take off your party dress

My lovely old friend Dina's book has arrived in the post, finally published - in the end, after weeks of waiting, I had to get it off Amazon because I couldn't get to the shop this week, could I? It's called Take Off Your Party Dress, and it's about her breast cancer.

It's hardly the book we imagined she'd write when we met all those years ago* in a writing workshop, or indeed in all the years that followed, but when I opened it today to have a quick look I ended up sitting on the edge of the sofa reading and reading and reading. It has all the qualities her short stories used to have** - it's immediate, firmly rooted in real life, very vivid and human and funny, and it's beautifully written. But unfortunately (and unthinkably), in this case, it's all true.

Dina's writing a blog called Take Off your Running Shoes, raising money for a cancer research unit. Always pragmatic,*** she wants to raise the money without running a marathon, which I think is eminently reasonable! Go check it out and put some in the pot so she can put her feet up. Or do something else.

* I think it's 12 years!
** and indeed her journalism does. Except of course, like the book, the journalism is also true.
*** and with even more children than Ms B...