Match It For Pratchett

Dine with Terry Pratchett

A message from the Alzheimer’s Research Trust:

Calling all fans of Terry Pratchett and Raj Persaud!

On 1st May the Alzheimer’s Research Trust will be hosting an exclusive dinner at a private venue in London. The format of the evening is a dinner hosted by consultant psychiatrist, broadcaster and author of various popular publications on psychiatry, Dr Raj Persaud, with acclaimed author Terry Pratchett OBE as guest of honour. Mr Pratchett and Dr Persaud will spend time with our guests talking about their involvement with the Alzheimer’s Research Trust.

Places are strictly limited and seats will be allocated to the highest bidder with monies raised going to the Alzheimer’s Research Trust to support further research into Alzheimer’s and related forms of dementia.

If you would like to join Alzheimer’s Research Trust for this wonderful and unique evening, please register your pledge with us as soon as possible. You can do so by email to terrypratchettdinner@alzheimers-research.org.uk or by letter to the Alzheimer’s Research Trust, The Stables, Station Road, Great Shelford, Cambridge, CB22 5LR or fax to 01223 843325. We need to hear from you by 3pm on 21st April. Successful bidders will be notified by close of business on 24th April.

Seat allocation will operate on a closed-bid basis. In the event of several bids of equal amount being received, where it is not possible to distinguish which bid was made first, invitees will be chosen by process of random selection.

Money & Match It For Pratchett

The amount of money the campaign has taken through the Donation Jar has been staggering. The jar itself was just an after-thought, quickly added to the web site when I saw Typepad made it very easy it set one up. I only ever expected it to be a connivence for those who had Paypal accounts and for it to collect a small amount of money. In some ways this is true, much much more money has gone straight to the charity. However several thousand dollars in my Paypal account is more than I expected to handle and this has been worrying me.

To the rescue comes Rebecca, CEO of the Alzheimer's Research Trust. We had a good chat yesterday and the Trust is in the process of setting up its own Paypal account. Once its up and running, I will switch the Donation Jar so that it pays direct into their account instead of mine. All the money collected so far will also be transfered over. Because of the bank holiday and the hoops the charity needs to go through to set up their Paypal account this is not going to happen until next week. In the meantime I will continue to give regular updates and list each and every donation on the Detailed Accounts page.

The money from the T-Shirt's will still flow into my account and be forwarded on to the charity at regular intervals. However I will be updating the site slightly to make it clear how much of each shirt goes to the charity. (Its $10 per shirt).

Rebecca has promised to keep us informed of how much has been raised and she sends her thanks to everyone who has donated, posted on their blog about the campaign or simply told a friend about it. The response of Terry's fans around the world has been fantastic.

Wear The Lilac - May 25th

It is a tribute to the Terry Pratchett's writing skills and his friendly attitude to fans that he has inspired not only Match It For Pratchet but a second campaigns to raise money Alzheimer's.

In Nightwatch, the men who fought and died (and in one case, fought, died and kept on fighting) in the Revolution are remembered by the wearing of sprigs of lilac every May 25th. The online Pratchett communities have adopted May 25th as Wear The Lilac day, an unofficial holiday celebrating Pratchett's work. Now AG has taken it one step further with these fantastic Lilac Pins with the proceeds split between the American Alzheimer's Association and the Alzheimer's Research Trust.

From AG's website:

These lilac pins are made from life-size silk blooms and tied with a black velvet ribbon. The large size blooms are approximately the size of a lady's corsage spray, and the smaller blooms are the size of a gentleman's buttonhole/boutonniere.

More details on Wear the Lilac for Alzheimer's

We think that Wear The Lilac is a great idea to show your support of both Terry Pratchett and to raise money for Alzheimer's research. Here at Match It For Pratchett we have ideas to support Wear The Lilac with special Icons for download and possibly T-shirts. |f you have ideas or ways of supporting Wear The Lilac day, please let us know via the comments.

Lara Croft’s Buttocks

From the start of the speech to Alzheimer’s Research Trust Network.

Ladies and Gentlemen. My name is Terry Pratchett, author of a series of inexplicably successful fantasy books and I have had Alzheimer’s now for the past two years plus, in which time I managed to write a couple of bestsellers. I have a rare variant. I don’t understand very much about it, but apparently if you are going to have Alzheimer’s it’s a good one to have. So, a stroke of luck there then…

and from the end

I'd like a chance to die like my father did—of Cancer, at 86. (Remember, I'm speaking as a man with Alzheimer's, which strips away your living self a bit at a time). Before he went to spend his last two weeks in a hospice he was bustling around the house, fixing things. He talked to us right up to the last few days, knowing who we were and who he was. Right now, I envy him. And there are thousands like me, except that they don’t get heard.

So let’s shout something loud enough to hear. We need you and you need money. I’m giving you a million dollars. Spend it wisely.

If you want to know what this post title has to do with anything, read the full text of the speech.

Thanks to pwt_fan and the Discworld LJ community for finding this.

Grand Total: £34,000

Direct to Alzheimer's Research Trust: £32,189.65 (824 donations)

Via MatchItForPratchett.org: $3973.34

Approximate Total: £34,000

The Alzheimer's Research Trust figure is on the conservative side as the charity is still catching up with the flood of donations. Details of the money raised from MatchItForPratchett.org can be found on the Money & Accounts page. We don't know how much has been donated in the US or around the world but we hope to have some information soon.

Why I'm Giving

Back in 1984, I was a spotty, geeky teenager who spent most of his lunchtimes hanging around in the local branch of Games Workshop chatting to the staff and other spotty teenagers. One day, Ben the deputy manager shoved a book into my hand and told me to buy it. Impressed by his no nonsense approach to selling I brought it without really looking at it. It was only when I was on the bus home that night that I gave it any attention and discovered it was called The Colour of Magic.

A few years later I was the proud owner of several Discworld novels but I had fallen in with a bad crowd of Douglas Adams fans know as ZZ9. After sitting in a pub all day someone suggested than there should be a Discworld fan club and a few minutes later we had a committee for Octarine, the Terry Pratchett Fan Club. Next weekend, we descended on a science fiction convention that Terry would be at. After hanging around in the bar all day, nervously waiting our chance, we pounced on Terry, explained our great plan and something amazing happen. Terry Pratchett listen and talked to us. With a skill I didn't appreciate until I was a lot older, he guided us away from being the Pratchett fan club and instead suggest we covered all science fiction and fantasy humour. It was good advice and Octarine, The Science Fiction & Fantasy Humour Appreciation Society was born.

Terry gave us his contact details and that of his agents. In no time Terry's publishers were sending us press releases and review copies. To a bunch of fan-boys and girls, this was heaven. The club prospered, especially as Terry would refer to us as The officially unofficial Not-the-Terry-Pratchett-Fan-Club and pass on our details to anyone who asked. This led on to Octarine's Way-Out Day-Outs where fans and the man himself would visit a theme park and have a party. Eventually we thought it would be a good idea to run a convention and Terry came along as "the man who most certainly wasn't the guest of honour, oh-no most definitely not".

The convention was great fun but an organisational disaster because none of us knew what we were doing. Despite this, through out the convention, Terry got involved with everything and willingly played the fall guy in half the programme. His presence and enthusiasm saved the weekend from complete meltdown.

Time passed and Octarine faded from my life and from existence but others fans took over. Alt.fan.pratchett gave birth to the first Discworld convention. We went along and saw Terry, who was now a world famous, best selling author, engage with his fans in exactly the same way he did with us ten years before. He would take time to talk to fans and thank them for buying his books. He knew how much his books meant to the fans and was, and probably still is, touched and honoured by this.

As I write this, sitting on the bookcases downstairs is every book Terry Pratchett has written. They still give me as much joy now as they did when I first opened The Colour of Magic on a bus home more than twenty years ago. What gives me even more joy, are the memories and friends I made through Octarine. Without Terry's support, advice and above all patience, none of it would of happened.

This is why I'm giving to Match It For Pratchett.

Why are you giving?

First Post!

Welcome to Match It For Pratchett, the campaign to match Terry Pratchett's $1 million ( £500,000 ) donation to Alzheimer's Research. In time we will have news of how much has been raised and how you can help but right now things are still being set up. If you would like to support the campaign, the most useful thing you can do right now is spread the word. Post a link on your web site, on Twitter, Face Book or whichever social networking site you use.