BLOWN AWAY BY A BOUFFANT BUDGIE! Or: Donating future profits from book sales to favourite charity

Back in Andalucia recently after a short business trip. Picked up local papers and found, to my delight, an article about Malaga-born actor, Antonio Banderas, and his wife Melanie Griffith (pictured at Cudeca Cancer Hospice, Andalucia). They have pledged their support to Cudeca, my favourite charity, by recording videos for its campaign "Become a Benefactor - Add Life to Days". The couple also praised the hard work of the hospice’s team, who have offered invaluable support to more than 5,600 patients and families.

Cudeca was set up singlehandedly by its warm, compassionate President, Joan Hunt OBE in 1992. Like most charities in this economic downturn, however, it needs the public’s support more than ever for, as Joan observed to me, cancer doesn’t recognize or respect recessions. And that’s why I’m keen to do whatever I can to support its fundraising efforts and the reason I’m donating to it all future profits from sales of my novel The De Clerambault Code (left) likewise featured in local press articles that included pic of Joan and part of me (bottom left).

I mention all this since my previous efforts at charity fundraising in the UK had some unexpectedly DISASTROUS results!

In the wake of the Asian tsunami in early 2006, I decided I needed to do something positive to help the fundraising efforts (well, shamed would be more honest!). So the Red Cross was the unfortunate choice of my first-ever practical volunteering efforts (P and I have long contributed financially.)

This involved door-to-door collections of, I was advised, discarded clothes, toys, that sort of thing. In the event, it involved everything imaginable and unimaginable. Knives (all shapes and sizes), half a samurai sword, artificial limbs (none matching), two sets of false teeth, what looked like a false eye (though possibly an odd-shaped marble), walking sticks, a mouse (hang on there girls! A computer mouse), a Masonic apron, two mauve bridesmaids’ dresses, three women’s wigs, assorted sanitary ware (ugh!) - even the discarded Christmas gift of a puppy (dogs not for life in that community then).

And for the next few days, I had this ever-present nightmare of bumping into a toothless, one-legged Polyphemus on his way to the Masonic Hall brandishing half a samurai sword supported by a bald lady in a mauve wedding dress bearing a bidet...

Anyway, I was doing fine in the first street on the list I was given till I got to the house at the end. A dark-haired, middle-aged woman eventually answered the door. Before I had a chance to get in a word, however, she smiled sweetly and lisped: "Sorry, ducky, I’m in the middle of blowdrying the budgie".

I was so dumbstruck my jaw dropped to the ground, words froze in my mouth and the door slammed shut in my ashen face.

So if, during tomorrow’s UK local and European elections (or the run-up to the next UK general election), you need a sure-fire method of ridding yourself of unwanted visitors - canvassers/ politicians/ double-glazing salesmen posing as canvassers/ politicians (any difference, anyone?) -this lady may just have the answer…

P.S. Spending long weekend in far corner of UK = insoluble equation:
QED No laptop + no WiFi connection = incommunicado till Monday!