Greetings, readers, and welcome to your first proper instalment of charity news titbits this year.
You are, no doubt, looking forward to Valentine’s Day. Perhaps your mind has already drifted from your vital charity role to tomorrow’s expectation of a handpicked bouquet of flowers, candlelit meal and perhaps a moonlit walk along the river.
But wait! Before all that romantic palaver, you’ve got to get through Friday the 13th! Tread very carefully, reader, or better not at all. Just keep your head down and focus on trying to avoid falling into any of the country’s rapidly multiplying potholes as you go about your day. Then maybe you can enjoy a nice, cold, cloudy Valentine’s Day with your beloved.
Neuter your Ex
For those less loved-up, a local animal rescue charity went viral with its ingenious Valentine’s Day fundraising scheme in which it offered to name a neutered cat after supporters’ ex-partners.
RSPCA’s Altrincham Cheshire branch is raising money for a trap, neuter and release programme for feral cats and was overwhelmed by members of the public donating £10 and their former lover’s name.
Diary particularly enjoyed this polite request from one anonymous donor: “Please castrate Alistair, yes! If the first time it goes wrong, make sure to give him the chop again. Without anaesthesia. Thank you.”
The charity has raised around £2,500 so far and has reassured donors concerned that one of the innocent kittens would be jinxed by association with their ex that it would not “tell the cat what we’ve called it”.
Meanwhile, freelance fundraiser Sarah-Jane Pickering successfully caught the eye of her Valentine, Garfield Weston Foundation’s grants application processes, with a lustful LinkedIn poem.
“Roses are red, some forms make me groan. But Garfield Weston. You’re in a league of your own.”
If that doesn’t set your loins on fire, reader, then Diary has run out of ideas.
In other news
Football supporter Frank Ilett, known as the United Strand, made headlines recently by refusing to cut his hair until his beloved Man U won five games in a row.
After four wins, the Red Devils drew this week, resetting Ilett’s challenge, meaning he will have gone more than 500 days without a trim.
He has raised about £6,000 for the Little Princess Trust through the stunt and plans to donate his locks to the charity, which provides wigs to children, when his team eventually does the business.
And finally, 91-year-old Peter Quinney overcame the odds to win gold in an over-40s gymnastics competition in Portsmouth.
The limber nonagenarian plans to out-do Captain Tom by performing 100 backflips when he reaches his century to raise money for Cancer Research UK.
