Greetings charity sector. The title of this column might sound like the ingredients for a very strange picnic, but Diary insists that each facet has something to do with charities this week (however tenuous).
So, when you are quite done biting the hand that feeds you, then we can begin.
Matt Hancock donates shirt to Matt Hancock
Your favourite ex-health and culture secretary, ex-reality TV star and breaker-of-Covid-laws-he-set is back this week with even more shenanigans. Can you believe it?
Diary can. This is the man that once made an app named after himself, which has since been discontinued in favour of his TikTok account, which he now uses to keep his constituents in the loop.
One of his latest TikTok's shows him sporting a Newcastle United shirt to celebrate the club reaching the league cup final.
So far, so uninteresting – but what did cause a stir is the fact that the signed shirt he's wearing is the same one he claimed to have donated to Chris Evans' NHS charity auction.
Since his post, Hancock has admitted it is the same shirt he auctioned off for charity. He claims the person who bought the top “gave it back as a gift”.
This is the most bizarre response that Diary could have ever anticipated.
A diehard magpie presumably paid hundreds or thousands of pounds for a signed Newcastle United shirt, but was even more fond of the former health secretary so he decided to donate it back to him?
If true, who on earth would do this? Is there a Matt Hancock superfan hidden in the ruffles of society? Or did the shirt simply smell so bad they returned it to its owner, with the plea of “even for charity, I can’t wear this”?
It makes the mind wander – but now Hancock has bigger fish to fry, or should Diary say, t-shirts to wash.
A mere 100,000 of his WhatsApp messages have been leaked. Perhaps the best thing to come out of this is the bluntness of George Osborne’s texting style when responding to the politician.
Most pleasing, too, is reading Hancock’s text message “I WANT TO HIT MY TARGET!”
This columnist likes to read this in the voice of a petulant school boy that stomps his feet with each enunciation.
Happy feet
CSM Towers, where Diary and the Civil Society colleagues reside, was interrupted by the stampiest of feet this week.
Remote working, which is often thought of as less productive, would have been preferable at this time, as two absolutely ginormous birds (no exaggeration, it was like Jurassic Park up there) had decided to make nests on the roof of our office.
Serious meetings were interrupted by the giggling of the editorial team, giddy with distraction and glee. Was the office about to be taken over by huge birds? The excitement was too much to handle, because really anything is more exciting than doing the work you’re being paid to do.
Diary and CSM colleagues have had previous animal encounters in the office, most notably, when a Mama Cat decided to give birth to kittens inside our roof.
This columnist would like to decipher what it is about CSM’s roof that makes animals wish to raise their spawn there. Sooner or later, Diary will have to find out for themselves. Next column may be broadcast from said roof when editor is not looking.
Over 240 National Trust scones later…
Sarah Merker, 49, made the news this week after she completed her goal of sampling a scone at every National Trust location.
Ten years, 244 scones and over 7,000 Twitter followers later, Merker completed her challenge armed only with a ‘Choose National Trust Scones’ t-shirt.
Not only is the completion of this project incredibly impressive, but it was also a very emotional experience for Merker.
She told the Independent she started the journey with her husband Peter, who was diagnosed with cancer in 2016 and died two years later.
She told the newspaper: “He’d been there for so much of it and obviously I have memories of doing it with him.
“So, for me, it was really important to finish it for him as well – I wanted to make sure I got to the end.”
Merker told them the secret to a good scone is its freshness. We applaud her for her dedication to the cultural classic.
Egg-citing times
Easter is rearing its head which means egg-related puns are about to crawl out of the woodwork and straight into charity appeals.
Edinburgh Zoo, part of the Royal Zoological Society of Scotland, has announced its upcoming Easter events with a photo of a little red panda playing with a paper mache egg.
The adorable image promptly made Diary forgive all the egg puns!
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