Howdy to all of you forever fans of Fridays. At the risk of sounding overly London-centric, the sun has been shining in the capital more or less all week and, quite frankly, the Diary hasn’t known exactly what to do with itself.
Having said all that, life has a funny way of evening up the ledger. Sure, the sun has been shining, but the plants have also been photosynthesising right in this column’s eyes, nose and throat. A hay fever tablet, a hay fever tablet, Diary’s kingdom for a hay fever tablet!
This week in charity sector satire: a choir of various animals have been roped together by Blue Cross to sing Here Comes the Bride for Prince Hal and Meg; The Old Vic turns 200; the Small Charities Coalition's CEO talks GDPR [and, presumably, jazz?] on the radio, and we check in with Macmillan’s latest viral pet content.
Here comes the snide
First this week – bringing together two of Society Diary’s ‘favourite’ topics of conversation: the impending royal nuptials and cute animals – we turn to Blue Cross.
The charity has produced a 37 second video, congratulating Prince Harry and Meghan Markle on their impeding wedding. Yes, they’ve used a “choir of homeless pets” at Blue Cross rehoming centres across the country to serenade the couple.
Before we proceed, might be worth you watching the video dear reader, because there’s a lot to unpack here.
Yes that’s a bunch of animals “singing” wedding standard Here Comes the Bride. Singing being used here in a fairly loose definition. Where to start? Is it good? Well, that all rather depends firstly on whether we’re talking about the visuals (yes, definitively good) or the sound (bad, definitively bad) and secondly, what you personally define as ‘good’.
Having said all that, this video did lead Diary to discover that the future Duchess has an adopted beagle called Guy who has made the move across to the UK, and a Labrador called Bogart, who alas had to “remain in Canada due to his age”.
Bogart is an excellent name for a dog.
Blue Cross also shared this little nugget of information: “as many as one in ten Brits have given pets a central role in their own wedding ceremony, and 56 per want their pets to have a starring role in their wedding photos and video”.
The more you know.
Putting the ‘old’ in Old Vic
Today marks the 200th birthday of noted theatre venue and somewhat London-landmark, The Old Vic.
Yes, the venerable theatre opened its doors for the first time all the way back in May 1818. Society Diary can’t help but wonder what those walls would say if they could talk, the stories they would tell, the historical moments they witnessed first-hand, just how cantankerous they'd be in conversation…
Anyway, to mark the occasion, the Old Vic is very much harnessing 21st Century technology to celebrate its 19th Century birth. It’s launching, in collaboration with everyone's least-favourite social-media-network-slash-echo-chamber-of-endless-screams Twitter, a “marathon broadcast” from the theatre around the globe.
From 2pm this afternoon, those interested can “watch the full performance of Future Conditional” – presumably a play of some description – interviews, including one with Dame Judi Dench, and a guided tour of the theatre with Harry Potter himself, Daniel Radcliffe.
Keen Twitterers and/or drama enthusiasts can follow all the action on the hashtag #OV200, or on the theatre's website stream this afternoon.
Worthy of note
Speaking of social media, we turn to the Small Charities Coalition’s Twitter platform, and this frankly intriguing tweet from earlier in the week.
Prerecord with @MsMandyJ about #GDPR for @jazzfm business breakfast show.#GDPR can be jazzy, right? - #SorryNotSorry pic.twitter.com/HXYvDQv01Q
— Small Charities Coalition (@sccoalition) May 8, 2018
Yes, that's a picture of Mandy Johnson, chief executive of the SCC, doing a pre-recorded interview with Jazz FM’s very own business breakfast show. GDPR is also mentioned in the tweet, but not in any real context.
Diary has many questions: like, why is Mandy Johnson being interviewed about impending European data protection legislation on, of all places, Jazz FM? In what dimension are those two things related? In anyway?
Also, did Mandy also discuss jazz? Does Mandy even like jazz? Did she try her hand at a little bee-bop, live on air? Is this interview available to stream on the internet?
Now diary’s not trying to be like your weird uncle Trevor. Trevor; always dressed in his black turtle necks, with his berets, walking around the street with his empty saxophone case. Trevor; clicking his fingers along to 12-bar piano music in vegan cafes, calling everyone he meets ‘cat’ and or ‘daddy-o’. Trevor’s got two salamanders called ‘Miles’ and ‘Davis’, doesn’t he? Trevor lives alone, but he’s never alone “as long as he’s got Dizzy on the turntable”. Poor Trevor. Poor, old uncle Trevor.
In other words, Diary’s not big on jazz, but it does know one or two things about data protection legislation.
If jazz is actually about “the notes they’re not playing”, then GDPR is similar in that it’s more about the privacy notices that charities aren’t publishing. The consents they aren’t refreshing. The legitimate interests organisations aren’t legitimising.
Also, like many jazz records, it comes with a distinct right to be forgotten.
On the hop
Finally, to Instagram, and what appears to be turning into a weekly segment for Diary, we check in with #MacmillanPets.
Meet Floppy, a house bunny, and I think dear reader you’ll agree, that while she might love “pellets, bananas and cuddles”, Diary will just get on with loving her.
We're hare today and gone tomorrow. But Floppy. Oh, Floppy will live forever. Keep on hoppin' you crazy diamond!
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