Download the audio version of this blog here.
I was having a twitter conversation with Danny Robins an hour or so before the broadcast of the documentary. In one of the tweets I wrote, “one more night of peace before you become an official enemy of the RSPCA”. This was of course in reference to his song that featured in the documentary called Kill your Dog for Satan.
Almost immediately after sending the Tweet, I got an alert from Twitter telling me that I was now being followed by the RSPCA.
But it wasn’t the RSPCA nationally; it was the north Wiltshire branch.
I have no idea why North Wiltshire RSPCA is so much more proactive when it comes to twitter than the RSPCA in other regions. Perhaps there are a lot less injured animals to tend to in North Wiltshire, and so they have quite a bit of time to just sit around and play on Twitter. Well there’s one way we can find out: start beating up animals in the north Wiltshire area, and see if North Wiltshire RSPCA’s presence on Twitter reduces. If it doesn’t then you know there’s something wrong, and that they’re definitely just sitting around playing on the office computer rather than saving animals. In the long run, you would actually be helping the animals of North Wiltshire by outing the north Wiltshire RSPCA staff as bone idle, selfish bastards who are happy to let animals suffer while they fritter away their time on Twitter. So get beating up those animals; It’s for the greater good.
As an experiment, I wrote some tweets containing NSPCC, RNIB and RNLI. Over fifteen hours have gone by, and none of those charities are yet to follow me. As someone who is blind, I feel a little let down by the RNIB’s negligence in this area. All I can hope is that they’re too busy coming up with a cure for blindness.
My Twitter connection with the North Wiltshire branch of the RSPCA was very short lived. By the time I went back on Twitter, just after the documentary had finished, they had unfollowed me. Perhaps they’d heard me singing “kill your dog for Satan” on 6Music. Or maybe they are just very fickle and will unfollow you if you haven’t followed them back within 2 hours. Well, there’s no way I’m ever giving money to the RSPCA, or at least not the North Wiltshire team. If you ever see an injured or distressed animal in Swindon or Salisbury don’t come to me about it; I’m not interested.
I thought the documentary was excellent. My bit only constituted a small part of the programme. We did quite a lot of recording on the moor but they only used a small amount of what had been recorded. Probably for the best; the naked, orgiastic dancing probably wouldn’t have worked on radio.
The way Danny introduced me was interesting. I was labelled as “a blind accordion player”. While this is entirely true, I wondered why the fact that I was blind had been mentioned. If I was a black man, would I have been introduced as “a black accordion player”? Perhaps Danny thought that “blind accordion player) sounded more sinister than simply “an accordion player”. Perhaps some listeners might think that I’d been blinded by an evil curse. It’s strange though that even on radio, where my sight loss really shouldn’t need to be apparent, the fact that I am blind is deemed to be of relevance, even though it had no connection with the subject of the documentary at all. Obviously I don’t find it at all offensive; I just find it strange that people feel it is a major part of who I am and worthy of a mention.
Anyway, the documentary is now available on the Iplayer here.
And you can download my brief appearance on the programme, including the Kill your Dog for Satan song here.
This is David Eagle, AKA the Blind Accordion Player, signing off.
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