So, Diary forgot to put its iPhone on sleep mode and was woken this morning by news alerts that the United States had launched missiles at Syria.
While trying to process this news, it switched on Radio 4 and found out that everyone’s still talking about the National Trust’s much more dangerous war on Easter. Here we go again…
Theresa's hopping mad over Easter
So, just in case you missed it earlier in the week, Theresa May took a few minutes out of her busy schedule of cosying up to the King of Saudi Arabia to lambast the National Trust for “airbrushing” the Christianity out of its annual Easter egg-hunt.
Some further background: for many years now the National Trust has held various egg hunts around Easter time which it has called the ‘Easter Egg Trail’. However this year, the Trust and the event’s sponsor Cadbury’s, rebranded the event as the ‘Great British Egg Hunt’.
The ‘Great British Egg Hunt’ has quite a nice ring to it. It puts Diary in mind of Mel and Sue; copious Union Jack bunting; Mary Berry tucking into lovely slice of Victoria Sponge, and Paul Hollywood waggling his eyebrows while fingering at a soggy bottom.
All the sorts of things, in other words, Diary figured would be right up the alley of an unelected Vicar’s daughter who once said on national radio that, were she trapped on a desert island and could only listen to eight songs ever again, chose an ABBA song, a 12th century Latin hymn (bloody Papists, right?) and an audio clip from Yes Minister…
Diary’s been wrong in the past and, needless to say, Diary was wrong again.
"Well, I think the stance they have taken is absolutely ridiculous and I don’t know what they’re thinking about, frankly,” May told an ITV reporter. "Easter's very important. It's important to me, it's a very important festival for the Christian faith for millions across the world. So I think what the National Trust is doing is frankly just ridiculous."
On the same day, the Daily Telegraph – aka the ‘thinking Brexiteer’s newspaper’ – ran the story on its front page, with copious levels of complaining from the Church of England, a spokesman for whom said the rebrand “highlights the folly in airbrushing faith in Easter”.
Keep in mind, dear reader, at roughly the same time that this was going on, a former leader of the Conservative party was calling on the government to threaten Spain with a war over Gibraltar, and our Prime Minister was LITERALLY IN SAUDI ARABIA! A country which beheaded over 150 of its own citizens last year.
This column, at the very least, took a crumb of comfort from the hope that Donald Trump’s missile strike against the Assad regime in Syria this morning would recalibrate and refocus the news cycle. Yet, this morning Radio 4 was still banging on about it.
What really irks Diary the most about all of this is the fact that (see picture above) THE PROMOTIONAL POSTER FOR THE GREAT BRTISH EGG HUNT LITERALLY HAS THE WORD EASTER ON IT! IN MASSIVE LETTERS! FOLLOWED BY THE WORD FUN!
Jesus wept.
Watch as the Charity Commission makes the charity… disappear!
Do you, dear reader, believe in magic? The answer of course is no. It’s not real.
However the boys from One Direction seem to believe in magic, at least believe in the magic of a charity called Believe in Magic. The 1-D lads raised over £5m for this relatively small charity over the years through various means – singing, most likely, and the commoditisation of said singing.
Look, Diary’s going to level with you, this column doesn’t know a lot about One Direction. Yes, there’s a Harry and a Zayn and, well, Zayn’s not in the band anymore and Harry is, but he’s sort of gone solo and another one of the group got arrested in an airport recently or something…
Anyway, Diary’s asking that you just sort of fill in the gaps here, is what its saying. Do some of your own heavy lifting for once. Diary can’t be across everything all of the time. It’s just one theoretical entity, routinely emerging briefly at the week’s end to lampoon and satirise the charitable goings on of the preceeding days. It can’t be all things to all people! GIVE DIARY A BREAK, WON’T YOU? JUST THIS ONCE!
Anyway the Charity Commission has frozen Believe in Magic’s bank accounts this week following “indications of misconduct or mismanagement”. Which is funny, in a sad kind of way.
Diary contacted One Direction for a comment but has yet to receive one. Story of Diary’s Life, really*. Still, that’s What Makes this column Beautiful*. Always making the Same Mistakes* etc etc.
*Crude takes on actual One Direction song titles – if you think satire is so easy, you give it a try!
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