those people who don’t want to put what they are feeling into words, can donate and pin up a flag instead.  I think it will look indescribably beautiful when it is full of messages and flags.

Lovely.

Donations for prizes are still coming in.  A generous reader; Henriette Edlin who runs a company called Bella Mama in California, has donated a pregnancy skincare kit, all the way from the USA. Props Henri.

The ever delicious Home Office Mum, has been pulling her super PR strings for me over the last few days and I am eagerly awaiting the most needful book tidy from the aptly named Tidy Books company.

I covet this item:

It is very, very shiny, no?

UE has come up trumps.  He has sent me two, huge boxes of stuff from his company Salad.  Salad does not do anything whatsoever to do with eating green, leafy things, and very much lots to do with the world of Neuro Linguistic Programming and other life coaching type things.  I have card sets which help you find ‘instant happiness’, and a CD to match.  I have sets of NLP Coaching Cards and audio CDs that are entitled: ‘Uncovering your Highest Quality of Mind’.

Obviously I do not need these, ahem, having lived with him for ten years I am so spiritually enlightened I have to wear dark glasses to stop myself blinding myself, but I hear they are hugely popular with other people.

Tallulah has donated three, brand new, never been opened, Rainbow Magic Fairy books by the ever abundant Daisy Meadows. You have no idea how massive this sacrifice is to her.  I am impressed.

Not only that, but the children have wandered up and down our estate today, leafletting every house, and selling raffle tickets where they can.  Despite the fact it is a hot, bank holiday weekend and most people are away, they have sold over £20′s worth of tickets, which is amazing.

We have also hit every shop in Broughton Astley with posters advertising our walk.  The children were most impressed by the computer shop, where the owner has a teacup chihuahua puppy the size of my palm, which jumped all over them like a flea on steroids.

Payment enough for a day of charitable toil.

I now have many cakes to bake.  I am being aided in this by the wondrous Hairy Farmer Family, who has promised me some of her justly famous cup cakes.  I am hysterical with excitement about this. I have been the recipient of HFF cakes before, and they truly rock my world.  I say this as a woman who eats cake on a daily basis. I know of what I speak.

I was going to bake this evening, but in between all this philanthropic activity and Jason’s absence, and Oscar and Tallulah’s perpetual war against each other and me, I am knackered. I am off to sofa surf with Nancy Mitford’s Wigs on the Green.

Remember, if you want tickets for this raffle, I will post your prize to you if you win something, because I am kind.  Tickets are £1.00 each.  There is a list of other prizes here and here.  Please donate your ticket money to my Just Giving page and e-mail me either at katy@cheekymonkeymarketing.com, or drop a comment in the comments box and I will mail you.

To everyone who has already donated this way: Mrs Jones, Alienne, Libby, Sophie, Jo and Bev, I have your tickets. I have written them all out.  I will dig out the scanner in the next day or two and scan your tickets and mail you with them.

I also promise not to run off with your prizes, even if you win the ones I really want.

Waste of a good horse

I had to dash into the village yesterday to do some errands before everything shut down again for another four days.  I love a good holiday, and it is brilliant that people who work are getting lots of time off.  If I worked I would probably be dancing round the maypole and getting drunk right now, just thinking about it.

But.

But it totally messes with my head.  I have spent all week utterly confused about whether the postman will come, whether the supermarket will be open, whether I am going to get shouted at by the bank, etc.  I am not the most organised person at the best of times, and my grip on time and space is particularly unhinged during the holidays. It is killing me. I cannot wait for the children to go back to school on Wednesday so that I can embrace their routine again.

There’s that, and the fact that this holiday has been one of the most unjoyous holidays on record.  Two cases of measles and the worst period since the last worst period, which I am still experiencing pain from as I type. Gah!

Anyway.

So I went into the village with Oscar, and as I was driving to the car park we passed a woman with one of those teeny, weeny, miniature horses, camped outside the chip shop, surrounded by a mob of children.

Not something you see every day.

I pointed it out to Oscar. He was entirely uninterested.  He has been following his dreams of rock stardom all week, and had got me to make him a cardboard guitar, which he was flinging about in the seat next to me in moody, rock star poses.

We parked, and went off on our errands. Coming back from the library we stopped outside the Co-op to use the cash machine, and there was the woman with the weeny, itty, bitty, microscopic horse again.  Different children were milling around her this time, but it was all very strange.

I walked past slowly, staring like one of those fish with poppy eyes, when the horse lady said: ‘Come and stroke him.  I need people to come and stroke my horse.’

I rushed over, knocking about one billion small children over in my haste.

Oscar hung back and I had to practically drag him over to the horse.

It turns out that this woman rents out the horse, and another one just like it, for children’s parties.  It is the start of the party season and she is taking the horse around the village, encouraging people to make a fuss of it, so it won’t be nervous when it has to perform at its first party in a few weeks.

it’s name was Alfie. It came up to my knee. It was one of the cutest things I have ever seen.  I am not a horse fan, but I like cute animals, and this fit the bill completely.  It was unbearably cute.

Oscar was totally unimpressed. He patted it unenthusiastically once and then kept pestering me to come away from Alfie and take him to the baker’s for a biscuit.  It was so disappointing.  I was hoping he would beg me to book it for his party, but no.

As we left, I said: ‘Didn’t you like the horse?’

To which he sniffed and replied:

‘Well. It’s not as cool as a guitar, is it?’

Royal Stuff of Course

The charity drive moves inexorably on. There is more to tell you, but I think I need my blog back for a while.

Let us talk of other things, like shoes and ships and sealing wax and cabbages and kings (I know I am probably misquoting this but I am too tired to look it up).

Let us talk of Royal Weddings.

You know I are not keen. I are not a republican by any means, but I am not the top, number one fan of the royals either.  Put it this way, despite my total obsession with La Bridgewater, I was not tempted for a nano second by any commemorative pottery.  I wouldn’t smash it with a poker if someone bought me some, but I’d certainly stick it at the back of the cupboard.

I had no intentions whatsoever of watching the whole fol de rol unfold on television this morning.  On the other hand, I was at my mum and dad’s, my brother had it on, and my son was practising being a rock god in the other room with a broken plastic guitar and a swanee whistle.  I made my choice.  I am unapologetic about it.

Here are my thoughts:

The Dress

It was elegant. It fit beautifully. She looked pretty.

Meh!

I cannot get my head round the fact that it was McQueen.  Don’t get me wrong, I wasn’t expecting her to totter up the aisle with prosthetic limbs and industrial car paint squibbing out from under her tiara, but I had hoped for something with a bit more edge.  I love McQueen.  If Jason can ever afford to marry me again I was always torn between McQueen and Galliano.  Now what am I going to do? I shall have to plump for Vivienne Westwood and bugger the lot of ‘em.

The dress was classic. So, not my cup of tea.  On the other hand it will probably date very well and she won’t have to hide the photos in later life.

William

His bald patch was doing a bit of a combover thingy.  I found this troubling.

He seemed to be nodding off during proceedings.  I do not blame him.  Apparently the bookies were taking bets to see if Philip snoozed. Something William has obviously inherited from his grandfather.

The Trees

I liked ‘em.  Ver’ nice.  Best bit of the whole thing.

The Guests:

HAHAHAHAHAAHAHAAAHAHAHAHAHAHA!  Weren’t there some shockers?

Where to start? The queen looked like a slightly bored daffodil.  Me no like.

Beatrice and Eugenie looked like a pair of shire horses in hats, and whoever helped them pick their outfits clearly hated them viciously and without remorse.

Princess Anne was a disappointment. I usually like her style, but I don’t think lilac was her colour.  She looked knackered.

Elton John looked half dead too. I think the baby had been keeping him up all night and it was clearly his turn to change nappies. It explains why David Furnish looked so smug. He’d been sleeping like the dead in the spare room with his ear plugs in.

David Beckham. Lovely tailoring. Suits you. Lost interest entirely before I found out if he ever put his hat on, or just clutched it to his testicles for the duration.

Posh. Nice dress. Didn’t like the shoes. They looked agonising. Sorry Louboutin. Bad hair. Interesting hat.

Harry. Needs a wash and a hair cut.

I got bored after that.  I lasted half an hour.  Not bad really for me.

Did I miss anything good?

More Prizes from the Lovely People of Leicester

I know I am banging on a lot about my charity event at the moment, but please be patient with me. It is for the most excellent of causes, and I only have a fortnight now to work wonders.

Yesterday I posted a list of some of the many fantastic prizes that you, my kind internet friends, have donated, and which it is possible to win if you buy one of my lovely raffle tickets.

I  also promised yesterday that I would highlight some of the marvellous work done by local people and businesses for our cause.  People have been unstintingly generous, which given the fact that nearly all the people I am about to mention do not know me from Adam, have never read my blog and were put on the spot by me and my children, is utterly fantastic.

Here are some of the prizes you can win that have been given to us by the splendidly shiny denizens of Leicester:

Anna Webb at The Exchange Bar, Leicester, has offered us a bottle of wine to be drunk at her lovely establishment as a raffle prize.  Anna has also been extraordinarily helpful with her time and ideas, and it was because of her that Michelle ended up being interviewed on Radio Leicester this week.

The Exchange is a great bohemian style bar just opposite the new Curve Theatre in Leicester. With mix and match tables and chairs, a relaxed atmosphere and a really friendly staff it’s a brilliant place to hang out. They’re just as happy to serve you coffee and muffins as they are drink drinks, which is great. I’ve been there a few times in the past after the theatre or coming from the Phoenix Cinema, which is just down the road, and it’s always been a welcoming place to go.

Nick Skinner, manager of The Almanack restaurant and bar in High Cross has offered us a free dinner for two in his exceptional establishment.  I have blogged about The Almanack before.  I go there A LOT.  My mum and dad go there A LOT, even UE goes there A LOT when he’s back in Leicester.  The food is fabulous. The service is great.  In the mornings if you go for a coffee they have free toast, which you can make yourself, all set up on the bar.  It’s one of my favourite places to go in Leicester, and I’m really hoping I win this prize myself.

The very trendy Indy Hair Salon on the corner of Guildhall and Loseby Lane have given us a free cut and blow dry voucher with their stylist, Oli.  Indy is somewhere I have had my hair done several times in the past, and they have always done an excellent job.  They really saved my bacon one time when I was on my way to a business meeting (this was when I had a life!), and realised I had been in such a rush I had forgotten to do my hair (a frequent problem for me). They made me look sleek and beautiful and capable. It’s a tall order, but they pulled it off.

The ever lovely, Alistair Bell at Leicester’s Printing.Com on Charles Street has given us a £25 voucher for any printing you may want doing.  I always use Printing.Com for all my printing needs, which over the years have been many and various, and they have never, ever let me down.  Alistair is a superstar, who can really bring your ideas to life, and is extremely friendly to boot.  He has also designed some great posters for me, which will be going up in the next week.

Amabis jewellers, on High Street in Leicester have given me a £20 voucher to spend on the jewellery of your choice. This is another win I rather covet. I do not do jewellery really, but every now and again I buy a piece even I can’t resist. Amabis always have something drool worthy, and the last time I bought something was a really delicate silver necklace strung with drops of honey coloured amber from their shop.  Covetable things is what they sell.

One of my favourite Leicester stores, Niche, have also been super generous. Catherine, the owner, was exceptionally kind, giving me two beautiful keepsake boxes, one for storing memories, and one, which would be perfect as a christening gift, which is a beautiful, blue padded gift box for a boy.  Catherine was also helpful with ideas and suggestions, I cannot thank her enough.

The lovely people at Set, gift store in St. Martin’s Square who have one of the trendiest gift shops in the city, gave me a gorgeous mini hot water bottle with a really cute knitted retro cover in a kind of Cath Kidston style.

Jake, the very laid back dude who does the marketing for our fabulous new arts cinema, Phoenix Square, not only donated two comp tickets for the film of the winner’s choice, plus free drinks, but also the most amazing limited edition print. It’s a cell of a digital rendition of Leicester as a soundscape. It looks like an exploding icicle and it’s very, very cool indeed.  Jake was also really helpful with ideas and suggestions when I started out, for which many thanks.

Jo and Christian who run the excellent swimming lessons Oscar and Tallulah both attend in Husband’s Bosworth, have given me a free Little Splashers baby and toddler swimming lesson.  They were hugely sympathetic and do lots of work with and for Tommys’ charity, so the fact that they were able to find room for us as well was remarkably generous of them.

The delightful lady at The Original Cookware Company in St Martin’s Square Leicester, where I go to assuage my Emma Bridgewater habit, donated a cute chicken egg cup and cosy set, which my children are all hoping to win.

The Good Earth restaurant, which I have blogged about many times before as one of my best loved eateries, also has a rather gorgeous shop downstairs from their restaurant. The owner kindly gave us an adorable gift set of a towel and pretty soaps all done up to look like a chocolate cake with frosting. It is something I am keeping well away from Tallulah.

My picture framers, the ever brilliant Frog and Mouse Picture Company have been extraordinarily generous, as I knew they would be. They have donated two £25 vouchers redeemable against either framing, or one of their exquisite pictures.  They are always a joy to visit and work with, and have the best customer service on the planet. FACT.

My delightful friend Barbara von Ow, who runs a Mary Kay cosmetics business in Leicester, is giving me some Mary Kay goodie bags. You may remember that I have blogged about Barbara and her skills on several occasions in the past.  She is a superstar of cosmetics and her products are totally fantastic.  I swear by the mineral face powder, and Barbara is the least pretentious and best make up sales lady in the universe.

I must also give a special shout out to Merry over at her blog, Patch of Puddles. Merry read the guest blog I wrote about Michelle and her son Keelan over at Heather’s blog: NotefromLapland.  She sent me a message offering a prize from her fantastic business: ‘Play Merrily Toys’, which was not only very generous of her, but really touched my heart in another way.  Merry too lost a son last year to SIDS, and knows exactly what Michelle is going through, because she is going through it herself.  The fact that she has taken the time to connect with and help, someone else in the same situation is really heart warming.

Take a trip over to her blog.  She writes beautifully. She’s worth reading.

So, takes a deep breath, that’s what we have so far.  There will be other things, I am sure.

Remember, tickets are £1.00 each, which is cheap at half the price.  No, I do not really know what that means either.  Anyway, contact me if you want a ticket, want to know more about the great businesses featured in this post, or if you just want to shoot the breeze because it’s better than thinking about the Royal Wedding.

Win Stuff

Yesterday I promised a list of some of the shiny stuff that people can win if they buy tickets for our lovely fundraising raffle.

Please note, that due to your unstinting generosity, this is not a comprehensive list. Things are still coming in, which is utterly amazing and brilliant.

It’s hard to know where to start really.  I think I will just plunge in with a random selection:

A pair of tickets to the National Trust Guided Tour of the Beatles Childhood Homes in Liverpool

A bottle of Veuve Clicquot champagne

4711 Eau de Cologne

Smirnoff miniature gift set with shot glass

A Kikoy (a fabulous scarf) from the Edun label (that’s Bono’s environmentally friendly fashion label you know)

Various pieces of beautiful jewellery, necklaces, bracelets etc

A spotty four person teapot by Emma Bridgewater

A limited edition digital print of Leicester rendered as a soundscape

Brora cashmere socks

Salad NLP products

Mary Kay cosmetics

A pair of boxing gloves signed by Rendall Munroe

A selection of books for adults and children signed by the author, Tim Atkinson

Lilyflame scented candles

A gorgeous crocheted bird

A piece of 1910 Carnival glass in blue

Keepsake boxes

a cute mini water bottle with a glorious kitsch knitted cover

Clarins products

A fused glass, heart shaped light catcher

Massage products for pregnancy bumps

A chance to be a character in India Knight’s next novel, plus signed novels

Signed copy of My Daddy Cooks by Nick Coffer

Ladybird archive collection mug by Spode

Revlon nail varnishes

Sex and the City nail varnishes

Swarovski perfume

Early Learning Fluttering Flower clock

Bombay Duck silk shoe bag

Hotel Chocolat goodies

A signed book on the history of children’s clothing by Noreen Marshall

Bloody good bottle of wine from Keith Marshall!

and so much more:

There are also prizes which are local to people who live in Leicester, like offers of meals, and cinema tickets and hair cuts, which I will be posting about over the next few days with acknowledgements and thanks, along with links to all the wonderful businesses who have helped us.

So many of you have donated, and I have tried to thank you all individually.  If I have forgotten, please accept my apologies, and I will attempt to be more organised and rectify the fault in the coming days.

Tickets are the bargainous price of £1.00 each

If you want the chance to win any of this, if you mail me, or comment at the bottom of the post, I can sort you out a ticket.  Long distance ticket purchasers can donate their ticket money via my Just Giving page and I will scan you a copy of your tickets, so that everything is in order.

If you win something, I will happily post it to you at my own expense.

If you don’t want a ticket, just sit here and feel a warm glow of pride at what you have helped me achieve, and be stunned that I simply haven’t managed to list everything everyone has given yet. That’s how much there is of it!

I heard it on the radio

I’m still feeling ghastly today, so let’s gloss over it and get on to some excellent news.

I have updates for you on how our fundraising activity is going.

It is going AWESOMELY is how it is going.

Just to recap:

We are walking A Mile in Memory of Keelan Bambrick Webster on Saturday 14th May at 11.00 a.m. through Western Park in Leicester.  We will meet at the Glenfield Road entrance of the park where the adventure playground is.

Afterwards we will be holding a kind of fund raising party at The Sportsman pub, Park Rise, Leicester.  There will be face painting, a bouncy castle, a cake stall, and we will be announcing the winners of the raffle which so many of you have donated gorgeous prizes for.

Our progress has been staggering.

Not only is my Just Giving page up to nearly £1400, but we have armfuls of the most brilliant prizes for our raffle to boot.  All the money is going to help raise funds for the Foundation for The Study of Infant Deaths.

Tom, my lovely cousin has used his graphic design skills to create raffle tickets and posters.

Keith, my lovely friend had a fantastic idea to create a prayer wall on the day of the event and is giving us 100 Tibetan prayer flags to help us make it special.

And you are still donating, gifting, tweeting, researching, mailing and helping in every way you can think of.  I quite literally got a sack of parcels this morning from the postman.  How brilliant is that?  I’ve never been so happy that none of them were for me before.

You rock.

Tomorrow I’m going to start blogging lists of raffle prizes we have so far.

Today Michelle was interviewed on our local radio station; BBC Radio Leicester.  She went on the afternoon show with the lovely Rupal Rajani, and spent about fifteen minutes with Rupal talking about Keelan and FSID and our walk.

Michelle was magnificent.  I was out at the time, but I got home half an hour ago, and the first thing I did was use the Listen Again facility to hear what she had to say.

She was dignified, thoughtful, passionate and articulate.

She thought she might have come across as sounding silly.  She could not be more wrong.

Why not listen for yourself?

Click on this link

Press the play button

Spool forwards to forty minutes into the show.

I did try to embed the page but I don’t have enough technical know how.

I urge you to listen.

You won’t regret it.

Then you can tell her that she wasn’t silly at all. She was and is bloody brilliant.

Advanced Biology Lesson 9011 – The Uterus – For May

Observe:

Figure 1. – The Uterus:

Figure 2. – The Devil:

Only the horns have been changed to protect the innocent.

Further proof, if proof were needed:

You never see them in the same photograph.

Don’t Take That Tone With Me

I do not, I thank the lord cheezus, spent hours every day with other people’s children.  This is why I always think that other people’s children are very much nicer than my own.

I’m sure that were I to spend hours every day with other people’s children I would find them just as aggravating and unfathomable as my own.

I know I was once a child myself, and I have very vivid memories of some of the frankly insane things I thought, said and did during my childhood years, but somehow, watching my children do these things is so much more intense.  Some of it more intensely irritating, some of it more intensely funny and some of it more intensely strange.

They are out in the garden right now, playing a game.

Jason is still intent on clearing the garage, as he has been since Friday. It is one of his peculiar, manly obsessions, the garage.  He wouldn’t care less if you built a giant spider’s nest of socks in the middle of the living room, as long as he could still see the television, but if the garage is not a pristine paradise of order, he gets very irritated.

He spends a lot of time being very irritated.  There is a door into the garage from this kitchen, and it is where I put all the things I do not quite know what to do with, and the recycling, and the finished craft projects which will become recycling, even though I have promised the children that I will keep them forever. (Yes. I am that horrible parent).

Today Jason became troubled by one of our pictures. It is an enormous picture of the Flatiron Building in New York.  It came from Ikea. Despite this it is lovely. It measures about 8 feet across by five feet high.  It is mahoosive.

The movers flat packed it in its frame.  It is a canvas.  It can be rolled.  Jason decided this morning that he needed to dismantle the picture, roll the canvas and put it back in the garage in a tidier, smaller way.

When he had finished we had a lot of cardboard.  He gave it to the children and helped them turn it into three cardboard forts in the garden.

They have been playing in these forts all afternoon.  Apparently they are three friends who met at university and who now have very complicated lives, and jobs which mean they have to travel on scooters round the M25 all day.  It is exhausting.

The French windows are open, so I can hear them as they buzz about their imaginary lives. They are so busy, they make me feel tired.

I am all for this kind of play.  It requires minimal interference from me. It is low impact.  It is healthy, because they are outdoors, and because it is so complicated it goes on for hours.  All I am required to do is shout occasionally when it gets a bit frantic, and provide refreshments.

This is the sort of parenting I like.

The thing that I do not like about it however, is their need to adopt fake voices when they play.  I wouldn’t mind if these fake voices were burly, manly voices in a low key:

‘Awwright Dave?’

‘Awwright Arfur?’

‘I aint doin’ no bird.’

etc.

That would be fine.

But for some reason, all the people who inhabit the vast, teeming world of planet play seem to communicate in a falsetto series of squeaks all rendered at top volume, in a peculiar approximation of an American accent, with Welsh overtones.

They sound like Alvin and the Chipmunks, but speeded up.

What is this about?

Did I do this?  My mother, who reads this blog, will undoubtedly answer in the affirmative.

I think she is probably grateful we had a very long garden.

I know I would be.  Or if the Bose, Noise Cancelling Headphones Fairy were to pay me a visit.

Either would be acceptable.

Armistead Maupin

Apart from Doctor Who, I am trying to avoid television now that I have overindulged by watching twenty straight hours of The Killing.  I have many books to read.  I have only just caught up on my Amazon reviewing.  This would be fine, were not two more tomes winging their way towards me in the post as we speak.

I cannot renew my library books again. I think it’s a three strikes and you’re out thing. So I have put my reading list on hold to roam across what the library have provided me with.

I started with Mary Ann in Autumn, the latest Tales of The City novel by Armistead Maupin.  I have been jonesing after it since it came out, but as my reading backlog is at an all time high, even for me, decided to wait until it came out in paperback.  Then, there it was, sitting on the new arrivals shelf in the library.

Yay!

I adore Armistead Maupin’s books.  I have read every book he has ever written and never been disappointed by a single one. Not ever.  That is fairly impressive. There are lots of writers I love, but generally there are some books that I love less than others, some I maybe don’t like at all. I can’t think of a single other author who has written multiple books, whose work I have enjoyed so consistently.

If you have never read Maupin before I must warn you:

You need to read his Tales of the City sequence in order.  They are like soap operas (of the best kind), you need to get properly involved with the characters, and a lot happens.  To enjoy Mary Ann in Autumn as much as I did, you need to have read everything that has gone before.  Start with the eponymously named: ‘Tales of the City’ and go forth.

He writes candidly about gay relationships, transgender relationships and even common or garden heterosexual relationships.  If you’re not keen on openness and frank discussions of all kinds of sexuality, these books are not for you.

Other than that you should fill your boots.  They are set in San Francisco from the Seventies right up until the present day, and the same  cast of characters appears throughout.  Some characters die as the series progresses, others are introduced. None are ever forgotten.

There was an excellent television series of the first  few books made, starring Olympia Dukakis and Laura Linney.  They are as good as the books.

I know, Amazing isn’t it?

They are funny, tender, dark, unflinching, hilarious and topical.  They are an utter treat to read.

I wish I could discover them again for the first time.  That’s how good they are.

Oscar Wisdom Part 4765

‘But we must remember to be cheerful mama, because we do not all die at once.  That would be too difficult.  No. We get to die one at a time.  So that’s ok.’