Hi there. This week kicked off with the most depressing day of the year, Blue Monday. But now it's Friday, we're here to cheer you up.
What's that, you say? Hard Brexit? Donald Trump is getting inaugurated today? Well, now we're depressed too. Anyway, here's some stuff that charities did this week.
Feeling blue? Here’s some animal puns for you
Quite why Monday 16 January is any more depressing than any other Monday of the year is slightly beyond this column, but that is essentially a moot point. Suffice is to say that charities up and down the UK used Blue Monday to at once raise awareness of their work and, in many cases, try and perk up those of us who were feeling down.
While serious props should go out to any number of mental health, LGBT and homelessness charities for their fine work at the beginning of the week, this press release from the RSPCA really took the biscuit, so to speak.
No, you’re right dear reader, animal cruelty is NOT amusing in any way, shape or form, but some of the calls that the charity’s animal cruelty hotline receives can be.
Here's Diary's absolute favourite.
“Bummer! Inspector Sarah Mason was concerned when she received a job from the RSPCA control centre in October asking her to visit a stray cat in Leeds that was reported to have an open wound under its tail. But before she could even get to the address, the caller rang back to report: ‘Sorry, it’s actually its bum’”.
Oh, doctor! We’ve got a live one. It’s almost as if Diary came up with this itself to further its own satirical ends. The perfect marriage of iffy-word play and south of the equator, anatomical banter that this column thrives on. It just had to be reproduced here, in full, for your enjoyment. Don’t say that Diary never does anything for you…
We're here to mortify you
So Diary got a message from the Scottish charity regulator this morning. Apparently Dundee-based body Home Mortification is changing.
This took Diary by surprise a bit. What is home mortification and why do we care?
Diary got to thinking about this. What does this charity do? Does it go round to your house and make you really embarrassed about it?
Or does it go with the old meaning of the word, that used by the sackcloth and ashes brigade, to whom mortification meant whipping yourself on the back while moaning, in order to convince an all-loving God not to cast them into a state of eternal damnation and despair. Perhaps they come round and whip your house until it feels better.
Or perhaps they go back to the really old meaning of the word, from the old Latin, where mort meant death, and they actually come round and bump your house off.
Or who knows, perhaps it's a typo, and the charity is actually Home Fortification. Perhaps they come round and ensure that if you think your home is going to be overrun, they'll stick in a few storm doors.
A state of flux
As alluded to earlier on, today is the day. Donald J. Trump is set to be sworn in as the 45th President of the United States of America, and handed the keys to the nuclear codes, the missile drones and all that other good stuff.
As Trump comes in, Barrack Obama goes out. 'When God closes a door, he opens a window', and all that crap. The world holds its collective breathe today and waits, with a mixture of trepidation and fear, to see what will come out of that particular window.
As in the wider world, so too in the world of charity umbrella bodies. As Karl Wilding of NCVO pointed out, not only is today the day that former president Obama moves out of the White House, it’s also the last day’s in their respective jobs for both Vicky Browning AND David Kane.
Vicky Browning is of course leaving CharityComms to become the new chief executive of Acevo so, at least, she’s likely to see a lot more of Karl Wilding and the rest of the NCVO family in the shared office common space by the canal.
Kane, former NCVO researcher whose Twitter bio-picture is of “a homemade Dalek”, is also moving on for pastures new. Though it seems, based at least on this tweet, he’s concerned that his leaving do might end up being a little cross-polenated:
Truly the world is all in flux and we are but flotsam washed up on the beaches of history, and all the things we thought we once knew have been proven wrong. And it’s scary, isn’t it? All this upheaval and change. Terrifying, really, if anyone stops to truly think about it.
And the frost settled heavily this morning, more heavily than it has all winter, and in that bitter frost Diary saw only the portents of doom for the future, and it wrung its hands, and shook its fists up at the sky and cursed a God it had long-ago forsaken. And the smog choked the city of London, and people felt fear in the street…
And, yeah, good luck Vicky and David!
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