Hemingway was ultimately right: there is something normal about London- something mundane. The hum of the bus engines, the swoosh of the traffic as it passes, the rattle of the tube trains. It’s all so regular. London might be a mighty global metropolis, but it’s one that runs like clockwork. An ornamental grandfather clock in the hallway of your grandparents house which you have passed countless times and has been ticking for decades, but which you have never really noticed. The thing is, there comes a point where you start yearning for something different: something not so regular or predictable. Somewhere away from the wealth and monotony; somewhere where the signs aren’t all in English and the automatic announcement voices on the trains don’t all sound bored. Somewhere which isn’t so used to being able to fund and create anything it takes a shine to, that billion pound building and infrastructure projects become just another part of daily life. Somewhere a little less stable; somewhere more chaotic, where there is a chance for things to go wrong and for adventures to happen. Somewhere a little less normal.

I went to bed last night, having watched the match, obviously feeling very disappointed: As usual I had got myself extremely worked up and emotionally invested, and was feeling rather angry. But I told myself the best thing to do was probably just to accept the result and go to sleep. This morning, however, I don’t think that is an option, having seen this disgusting news. The Argentinian team used the result of last night’s match to stage an overtly political stunt, something they have been warned against before: “After the final whistle, Argentina players celebrated while holding a banner reading “Las Malvinas son Argentinas”, which translates as “The Falklands are Argentine”.” Such politicisation in sport should surely be unacceptable, and as such Argentina should be disqualified.

The Beeb et al seems to be playing it down a bit, but I now seriously think pressure should be put on FIFA, possibly from the FA, maybe even from the UK government, to take action. To call it unsportsmanlike is a gross understatement; behaviour like this has no place in international sport. Argentina should be disqualified and victory awarded to England. I’m not just being a sore loser or an overexcited spaz here: if events like the World Cup are about the global community coming together, then surely such international sporting competitions should not be hijacked for such overt, barefaced political provocation.

I’m afraid this will be yet another “everyone needs to watch this” entry, but I really think it’s worth checking this out. It’s one of the best, most insightful pieces of political analysis I’ve seen in a long time: Dr. Vinay Raniga looks at the psychology behind the Trump/MAGA movement, and explains that, while urban liberal elites too eager to dismiss such people as uneducated or backward, their mentality has a lot to do with deep feelings of disenfranchisement and being ignored. People who perceive themselves as members of “traditional” communities are feeling increasingly drowned out, and so turn to people like trump to restore their status. He approaches the topic from a very understanding, educated perspective, so while I’m not sure I agree with absolutely everything he says, he’s certainly worth hearing out.

I went to Tate Modern again with John and his girlfriend Marta yesterday. Among the wide range of exhibitions, we found a series of fairly short statements printed on the walls. There wasn’t much info about their providence, but we felt this one suited me rather well…

It’s a curious, liminal moment: those few seconds after you wake up. The universe is in a state of flux, given that you went to bed not knowing the result of the match the night before. Things could have gone either way. You watched most of the match, but at about midnight, the score level and the tension unbearable, you elected to just go to bed. Thus, probably unlike most of the country, you don’t know the result. England could have won, and the nation could be euphoric; or Norway could have won and things could be catastrophic. Hence, before you get out of bed and check the result, both states are equally possible, bringing about a strange, liminal hyperreality in which both essentially exist at the same time. Victory or defeat? Misery or euphoria? In a way you don’t want to get up, but instead cherish this flux of unknowing: warm, comfortable and pleasant. But you know you eventually have to face reality and find out the score.

Of course, the flux collapses the moment you turn your computer on and find out England won: a moment of instant relief and slight surprise. Perhaps you should have stayed up after all. Euphoria has prevailed – for now at least.

With so much having happened this week, part of me feels duty bound as a blogger to say something about the political situation. The thing is, I have no intention of feigning any kind of grief or sorrow for a woman who I frankly despised, and who I thought was the embodiment of the kind of selfish, arrogant, uncaring politics that I loathe: Ann Widdecombe was the kind of woman who would have thought her narrow-minded, intolerant views would have outranked anyone else’s simply because of who she was, and that she had a right to dismiss anyone who disagreed with her as a “liberal snowflake.” At the same time, we seem to have reached a point where the hopes of anybody with any sense of decency or progressiveness about them now lie with a dude dressed as a bin. As hard as I am trying to think of something astute or meaningful to say about either of these things, probably the best I can do is to wave a tired, cynical hand in their general direction.

If you want (another) example of just how advanced, articulate and interesting online TV and film analysis is becoming, I really, really think you should check this out today. It’s Steve Shives’ review of classic Star Trek episode Let This Be Your Last Battlefield, and I certainly think that, as a piece of incisive, balanced textual analysis, it couldn’t be better. As Shives points out, the original Trek episode has a lot of pacing issues, and many might criticise it for being a tad heavy-handed; yet, like much of Star Trek, it still has a lot to say about contemporary American culture. Star Trek was at it’s best when it was making overt political and social comments, and Let This Be Your Last Battlefield was arguably the pinnacle of that. Above all though, as a witty, entertaining review, I think this is definitely worth a watch.

Quite some time ago, I mentioned that I was planning to read Matthew Parker’s book on Goldeneye. The odd thing is, I don’t think I ever got around to it, so, a. couple of weeks ago, the paperback eying me from my shelf, I thought I’d finally put that right. Like all texts about Ian Fleming however, it has left me with extremely mixed feelings. There’s no getting around the fact that the creator of James Bond was quite a sickening imperialist and snob, and I think Parker makes that even more apparent in his book about Fleming’s luxury house in Jamaica than Lycett or Shakespeare do in their biographies. He was a gut-churning conservative who despised the welfare state, any form of social progressiveness, and essentially thought black Jamaicans should just accept white British rule.

The thing is, what comes through in Parker’s book is far more nuanced and intriguing: he juxtaposes summaries and short reviews of Fleming’s writing against what he was doing as well as what was happening in the wider world at the time he was writing, so that we get a very interesting idea of where bond came from. He may certainly be an imperial figure, but his was an empire very much in decline. Fleming may have resented the demise of Britain, but he could neither avoid or deny it. What Parker gives us, then, is a picture of an anachronism at odds with the modernising world he was being drawn into: a man not all that comfortable with the open, liberal values of the postwar world, who fled to Jamaica to write far-fetched adventure stories to escape it. Yet ultimately who, despite his flaws, was one of the most intriguing cultural figures of the twentieth century: nuanced, enigmatic, but ultimately a likeable guy who didn’t take himself – or his creation – too seriously.

As Parker puts it in his closing remarks, “​It is this complexity, born in the Jamaica of Fleming’s time, that gives continued life to James Bond and projects an image of Britishness that makes us likeable to ourselves, and to the rest of the world – who no doubt enjoyed the appearance of Bond in the Olympic opening ceremony almost as much as we did.” Frankly, I couldn’t put it better.

Why the zark was the news this morning once again dominated by stories about a family of sickeningly rich, privileged aristocrats whose affairs don’t have any bearing on our lives and who do not make any actual contribution to society or culture? Once again, I know I shouldn’t get so worked up about this, but the way in which our breakfast news was dominated by a story about Harry Windsor really does irritate me, especially given there’s so much else going on in the world right now. How does what this family of snobs effect any of us in any way? I think it’s their arrogance which gets to me most: they seem to expect to be the centre of national attention as though it’s their birthright, haughtily waving to the cameras like roman emperors waving at lowly minions. I find it perverse, especially given we are supposed to be striving for equality. The snobs would probably argue that they do a lot of charity work, but if it was up to me I’d dethrone the lot of them and make them work for a living, like everyone else.

Can a city ever be said to be finished? This is something I began thinking about a few days ago, trundling around central London. There was so much building work happening there, so many building sites, that it almost seemed like the metropolis was being built from scratch. But of course, London is two thousand years old, so the buildings being constructed there would have replaced older ones, and they in turn would have replaced even older ones. And presumably the huge complex buildings that saw being constructed will themselves one day be demolished and replaced. After all, a medieval Londoner, a Victorian Londoner and a contemporary Londoner would presumably each think of theirs as the definitive London, yet they will ultimately inhibit three totally different landscapes. It makes me wonder: will this cycle of urban renewal ever end? Can a city ever be said to be finished, like other art works are? Or are they just so dynamic that they transform and evolve into eternity, like living beings?

I’m really feeling the need to point out that the more overt and blatant sociocultural bandwagon jumping becomes, the less meaning the notion of cultural pride has. I took myself to pride London yesterday, and to be honest it aroused quite a lot of conflicting, if interesting, feelings in me. Truth be told I had only  got wind of it a day or so before, and yesterday morning decided that going to check it out would be an interesting way to spend my Saturday.

For the most part, there is no denying that what I saw yesterday was absolutely incredible: just like last year, it was a huge celebration of inclusivity and tolerance, worthy of a twenty first century world city. There were bands and floats and drag queens; a vast array of communities and groups were represented; the music, costumes and colours were fantastic. The thing is, I couldn’t help sensing a darker, more cynical undertone to it. For one, many of the floats in the parade were sponsored by big corporations like Sky, so it was as if a huge advertisement was rolling past, or that a huge cultural event had been appropriated to make money. This left a very nasty taste in my mouth. On top of that, I got the distinct impression that many of the people there were there just to be seen to be there. That is, they had no real connection with the LGBTQ community, but it’s now so fashionable to be a member of a minority that a lot of people would have gone just for the politics of it. Now that it’s so cool to be gay or trans, more and more people seem to be suddenly discovering new identities they had never revealed before. Perhaps that could explain why there were so many people there yesterday.

But by far the most repugnant, abhorrent thing I came across yesterday was a group of religious bigots at the side of the parade route preaching about how homosexuality was ‘a sin’ and how everyone there would burn for eternity if they didn’t ‘repent’. I know I shouldn’t get so upset about such things and that I should just ignore it, but I found what those people were doing utterly, utterly disgusting. My cynical gripes aside, yesterday was a celebration of inclusion and diversity; it was a demonstration of how wonderful and vibrant the metropolis is. Those scumbags were blurting out how it was all wrong, forcing their homophobia and hatred onto everyone within earshot. Under any other circumstances no doubt they would have been arrested, but because they disguised it with their religious bullshit the police couldn’t do anything. Frankly, that’s what I find most disturbing, and what makes me most furious. In the midst of such a wonderful, happy day, those bigots were there spreading hate, claiming their god justifies their acrid intolerance.

As I trundled home on the extremely crowded Jubilee Line late yesterday afternoon, then, my mind was abuzz with mixed, even conflicting feelings. What I had just seen was, for the most part, absolutely wonderful; yet it had been tainted by far darker, bitter undercurrents. A celebration of inclusion and diversity had, at least in part, been intruding upon by people preaching the exact opposite, using their religious delusions to spread hatred and intolerance. Yet as sickening as anyone capable of rational thought will surely find that, the fact is if we truly value inclusivity and tolerance, we have no choice but to tolerate such bigotry.

I just watched the Beeb’s interview with Sir Kier Starmer. While, like many political interviews, you could find it a tad dull and monotonous, what I felt came across most was Starmer’s humility and humanity. This is clearly a man who really is motivated to do the right thing: he isn’t about greed or personal ambition, but came into politics to try to make people’s lives better. Whether he succeeded in that or not is obviously a matter of perspective, but frankly I think Starmer is – or was – a downright better man than any of his Tory predecessors combined: he simply wanted to help people. If you have the time and inclination, the interview is well worth a watch/

Just to follow up on yesterday’s entry, a bit of googling this morning told me that the ship I’d spotted in the Thames was heading to St Katherine’s dock. Thanks to the DLR, I popped that way today, and found the ship was the Nao Victoria, a replica of the first vessel to successfully circumnavigate the globe. Unfortunately I didn’t get any further as it looked too small and precarious for me to try to get on without help (when I explored the Endeavour in Sydney almost twenty years ago, I had my bro Luke to help me around). But I had already had a fascinating morning going along the cobbled streets and past the old warehouses of Wapping, before coming to an area of the metropolis which put me in mind of Monaco.

I had quite a magnificent maritime surprise today. I was in Woolwich as I had a question to ask at the library, but had been told to return later. To kill a bit of time, I thought I would trundle along the Thames for a while, probably as far as Thamesmead, and then head back. It was turning out to be quite a humdrum afternoon: I’m fond of London’s river, but it can seem pretty dull and docile.

All of a sudden though, I caught sight of something I had not expected at all: a seventeenth or eighteenth century galleon, her sails furled but flying a large Spanish ensign, was cruising gracefully towards central London. I couldn’t quite believe my eyes: it was as though a vision from four hundred years ago had suddenly cut it’s way into modern London, or the fabled armada had finally arrived.

Obviously some kind of replica, what she was doing here I’m not sure, and strangely I never saw her again even when I turned around and headed back to Woolwich. Yet it was just such an uncanny, surprising sight that I instantly felt I needed to record it here. I love this city for all it’s wondrous surprises.

I think I’ve said here before that one of the biggest differences I noticed when I moved to London was in public transport. Here in the capital, busses are pretty much as accessible to me as they are anyone else; the tube may not be perfect, but it certainly makes getting around the metropolis a lot easier and faster. When I was still living in Cheshire, I was pretty much stuck in my old home town: busses still had manual wheelchair ramps, and to be honest I didn’t go anywhere near the trains.

With all this talk of diverting investment away from London, I’ll be extremely interested to see if and how Andy Burnham plans to address this. Good public transport is obviously key to any kind of economic redevelopment, so I can’t help wondering whether the government will soon propose a kind of Northern Crossrail, linking Liverpool, Manchester, Leeds and Newcastle, or a light rail system between the towns of Cheshire. Helping people get around is key: that is surely as true in London as it is anywhere else.

Something happened yesterday afternoon which I think ought to be recorded. It had been a pretty pleasant afternoon: I’d popped over to Harlesden to visit mum, and, full of biscuits and having found a swift, convenient new route there and back via the Elisabeth Line, I was on a bus home from Woolwich. Just coming into Kidbrooke though, all of a sudden I heard two teenage girls sitting behind me start to jeer “Stephen Hawking” at me. Hearing such things is not that uncommon for me these days, and is in fact happening more and more. And while there is nothing wrong per se with being likened to one of the world’s greatest scientists, it is an intolerant slur I simply refuse to put up with.

As soon as I heard the little twits, I turned towards them and told them to shut up. They started to laugh, which made things even worse, so I immediately pressed the nearest normal (ie non ramp request) stop request button. When the bus stopped, I pointed towards the opening doors and told the girls as clearly and firmly as I could to get off the bus.

Of course they initially ignored me, but the point was that I could not let myself be treated like that. Things persisted and amplified until the next stop, by which time I was quite furious. I was shouting my head off, even using a little Klingon, but it was obviously working: the girls had quietened down, and when the next stop came, rather sheepishly exited the bus.

It was only a minor incident, but one with an outcome I’m rather pleased with. I cannot let myself be jeered at like that, so it’s up to me to assert authority and show such little brats who’s boss.

Truth be told I don’t know much about Andy Burnham, so I can’t really say much about him. He seems to be a nice, level headed Labour MP who I would of course vote for over any Tory. What I do know, though, is that as the former mayor of Manchester, he seems to be quite a steadfast northerner, and has mentioned intending to shift investment away from London. That certainly interests me: for some time now I have been aware what a disproportionate amount of money is being poured into London compared with the rest of the country. I hardly have to leave my flat before I encounter huge building projects; and I regularly cross the capital via transport systems which cost billions to create – the kind of jaw-dropping investment which you just don’t see elsewhere. How Burnham intends to address this imbalance of course remains to be seen, but from what I’ve been hearing he seems to want to shift the country’s economic and cultural centre of gravity entirely. I haven’t been to anywhere like Manchester or Liverpool for quite some time; but if the disparity between London and the rest of the country is now as huge as I suspect it is, there is a great deal of work to do.

I am, more or less, a cinephile: I think film is a phenomenally powerful artform which can be used to say things about the human condition that no other can. It has tremendous beauty and resonance. How should I feel, then, when this supreme mode of expression is dragged into the gutter and reduced to something unspeakably childish and infantile? I just came across Mark Kermode’s review of the latest Jackass film, and quite frankly I’m appalled that such films are still being made, let alone watched and enjoyed. Call me a prude, highbrow or whatever all you like, but I don’t see how anyone can find amusement or joy in watching someone get hurt or hurt one another. The entire premise of the film and it’s predecessors seems to be someone exclaiming “Look at me! I’m going to do something idiotic!” like a badly behaved child in a playground. They then somehow expect plaudits for it, when they should just be stripped of their filming equipment and told to get jobs. To see film as a medium intentionally being reduced to something so degenerate is frankly insulting; although I suppose you could argue that it’s just symptomatic of contemporary America.

And before anyone moans at me for blogging about a film without having actually watched it, frankly, I’d rather have a labotomy.

Shortly after posting yesterday’s entry, I came across this extremely interesting Channel Four video assessing whether Brexit has been a success or a failure. Somewhat predictably of course, it doesn’t really come down on one side or the other, although the evidence of the economic and political damage which it puts on display is so colossal that you would have to be a simpering idiot not to conclude that Brexit is one of the most idiotic mistakes any country has ever made. Towards the end of the film, though, there is an interview with Matthew Elliot: I’d never heard of him, but he was apparently one of the chief architects of the Leave campaign – presumably anyone more well known on the Outist side is too cowardly and tired of being shown to be a lying scumbag to appear on such programmes. However, Elliot came across as so arrogant and slimy, refusing to accept any form of responsibility for the damage Brexit has so clearly dome to the country, that I instantly felt compelled to make this.

I’m not being hyperbolic when I say such people are criminals. Thanks to their lies, our ties to our European neighbours were severed; our links to an international community were cut and we became nothing but a pack of inward-looking xenophobes in an unregulated, ultra-capitalist dystopia where the privileged few are free to bully and persecute anyone they like. And all p’tahks like Elliott can do is insult us even more, and claim to have been right all along. I know I shouldn’t get so wound up, but such shortsighted disgraces to humankind really do make my blood boil with rage.

I hardly need to point out that today marks ten years since I wrote this entry: ten years since I woke up to the worst (political) news of my life; ten years since the country took a sharp turn towards somewhere very, very dark. Ten years on since fifty-two percent of the voting population were fooled into stripping us all of our right to work, live and politically participate across an entire continent through a campaign of lies. Needless to say, I’m still bloody angry about it. I don’t want to go on about it, other than to point out that the mainstream media doesn’t seem to be making that much of the occasion. I think that’s rather telling: if Brexit had been an enormous success, surely they would be making a huge song and dance about it. Instead, as the consequences of the crime of 2016 get clearer and clearer, there seems to be a tendency to shove it into the sidelines and play it down, like the huge national embarrassment it still is. There wasn’t a word about it on this morning’s news bulletins; although, if anything, much more should be being made to rejoin the international body we were so idiotic to leave.

I actually have to feel quite sorry for Kier Starmer. He is, fundamentally, a good man: unlike most politicians, he was actually interested in improving people’s lives, as opposed to just being motivated by self promotion or preserving an unfair, unjust socioeconomic status quo. The problem is, the political atmosphere he was elected into not that long ago is becoming more disturbing by the day: people are steadily losing their minds and becoming more reactionary and draconian; mislead by charlatans like Farage and Trump, people are turning their backs on the voices of reason and logic and are being given permission to listen to hate-ridden instincts and uneducated gut reactions we should have outgrown long ago. Guys like Starmer don’t have the communication skills to counter this narrative, and, depicted as dull career politicians and “liberal elites”, inevitably get cast aside. Thus I fear what we saw happen this morning is just a sign of these worrying, dark times.

Wheelchair use is obviously rising rapidly: these days I see more and more people going around in wheelchairs and powerchairs. I have no idea why this might be, but the problem is when it comes to busses. Buggies aside, there was a time not long ago when I could pretty much assume that I could get on to any bus I wanted. My fellow wheelchair users were so rare that finding a bus wheelchair space already occupied was quite unusual. These days, however, it’s happening more and more often, and I have been left waiting at a bus stop more than once recently. Just having one wheelchair space on a bus is obviously no longer sufficient, making me wonder how long it will be before buses need to be redesigned.

I have some pretty good news to report here today. It has been another absolutely boiling day, so water was pretty much essential again. Having seen my last entry on the issue of course, my parents ordered me a special water bottle with an attached straw. The problem was, it wasn’t clear how we could fix it to my powerchair, ready for me to suck out of.

The issue had been shelved for a couple of weeks before it became really hot again. This morning, however, going out without a supply of water was obviously out of the question, so Dom did his best to find a remedy: he secured the bottle to my powerchair arm, ensuring that it wouldn’t spill or go anywhere. The problem is, it’s next to the backrest, so the only way I can drink from it is if I halt the chair and twist my  body round like a contortionist.

Refreshing but slightly painful.

I just came across a picture which made me want to vomit. I won’t give it the dignity of reposting it on here, but it was on one of the Facebook political pages I keep an eye on. Someone had obviously used CGI to create an image of Donald Trump as though he had Down’s Syndrome. It was obviously based on trump, but was smiling gleefully as guys with Down’s often do. As opposed as I am to the disgrace to human civilisation who Americans currently call their president, this was utterly, utterly repugnant. Someone had obviously thought it funny to insinuate that Trump has a learning difficulty, as if it was appropriate to point and laugh at people with LD. The image was as foul and discriminatory as one of Trump with Cerebral Palsy or as a black person, and whatever moron made it is just as vile as Trump himself. Frankly, if this is the direction online political discourse is heading in, these are dark times indeed.

Just as an update on this entry from quite some time ago, the old warehouses by the river at lower Charlton are still as dilapidated as they have been since I first moved to London. I go through that area quite often, as I still enjoy the path along the Thames between Woolwich and North Greenwich; but those buildings are still in the same crumbling state. I thought there were plans to renovate the area, called Faraday Works but they seem to have got nowhere. It’s strange because all the land around it seems to be being redeveloped into oblivion, especially as you get closer to Woolwich, but those buildings have apparently been left behind, creating quite an uncanny juxtaposition: they feel like some fragment of a fast fading past. As privileged as I know east London now is, especially in comparison to the rest of the country, I can’t help finding it rather odd.

I watched the second episode of the Beeb’s documentary on Brexit last night, and towards the end of the programme there was a section on how, just after the referendum had been held, the advocates of the Leave campaign suddenly came in for all kinds of criticism and abuse they didn’t expect. Guys like Boris Johnson and Michael Gove were complaining that people were suddenly absolutely furious, making them very uncomfortable. Well, if you ask me, they had absolutely no right to complain and still don’t: they are the ones who lead the campaign to cut the country off from our neighbours; they’ve the ones who made the UK an abject irrelevance. They were knowingly at the forefront of the most divisive, corrosive, abject political campaigns in our nation’s history. People had every right to vilify them, and obviously still do given both the corrupt way the referendum was won and the abject hole it has now put the country in.

The consequences of Brexit are becoming clearer and clearer. Thus to listen to those Outist p’tahks complaining and claiming some sort of victimhood really was sickening, almost Trumpian. They brought it upon themselves, and I honestly hope that it increases and gets more intense as the ramifications of the crime committed upon this country ten years ago become more and more undeniable.

Going back to what I was saying here a week or so ago about the relationship between film and video games, I just came across this Calvin Dyson review of the new James Bond game First Light. I usually have a lot of respect for Dyson, but I must admit that my initial reaction was to make a comment such as “Video games are what children play while their parents go to watch films at the cinema!” However, when I actually started to listen to what he was saying, a few very interesting questions began to crop up: it’s quite clear that Dyson is just as interested in these games as he is in the Bond films; he speaks of them on equal levels with the same enthusiasm. Interestingly, he employs the same analytical criteria, such as character and plot – and even dialogue. To be honest that is what caught my attention: it may be because I don’t play computer games, but I can’t see how they can have plots. I can’t see how a game can tell a story in the way films and books do, with one scene following another? Would it not be completely different structurally? The same goes for characterisation: Dyson speaks of characters being acted or portrayed in the game, but I’m at a genuine loss to see how that might function. In film, of course, scenes are acted out, with actors saying dialogue and conveying emotion. Shots are selected by the director in order to convey the meaning he wants. To my knowledge games work completely differently, with the player controlling the character with a limited set of options, viewed from one angle in order to carry out a series of in-game tasks.

The two therefore function completely differently, but to hear guys like Dyson speak, they seem almost identical. At one point he even compares the portrayal of Bond in this game to his portrayal by specific Bond actors, as well as discussing things such as tone. To be honest I don’t see how that might function in a video game, and I mean that as a genuine admission of ignorance. I’d be honestly interested to see whether anyone has started to look into this, and if any academic work has been done. Such fields are obviously constantly evolving, and areas keep merging. There is a giant crossover between literature and film – might it be time to start looking at video games in the same light? How can a game tell a story, and how does this compare, structurally, to other forms of storytelling?

I know I shouldn’t just direct everyone to the first video I come across of a morning, but I really think this one is worth watching. It’s Robword’s fascinating account of how all the symbols on our keyboard, such as the pound sign and hashtag came about. I’ve always been interested in things like etymology, and to be honest I was engrossed: did you know that ‘hash’ as in ‘hashtag’ comes from the french word for chopping things up? He also goes into the surprisingly long history of the ‘@’ sign. It’s one of those videos which is full of lovely little pieces of information which you’ve probably never really thought about, but once you hear them they seem great to know.

As a blogger I find myself in quite a weird predicament today. A couple of days ago on a Facebook fan page I came across news of something absolutely astonishing: word of a reunion in the works which I would have assumed far from possible. The thing is, I’m not sure how credible this news is given the reports I saw seemed rather sketchy and the guys concerned – think very funny guys now in their eighties, who last worked together twelve years ago – had previously discounted the prospect, so I’m not sure how much I can speculate or say about it here. There’s also no word about it on the BBC website, which is surprising as it would be quite a high interest culture story, if it were true. Thus I’m not even sure what I can say about it here, as it might all prove bogus; I might not even be able to say what it is, given it frankly seems so far fetched. I can only say something similar happened thirteen years ago, causing quite a few jaws to drop, which is why I’m so intrigued by this rumour. The prospect of something which would be so phenomenal if it actually happened that I feel compelled to blog about it, while the details and very possibility of it seem so scant that even naming it seems premature. Nonetheless it’s a news story which I’ll be keeping a very close eye on, and I look forward to blogging about it properly soon.

A couple of months ago I wrote that “the prospect of the Americans, Trump foremost among them, soon boasting about walking on the moon again and hosting the ‘greatest olympics ever’, as though only they could do such things, really is unedifying.” That is to say, with the world’s attention on their country this summer and indeed for the foreseeable future, the spectacle of the yanks basking in the global limelight wasn’t one I was looking forward to. However, I now think that ‘unedifying’ was far, far too mild a world. It’s already becoming clear that the world cup kicking off this evening is a total train-wreck; it’s already mired in xenophobia and corruption, before even a single match has been played.

Frankly, what the world now has before it is truly, truly hideous: A despotic, far-right nation headed by a vainglorious megalomaniac, being given the right to boast about itself before the globe, celebrating it’s 250th birthday, preparing to launch rockets to the moon and to host the Olympic games in two years time. All while it bombs the shit out of the middle-east, bans the citizens of several muslim countries from entering it, and targets it’s own people with a racist gestapo. Just ten years ago this would have been unthinkable, but this is what the United States has become: the nation which likes to boast that it is the greatest in the world and a shining light of democracy has become a corrupt, fascist cesspit; and at a moment when the rest of the world should be telling America that the direction they are heading in is unacceptable, we are sending athletes to participate.

It would seem that what I once called “the new American era” is about to begin. The global limelight is on the yanks, as they always want it to be. Yet a sequence of events which may once have been enjoyable, interesting and fun have now been replaced with the prospect of something dark, arrogant and frankly horrifyingly ugly. I don’t think I’m being hyperbolic or exaggerating: as a nation the USA becomes more frightening every day. With so much of our attention now upon it, surely it is up to the rest of us to stop it going too far.

I just got in from my usual daily trundle. Today’s was quite a long one, over to Canary Wharf and then along the canal to Stratford. It was going well until it started bucketing down. I just noticed one thing, though, which I think I’ll draw your attention to: at one point, going along an underpass, I spotted some graffiti. It was quite well done, as graffiti often is these days, but it was about the gentrification of the area. A fat, snobby looking man in a top hat was depicted evicting other working class people.

Of course, there is no denying that East London is being hugely gentrified at quite an astonishing rate. I hardly have to leave my flat to find blocks of high end expensive apartments being built. The entire feel of this half of the metropolis changed beyond all recognition over the last twenty years or so. The thing is, to be honest I’m not absolutely sure that was really what the street art I came across was really getting at. While there is certainly a sense that “traditional east Londoners” are being pushed out of the area, such sentiments often go hand in hand with a staunch rejection of multiculturalism. That is to say, there is an equally strong feeling in some east Londoners that the area is being overrun by immigrants: the culture they grew up with is steadily being drowned out by influences from all over the world. Frankly, I can’t help suspecting that was what the picture I saw was really getting at, but the painter had just tried to give it a less reactionary, more left-wing veneer. Obviously, this isn’t based on much more than a hunch, but if I’m right it would reflect quite an alarming growing cultural tension – one which people still seem to be hiding, but is nonetheless definitely there.