Our weekly round-up of outlandish and interesting information collected from the corners of the charity sector.

It’s my guinea pig and I’m taking it home

Occasionally, an idea comes along which makes Diary think that people in the modern world have too much time on their hands. To whit, the new pet-nup agreement, pioneered this week by the veterinary charity Blue Cross.

So what’s a pet-nup? It doesn’t mean, as Diary first thought, that when your cat leaves you in the middle of the night, it can’t ask for any of your money.

Nor does it allow dogs to end a relationship with an amicable agreement over who gets the chew toy and who gets the tennis ball.

Instead it means, that when your wife/husband/civil partner/other significant person* says, “I’m leaving you, and I’m taking the dog/wombat/alligator* with me,” the person being left can now brandish a bit of paper saying “Oh no you don’t. This clearly says that I pre-owned that dog/wombat/alligator* and it stays here!”

Diary has decided to illustrate this fact with a picture of a cute kitten, because apparently some people like to look at that sort of thing on the internet.

So anyway, if you feel that you may want to strengthen your bargaining position with your life partner vis-à-vis your pet cat/goldfish/wallaby* then you can download one here.

Maybe keep just one or two millions?

You have to feel a bit sorry for Brian Burnie, a multi-millionaire who made a fortune from construction and recruitment. When his wife got cancer, he started a cancer charity. Then he decided to give all his money to the charity, and started working full-time on running it. And then his wife got better, and divorced him, for spending all their cash on the charity.

Just goes to show that virtue is its own punishment.

Don’t do that. No really, don’t.

So well done to clothes shop Joy for hitting a spectacular new low in crass and inappropriate jokes about mental health.

There have been a fair few retailers in this competition, to be honest. Asda broke into an early lead with its “Mental patient” Halloween costume last year, but others have since come up on the rails.

Joy launched its offering in the race to the bottom with a gift card which said “Don’t get mad, take lithium” – a reference to the element’s ability to dampen mood swings.

When asked whether people with mental health difficulties might not just consider this offensive, the store replied: “Don’t buy it for them. PROBLEM SOLVED.”

And what about people with bipolar disorder who just wandered into the store?

“They’ll like it one minute and hate it the next?” the store responded.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, the chain has since worked out this isn’t the way to make friends, and has apologised.

A word about a way to win from wind

During a debate about social investment at the Labour Party Conference, someone asked an apparently innocuous question which tickled Diary’s fancy, just a touch.

“Should we develop a way to communicate about ways to get investment into offshore wind farm locations?”

So a method of communicating about a platform of investment based on a watery location off the English coast?

We could call it the Channel channel channel.

Shadow superhero

Earlier at the same conference, John Low, chief executive of CAF, stood up to speak at the launch of the Red Book of the Voluntary Sector, a collection of essays about charity by Labour MPs, and called on his first speaker.

“I’d like to welcome Reed, er, Richard to the stage,” Low announced.

Nope. Reed Richard is Mr Fantastic, infinitely bendy leader of the Fantastic Four and the smartest man in the Marvel Universe. The man Low was actually introducing was Steve Reed, Labour MP for Croydon.

Diary’s willing to concede he’s a pretty smart bloke, to be fair. But there’s no evidence he’s especially limber.

*Delete as appropriate