Donate £10 to Lumos and have dinner with JKR

[fromorbit]

JKR has made a very generous offer on Twitter:

J.K. Rowling
https://x.com/jk_rowling/status/1929113511004664078

I mean this, by the way. Donate £10 to lumos, I'll draw three names out of a hat and we'll have dinner. It could be KFC, but the wonderful JamesChiavarini has just suggested his restaurant, so it might be there instead (travel and accommodation on me if you're not in London).

Offer stands! Applications close at midnight on Monday. A £10 donation means your name will go into the draw.

https://wearelumos.org/how-you-can-help/donate/

If your name’s chosen and you’re outside London (or the UK) I’ll pay for travel and accommodation.

Once donations have been verified with Lumos I’ll select three donors’ names at random (can’t promise a literal hat, but who knows).

I’ll match the total sum donated to Lumos between first offer and midnight Monday.

And once my three fellow diners have been chosen, we’ll have a vote on whether we’re having KFC or going to Il Portico.

Additional offer from John Boyne:

John Boyne

£10 donated to Lumos. Whoever has the good fortune to win the raffle and have dinner with you, I'll donate £1,000 to the charity of his or her choosing.

This was inspired by JKR's ongoing twitter spat with Jolyon:

I've never sought to auction dinner with myself at a Michelin-starred restaurant with ‘a selection of wines from [my] own cellar’ as you have, Jolyon, but if anyone wants to bung Lumos £10, I'll draw a name out of a hat and we'll split a KFC bargain bucket.

I'm (half) jesting, same as how Rowling is jesting about meeting at KFC for the dinner.

I know she wouldn't go to a KFC, they put pride flags up for pride month.

I would want to hear all about Lumos, how they choose areas, countries, how they find the right employers in the countries. How often she gets to visit.

I’d want to get to know my fellow guests, interesting to meet new people.

I wouldn’t want to talk about Trans people or hydraulic engineering in deserts but I might ask her how she keeps her courage or spirits up when she is the subject if the most vile sexually violent threats. How does she protect herself.

Awww @Christinapple give it a rest mate. If you’re that bothered, why don’t you enter the draw, then you might win and you can talk about whatever you like.

Chris- you moan when JK Rowling says anything about transpeople but when she posts about something that’s NOT about them you can’t let that go either 🙄.
You and India and Jolyon are all cut from the same obsessive cloth.

Perhaps one of the many supporters of JKR who are trans will win - you do realise she has many trans supporters and many trans friends don’t you?

Have all three of them ever been seen in the same room???

I was a Harry Potter kid. Autistic special interest. I knew page numbers for quotes, had post its for favourite passages, read fanfic obsessively. I'd probably bore her ears off.

Done and donated

No interest in being part of the derail, so can I ask, as I dont really understand, if someone can clarify.

Is the situation that for some charity, legal reasons, it isn't allowed to ask for a £10 entry fee / ticket.

And if not, and say everyone said I want my £10 back, no money would be made?

Although one very happy person would get to meet JKR.

(I would be terrified of winning as I am absolutely sure that my idea of fund wont tally with JKRs. And I wouldn't want to be rude and say, sorry that's not really much fun!)

Yes, except there will be 6 people meeting JKR.

It creates a paid lottery. That’s the legal position. So to avoid that it needs to be free to enter.

Not just charities, it applies to business promotions and other types of competitions too.

Thanks - I think I understand and have just looked at the form and there is a donate button after it but not part of it.

Am doing a rapid re-assessment of what fun might be and assessing my ability to be part of it!

Sunday midnight deadline approaching! Still time to enter our draw for dinner with J.K. Rowling - because who wouldn't want to chat about magic and more over a meal?
https://x.com/lumos/status/1931400421710729531

No, because JKR has said she will match donations, including any that are withdrawn.

Wow! That's means she'll probably fall off the rich list again.

But have no doubts with her many talents she will be back agains soon.

As I don’t want original donors’ odds of winning to diminish by this necessary change to the prize draw rules, I’m doubling the number of winners. SIX people will now have KFC (or some vegan, vegetarian or fancier alternative) with me, rather than three.

KFC! and there was me thinking if I needed to how would I get hold of a posh frock. She's always so well dressed

Quite frankly, a glass of water would do me!

I imagine JKR is thinking
'[expletive deleted] it seemed like a fun idea at the time, now I have to engage my legal team AND my tech team AND...🙄!'
A good example of that 'gang aft agley' thingy..

Christinapple's interventions are usually pretty predictable, but the idea that a bunch of JKR fans meet JKR and they are going to talk about transfolx was way out there - unusually unpredictable, and completely silly.

As I've never read anything by JKR except her very funny tweets and her powerful political statements, I was interested to see that according to ChimpanzeeThatMonkeyNews*, she has a fascination with Canning Town.
Without wishing to out myself, let's just say that I'm no stranger to Rathbone Market myself, so that's a slight incentive to actually read some of JKR's books.

so I wouldn't want to win - it would be an evening of embarrassment, trying to hide the fact that I hadn't read a word of any of her books! I'd have to keep changing the subject - hey thanks, *Christinapple, you've given me a great idea, if the conversation was about her books which I haven't read, I could interrupt by saying 'Yes yes but what about the poor marginalised transwomen?'

edited to remove random ing asterisks! And then re-edited to replace the two ing asterisks that were intentional😠

Basically, 'bold' and 'asterisk' completely took over that last post of mine, and I ran out of editing chances.
It is what it is😥

Note to people who entered the first edition of the draw (after donating to Lumos) and then managed to fill in the Google form after the Lumos site had crashed.
You should have received a mail from Lumos Friday night or so, stating that you might want to fill out the form again, to be safe, even if you got through the first night.
As I never got a receipt for my second entry (the page went blank after sending it), I have just now clicked on the link provided and re-entered. The form looked a bit different (more checkboxes) from the earlier one. It also asks you to use the same credentials as before, to identify double entries caused by the crash.

@IwantToRetire "there was me thinking if I needed to how would I get hold of a posh frock."
I have little idea what is considered posh in the UK. I just know that my sister in London had much fancier garderobe than I have. Here you can arrive in Jeans/trousers and a nice blouse almost anywere. I think Jo Rowling needs to give out a detailed dress code for the uninitiated!

I hope someone on here wins because now I really do want to know what is discussed! I think it might be considered rude to ask but I am super interested in her journey from broke to billionaire, how that has changed how she sees the world and her place in it. And whether she prefers the Colonel's original recipe or hot wings...

"I hope someone on here wins because now I really do want to know what is discussed!"

But only under Chatham House rules! 🤐
😉
🔎We cannot divulge who took part, and also cannot confirm Ms. Rowling was present.🔍

If I won (fat chance) then I'd love to take my daughter with me as she's drunk so much Kool Aid she told me there were over 100 sexes. God knows how she got an A in GCSE Biology! I do actually think she'd be won over by a meeting like that but wouldn't take the risk, really.

private conversations should remain private. At most it should be sorry TRAs you didnt form any part of the chat.

I imagine pictures may appear on X so if someone want to keep their username here we are all either going to need a Spartacus moment or complete denial.

I imagine that with the risk of many TRAs having entered once the draw became free, in order to harangue JKR if they got lucky, NDAs will now need to be signed and participants will be collected from a central point and taken to the rendezvous without it ever being disclosed to them. Hope so, anyway, or the evening could be ruined by activists banging on windows, etc.

I imagine pictures may appear on X

Well what would be fund is that everyone turns up in a Venice Carnival type mask, and uses their online posting name, and then anything reported in public could not be linked to anyone.

I was just thinking if they came to my local KFC, which as yet have not been pushed out by expensive coffee shops or vegan super cafes, all the bored teenagers would not take any notice, and the exhausted mums bribing younger children to just be quiet for a second or two, who might recognises JKR would be so busy trying not to nod off they wouldn't notice.

So my first thought that KFC would be a bit public, could in fact be the perfect secret meeting place.