This Saturday was a great night – but it should have been better.
Anthony Nolan is a charity that I have supported for many years. It is a very worthy cause with the simple aim to save people’s lives. Each year, they stage a ball in The Great Room at the Grosvenor House Hotel on Park Lane. The room that Tom recently received an award from Empire Magazine. The room that inspired a short story that I published and is available on this blog (Hobbs’s Journey) and is also the setting in my imagination for my first novel, Only in America.
Very simply, the charity, Anthony Nolan logs and matches tissue types in order to provide bone marrow donors for people suffering from blood cancer. My friend’s wife is waiting for just such a donor – so you can see that their work is vital.
Tom became the young ambassador for the charity – since the age of donors has now been reduced to 16 – and so I was delighted that on Saturday night – Tom could attend and could weigh in with some serious celebrity chops on behalf of the Holland family.
Alas beaurocracy intervened.
Tom’s youthful looks alerted security staff and management – and at 11pm – he was escorted from the grand venue – in order to comply with licensing laws. I tried to reason with the five or six members of hotel staff – but there was no movement.
So at 16 – Tom can go to war. He can get married and he can smoke and he can work. He can also represent a magnificent charity which is saving people’s lives. But he cannot remain in a room post 11pm even though his parents are with him and he is not drinking alcohol.
Oh, and at 16 he can pay tax already as well – to the idiots who govern us all with their red tape amd meddling – all in the name of looking after us.
A lot of young people read this blog (on account of Tom I presume) – and I urge all young readers to visit the website of Anthony Nolan – and register your tissue type. It is easy to do – and by doing so, you could save someone’s life – a better upside of writing a blog, I cannot imagine.
That’s jobsworths for you, I’m sure there’s no law against Tom or any child with you being there, unless it is a local bylaw, eg if the hotel has been naughty in the past or has “adult” entertainment. https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/77510/DCMS_LicensingGuidanceb.pdf pg 110-111 esp paragraph 13.44.
Needless to say I shall be pushing A N Donors in my shops.
dominic congratulations hope you will fulfill all your wishes and hopefully meeting you mine you also to tom sam harry nicky lol paddy and you have a great time