Pride London

On Saturday 27th June myself and my family attended London Pride. What can I say? It was an amazing experience. Over 750,000 people attended from a hugely diverse selection of groups. This one was the Phillipino Nurses, there were banks, supermarkets, housing associations, an amazing dance troupe (with penis water pistols!) protesting the situation in Russia, trade unions (which I would have marched with if my son had not had a panic attack), rubbermen, motorcyclists, puppies, ponies and queens. It was AWESOME.

The idea came to me at the time, and I've mentioned it on facebook - why can't there be a group representing LGBT writers. Think of the marketing opportunities!! 750, 000 potential readers.

People were throwing/giving all kinds of things to the audience as well as among each other. I came away with dozens of stickers, packets of sweets, leaflets, cards, fliers, sun screen, and many other things, all with logos, numbers, information and candy goodness (not that I would recommend anyone tries eating the sunscreen or fliers)

My friend made the helpful suggestion - on the train - that I should have printed a photograph of my new book cover on our matching tshirts and I thought - why the hell not, next year. Then I thought why stop at a photograph on a tshirt? I could be handing out all kinds of things with my logo and details on. Then I thought why stop at me?

Individuals are not allowed to march, there has to be a registered group and this year they charged £550 per group. Although it's likely to be more next year, all we'd need is a dozen or so to make it well affordable. The only costs on top of that would be marketing. Of course we could all choose to do that individually but how much more impact would we have if we all got together and produced something wonderful!!