This letter, from a former slave to his old master, must be, if authentic, one of the most remarkable documents I’ve ever come across. It’s well worth a read, and was simply too fascinating for me not to flag up. I especiaally like the line ”Say howdy to George Carter, and thank him for taking the pistol from you when you were shooting at me.” To be honest, though, I’m in two minds about what I think of him asking for his back-paid wages: on the one hand, I think he had every right to do so, but on the other, it does seem a tad cheeky, but perhaps that’s just me being a bit British.

in part reply to my blog entry yesterday, Claire/Dennis has written this this on her own blog. It would seem there was much I misunderstood about DAN and its relationship with the greater disability rights movement. I obviously have much to learn, but the truth is, as the Tories start cutting harder and deeper, and start making crips suffer for no clear reason other than sheer malice, this stuff matters more than ever. Disabled people must fight back!

This may sound kind of stupid, but I realized earlier that, despite now calling myself member, I know next to nothing of DAN. What it stands for is clear enough: on it’s Facebook page, it states ” The UK disabled people’s Direct Action Network, DAN, is a grassroots network of proud, angry & strong disabled people from all backgrounds and of all ages, who use non-violent civil disobedience as a means to fight for freedom and equality. DAN has taken action AGAINST: patronising charities who profit from and perpetrate disabled people’s dependence, the warehousing of disabled people in institutions, welfare cuts, care charges, assisted suicide and euthanasia. DAN takes action FOR: equality and freedom, such as independent living, inclusion, accessible transport, fair access to work and welfare.” That is clear enough, and those aims are broadly my aims too. Yet I find myself asking – purely out of curiosity- what is dan, and how is it organised? Is it a pressure group? Does it have a leadership or hierarchy?

Of course, I also completely agree with the use of nonviolent civil disobedience as a means of fighting injustice. Now more than ever, the tactics of Gandhi and Dr. King must be utilised in order to fight what seems to be becoming the overt oppression of disabled people by the Tories. Yet unlike the campaign for Indian independence or the American civil rights movement, the British disability rights movement appears not to have a single leader. What it does appear to have, however, is DAN. DAN appears to be the central body of our movement, our figurehead; a group within a group through which we all have a voice. That’s why I am so curious about it: I’ve read that, contrary to what I wrote in my entry yesterday, Saturday’s action was not a DAN action but what DAN itself calls a ”cripple’s picnic.” If that wasn’t a dan action, what the hell is? And who is in a position to use such language, and how did he or she get there, wherever there is? This confuses me greatly, as I don’t understand the structures involved. As I say, I fully support dan’s aims and modus operandae, I also think , in a way, DAN now takes the place of a central figure in terms of crip liberation; I just wish someone would clarify what it is for me so I can be a better activist.

While I am still not sure about whether I can call myself a proper DAN (disabled People’s Direct Action Network) activist now, I think yesterday was a good day. Well, let’s put it this way: it wasn’t a total failure. You may have heard on the news that some disabled people were protesting against the cuts in oxford street. That was the protest we intended to attend, only we got there after the protest was over. Getting in to central London from Charlton is not as easy as you might think, especially on a Saturday. We got there as quickly as possible, but the protest had been broken up by the police by the time we arrived: as we were going down oxford street to the scene, we saw two or three cop cars whizzing past.

I was quite pissed off about that. I waned to add my voice, and feel guilty about not being able to. Writing about things is a very good way to get your view across, which is why keep my blog, but there comes a time when words become insufficient: a time when you have to take to the streets and show others that you object to something. That’s why DAN was on oxford street yesterday, and why I, at least tried, to join them. Many, like my friends Dennis and Becca, had come from as far as Manchester to join in*; you must ask yourself what would make these people, for many of whom getting around the country is not straightforward, come and protest?

The answer to that is that we are deeply concerned about what the government is doing. Their reforms will hit people with disabilities the hardest, so much so that many will be barely able to survive. It is a deep concern for themselves and their fellow disabled people that forced DANners onto Oxford Street yesterday. They, like me, are very worried about what the government is doing, so much so that they are prepared to risk arrest to show it. These are well informed, politically astute people; that in itself must force you to ask questions about what the government is proposing.

After finding oxford circus deserted, I was eventually able to track Becca and the guys down to a pub not too far away. It was great to see them, and I was especially thrilled to be able to introduce Lyn to Becca. I managed to do a bit of networking, so the day wasn’t a complete loss for me personally. For DAN and disability rights activism, on the other hand, the day was a complete triumph, with ITN, sky and the Guardian, among others, covering the protest. I think that they/we now need to keep it up, and I really hope there will be many more such protests – maybe I will actually be able to get to some.

*Another reason why I felt like such a shambles: if they came from Manchester but still got there on time, how committed does that make me seem?

After posting my list of Desert Island Disks on thursday, I realised I had missed a very important track out. How could I possibly forget to mention this, the very anthem of my life, and my personal motto. For one must, surely, always look on the bright side of life.

The entry I posted yesterday took me ages to write, and I’m quite pleased with how it tuned out, but after I put all the links in and put it online, I found something else I need to draw your attention to. It seems the journalist Rod Liddle has been talking crap about disabled people in the Sun. according to him, it’s rather nice being a crip, as we get lots of cool stuff. It is becoming ‘increasingly fashionable’, as it brings government cash, you don’t need to work – and you can even get a car parking badge. He also seems to think that conditions like ME are somehow made up.What an asinine, half-witted comment: liddle obviously knows nothing abut what life is like for disabled people, nor anything of the discrimination we face. He’s obviously trying to curry favour with The Sun’s idiotic readership by picking on one of the current political scapegoats. Twat!

I heard today that Desert Island Disks is about to celebrate its seventieth birthday; the anniversary episode will be with David Attenborough, presumably as a tribute to his equally awesome sixty years at the BBC. I find that pretty incredible: I suppose the programme is so successful because music itself is so potent. It is everpresent, supplying a sound track to our lives. There is something about music that is hard wired directly to the soul: more than any other art form, it taps directly into emotion, raising you up to the heights of bliss or crashing you down to the depths of despair. That’s why it’s such powerful medium for allowing people to talk about themselves.

Thinking about this earlier, I began to think, as I’m sure most other people do, about the pieces of music I would choose were I ever famous enough to be asked on to desert island disks. It’s an intriguing question to ask yourself. As with my list of my favourite meals, you can only decide such things in retrospect. And, as with Cinephiliac Moments, the pieces one chooses are all deeply personal, so your choices say a lot about yourself.

Which disks, then, would I take on to my dessert island? As soon as I started to think about it, I realised that my list would probably longer than the usual eight. I suppose I better start at the beginning, with my first ever favourite song: I must only have been two or three when my parents first sat me down and put a tape of the Frog Song into the video player. They probably regretted it, as I instantly fell in love with it and cried my head off when the video finished. My crying would only stop when they had rewound the tape and pressed play again, a situation which repeated itself for hours. I don’t know why, but there was something I found in that song which I found as comforting as a cuddle from my parents; even today there’s something in it which tugs at my heart every time I hear it. It’s a similar story with the snowman, another of those song-based childhood cartoons which still holds sway over me.

If I am going to mention those two, embarrassing though it is I must say that I would take A whole new World from Aladdin onto my island. It is a song I once adored: My brother mark played the piano, and I remember forcing the poor boy to play it again and again as a child. The last few times I’ve heard it, it has seemed rather cheesy, but even as a teenager there would be nothing I would rather hear.

The times I spent listening to mark play the piano, in the dining room of my old family home, now seem a lifetime ago. It seems like so much has happened since then, so many other pieces of music have acquired so much personal resonance for me. Maybe the next track I should mention is He Ain’t Heavy, He’s My Brother by the Hollies. That piece means a lot to me too, but for not such happy reasons. It was the first song played at Andrew Fox’s funeral, eleven years ago. Andy was one of my school friends; he had muscular dystrophy, and passed away when we were eighteen. I vividly remember his coffin being carried in as the first notes of that song struck up, so much so that even today every time I hear them my mind flies back and my heart fills with the rage I still feel at the injustice of his death. After the funeral it was a long time until I could bear to hear that song again, for it was a piece of music which captured Andy’s fortitude perfectly.

Andy, like me, was a trekkie. Star trek has been a big part of my life, and I find the theme songs to Star trek inspiring. Of them, I love none more than the theme to First Contact. It is a film that inspires me, allowing me to hope hat one day humankind will overcome it’s petty differences and work together to build a better future. Mind you, it’s a film which also predicts that before that happens we will go through a third world war, in which six hundred million people die, so perhaps it isn’t such an optimistic film after all. Nevertheless, the theme from first contact is still a piece of music which fills me with hope.

I suppose you could say that I find the James Bond series just as inspirational. Through him, one can live one’s fantasies: to me, he is a figure in full control of his world. I’m not sure why, but something in this misogynistic, anachronistic character appeals to me, even though in many respects he is my antithesis. I remember, lying in bed one night in my late teens, watching TV. The Alan Partridge show was on. I didn’t usually watch it, but I caught the episode where Alan decides to reenact The spy Who Loved Me. Something that night caught my attention, and ever since then I’ve been into bond, and especially the theme to that film. Charlie used to sing it to me when she was Pushing me home after a night out, so I have fond memories of bellowing out the words ”Nobody does it /quite the way you do / baby you’re the best.” into the dark of a Cheshire evening.

But I have many such memories concerning charlotte. She is quite a musical person, and I remember her singing constantly. Another song I associate with her is ”When the Night Feels my song’‘ by Bedouin Soundclash, which she taught to the University Gospel Choir; it was also charlotte who introduced me to the Cat Empire, so she would be the reason why I would take Days Like These to my desert island. Most of all, the song I will forever associate with my friendship with Charlie is You’ve Got A Friend in me by Randy Newman. As I describe here and here, it was a song that I heard being played at Disneyland; it is thus a song I associate with kindness, friendship and warmth.

Given that there are songs I associate with my friend charlotte, the question is raised about what songs I associate with Lyn. After all, she is dearer to me than anyone has been before. I was thinking about this before, and was worried to realise that, despite the fact she is a musician, there is no single song I associate with Lyn. But then it occurred to me that such things can only be discovered in retrospect: songs can only resonate with times when such times are over, and since my time with Lyn will not come to an end for a long, long time, I cannot pinpoint any one song I associate with Lyn. Mind you, this one might be a candidate; Our house by crosby, Stills and nash holds within its lyrics the feelings of warmth and tenderness I feel when with lyn.

That is the list of songs I’d take to my island. I may have missed something – I probably couldn’t go without some Aerosmith, Guns and Roses, and how could I leave Sweet Home Alabama behind? But it’s getting late, and were I to try to list all the songs that had ever touched me, I’d be typing till dawn.

Last night was really rather cool, as I got to indulge in a bit of real cinephilia. Dom had brought small projector with him, so we drape an old window blind over our

TV, dimmed the lights and set up a small cinema. The great Andre Bazin would have been proud, especially as the first film we saw was ‘The Man with A Movie Camera’.

I was initially ere excited about it – the film is a classic of early pioneering cinema. I remember watching it at university, so I relished the chance to watch it again. The thing was, I quickly realised that it wasn’t the original version: someone had re-cut Vertov’s 1929 original and set it to a modern score. At first I was totally appalled by this act of sacrilege – part of me still is. I usually have nothing against modern adaptations of originals, or postmodern fusions of old and new, but the original score for this film was beautiful, and the new one hey had replaced it with seemed out of place. I quickly got into the type of huff I revel in getting into when I see something I take umbrage with, and began to thin of ways I could express my opinion on this piece of cinematic blasphemy. Yet Lyn and Dom, who are more into music than film, were obviously quite enjoying it, so I told myself to stop being a puritanical, pretentious nonce and chill out.

The second film we saw was called Another Earth, which I didn’t really have a problem with and therefore can’t write much about it. It was typical, modern Hollywood fare. All in all, then, last night was really cool. It was an evening I spent on the sofa, trying to remember the names of writers and theoreticians from cultural studies, immersed in an art form I love.

Took my dog to the dole office to see what he was entitled to. The bloke behind the counter said: ”You idiot! We dont give benefits to dogs!” So I argued: ”Why not?

He’s brown, he stinks, he’s never worked a fucking day in his life and he can’t speak a word of English!” The man replied: ”His first payment will be next Monday.”

—

I came across the above joke on Facebook earlier. Needless to say I didn’t find it at all funny; I told the person who made it as much, and that he as being puerile and childish. He told me that I should get a sense of humour, and that all jokes are ” all derogatory about us in some way or another-that’s why they’re jokes! If you can’t laugh at yourself, you’re going to have a hard-up life, mate. Get over it.” He went on to explain that racism is an ideological belief that one race (whatever the hell that is) can be innately superior to another, and thus jokes could not by definition be racist.

I replied that he was talking crap, and that he could not hide behind so-called humour to uphold arbitrary distinctions between groups of people; it was like saying ”all men from Birmingham fuck their sisters” and then crying ”ahh but I was joking so I’m allowed to say such things”.

However, before the conversation got much further, he deleted the entire comment thread, which is a shame because I was about to explain to him why his joke was so unfunny. Many jokes have at their core some degree of truth, or expose a truth by framing it in a new, novel way. Take, for example, the old, old joke about the horse walking into a bar and the barman asking him ”why the long face?’ we laugh – at least the first few times – because barmen do ask such questions, and horses o have elongated faces, but we are surprised to hear these two truths come together. That’s why we laugh.

The problem with the joke above is that it seeks to expose truths which some presume to exist but don’t. it panders to an ideology with no basis in reality. The reason some may laugh at such things is that it reinforces ad legitimises their belief that immigrants are dirty lazy, don’t speak English and are allowed through the benefit system with great ease. Or that the benefit system panders to dirty lazy people who don’t speak English. That is, of course, total crap: there is no truth in it, and therefore it is not funny. Some want to laugh at it, though: they want to impress upon others that it is funny because they want to believe this joke has some truth at it’s basis. Like children in a room full of adults, making farting sounds and giggling hysterically, the people who make such jokes are laughing at things most other people find utterly immature.

I feel I have a fairly good sense of humour, but, as with sexist or disabledist jokes, there’s nothing funny about trying to reinforce stereotypes and social boundaries. In fact, we should all be laughing at the idiots who still adhere to such flawed notions in the first place.

I found the following image at the head of this blog entry from Johnny Void, eloquently and brilliantly explaining how much damage the Tories’ benefit reforms will do to the poorest members of our society, and found both the image and the article just too brilliant not to flag up. It might be too christian in tone for my liking, but what Void essentially says rings very true. How IDS has the gall to even utter the word ‘fairness’ when what he is doing is innately unfair staggers me. 

Lyn and I watched Inside I’m dancing last night. She hadn’t seen it before, and I was interested to hear what she thought about it. To be honest, I don’t think I was as impressed as when I was when I first saw it in the cinema: there seemed to be more flaws in it, things that did not seem realistic. Now I’m living more or less independently, employing my own staff, I was sitting on the sofa picking holes in it, like a MI5 agent watching a bond movie. Mind you, when I asked Lyn whether institutions are really like ho they are presented in the film, with adults just sat in their wheelchairs, parked in front of the TV to watch mindless cartoons for hours on end, to my disappointment she said that it was.

The biggest thing that got to me this time, though, was the quality of the acting. What I didn’t know when I first watched the film was that the two central disabled figures were actually played by nondisabled people. Looking back, I’m aghast that I missed that – it’s obvious. Nobody can portray a guy with CP if thy don’t have CP. Despite the thousands of out of work crip actors out there, they go and choose two non-crips, who probably know nothing of the realities behind what they are portraying, to take the lead in the biggest crip-themed film of recent times. Pathetic! On top of that, last night the film seemed mawkish and sentimental, as if it romanticised disability in a way. Although I got into bed last night feeling like I had just watched a good film, it did have it’s flaws; it’s a shame because it could have been a great opportunity to increase awareness of disability issues; instead we got something safe and inoffensive to the general public, and no doubt two actors got lorded for their oh so heroic portrayal of disabled people.

I jut noticed I posted my entry about the article with the misleading title twice. Oops! Not wanting to leave it that way, nor being able to think of to put in it’s place, I’ll think I’ll just send you here. It’s a short video about last years disability protests, the second wave of which will no doubt soon follow. The coalition ain’t seen nothing yet!

When I first saw the title of this article, I prepared myself to get angry. With a headline like ‘Do disability Rights cost too much” you expect it to be one of those pieces of bullshit arguing that disabled people are nothing but worthless parasites. It is, however, nothing like that. It’s actually quite an interesting potted history of the disability rights campaign, from it’s origins to the present day; it covers things like DLA.

It ends with the following: ”All of this was largely uncontentious in years of plenty, but austerity has brought with it demands that the welfare state be cut back. DLA costs billions and the Treasury is committed to finding an alternative that will see the rising bill reduced by a whopping 20%. No wonder there is such concern among disability campaigners. A struggle for rights which began half a century ago is threatening to go into reverse.” Well worth a read

Following on from yesterday’s entry, I think I need to draw this to your attention. I usually watch This Week; I missed it this week, but wish I hadn’t. Francesca Martinez was absolutely blinding on it, speaking powerfully on how much harm the tories are doing to people like myself. She kicks michael Portillo’s arse. As she puts it, the government is ”morally disabled”. It is well worth a watch.

Yesterday afternoon, Lyn and I were in the local coffee shop enjoying a drink and a snack. We were talking about this and that – our wedding, my birthday, her music etc – when the conversation got round to Lyn’s past. She is, let us say, somewhat older than I am, and has had quite a history. Lyn was telling us* about the four years or so she spent living in an institution. it sounded like some hellish cross between a school and a jail: everything was regulated and regimented; one member of staff fed four people; they had something called a ‘bath rota’. This was industrial, mechanised care; it seemed, from Lyn’s description, that she was not treated as a human but something simply to be kept alive.

It occurred to me that I have been exceptionally fortunate. You might call me spoiled. I grew up in a loving supportive family. I now have my independence, which, in a way, Lyn gave to me. Lyn had to fight for hers, as all the disabled people in her generation and those before did. And it was a long, hard fight, of the kind the crips of my generation know very little. We have grown up in a world much more accustomed to wheelchair users, and, although there are a great many fights yet to be fought, compared to those who were just shut away, I think my generation of crips have had it easy. We can choose when to eat and when to bathe; when to go out and what to watch on television.

I have sometimes been called a ‘survivor’ because I went to a special school, as if there was something heroic or brave involved in going back and forth to and from school every day. I don’t see it that way; I simply went to school and did the best I could do. It was not a case of living or dying. Lyn will probably say the same of her past, and argue that she just did what she had to do; but I think she can be called a survivor more fittingly than I can. For she did survive – she came through a situation which I daresay would have forced many to despair, and, what’s more, emerged from it as a strong, confident woman. I think Lyn, and the many people who went through such things, deserve our respect for that: after all, without the struggles Lyn’s generation of crips had to go through, we would not be free. I find myself wondering whether I could have survived in such a place.

Lyn, like people like Anne MacDonald and many others, had to fight to achieve the type of freedom disabled people these days seem almost to take for granted. We live in the community like everyone else; through the direct payment system we manage our own day-to-day affairs. It is easy to forget that this was not always so, and not so vey long ago people like me were languishing in long-stay hospitals. It is just as easy to forget how easily our current freedoms and equalities can be taken from us.

As indeed they might well be. We crips have, of late, been treated with more dignity and given more freedoms than ever before. This is because society has been relatively prosperous. I fear that could change: as this government cuts harder and deeper into budgets, I fear the freedoms we disabled people have recently enjoyed will be cut back. This, of course, must be fought. While we might not be at risk of being shoved back into institutions since it is far cheaper to fund the direct payment system, the amount of support people get stands to be cut drastically. Disability living allowance stands to be cut to the level that many people will barely be able to survive.

This must be fought as the last generation of disabled people fought for their freedom. The struggles we face might not be the same as theirs, but it struck me yesterday how much inspiration there is to take from people like Lyn. Through years of perseverance, she proved that she was able to live independently, no doubt having to overcome many doubting minds. Today we need to prove how unjust the cuts to the benefit system are, and how much harm they will do. My generation of people with disabilities can and must, I think, draw strength from what we as a community have been through. People like us are strong: people like Lyn are proof of how much we can go through, and how much we can achieve.

Lyn will chuckle when she reads this and accuse me of being overdramatic. No doubt others will think it silly to assert that my generation of disabled people can be endowed with the qualities of the previous one just because we both have disabilities. But the central fact remains, Lyn inspires me: in terms of her strength of character, her determination, her compassion and her sheer willpower, she is the greatest human being I have ever known. If we can today draw a fraction of the strength she and those like her had to use to free themselves, to live their lives as they deserved to, then we can overcome the current attacks to our liberties.

*Mitchell, of course, was with us

I’m sorry, but this story is just too amusing not to draw to your attention. the beeb has reported that yesterday, someone got six point on Countdown for using the word ‘wanker’. What amuses me is the way in which the bbc article tries to pussy-foot around the word itself, without, forgive the pun, spelling it out explicitly. I used to watch countdown with my randma and great grandma after school. I remember my great grandma being quite a ‘proper’ woman; what she would have made of that I dread to think, but I think I’ll start tuning in to it again.

Space. The final frontier. Last night Lyn and I got a glimpse of that frontier. It was not all that difficult, in fact: we just had to pop around the corner to Charlton House. There, the BBC were holding an event called ‘Stargazing Live‘, which you might have seen on TV. It is all about astronomy, and has been on the box the last two nights, with the final programme tonight. While there was no filming up at the House, they ad set up lots of astronomy based activities.

Truth be told, I hadn’t known what to expect; I’d only known about it after driving past the house one day and seeing it advertised. I didn’t know whether it would be aimed at kids, or at adults. Of course, the answer was that it was aimed at booth, with activities ranging from a table with astronomy-themed Lego to going into full lectures. The coolest part for me, however, was getting a chance to see through a telescope – I could see Jupiter, with it’s rings and satellites, in all it’s majesty, clear as day. It was absolutely beautiful. I had thought the dot, which Jupiter had turned out to be, was simply another bright star; I’ll never look at the night’s sky the same way.

We didn’t sty all that long – Charlton house is not an enormous place, and it was getting crowded – but I found what we saw thrilling. It was a great evening, an the clouds had kept away. I have always looked up at the night’s sky with wonder and awe: rather than allay such feelings, I think last night’s event will have deepened them.

I think I just ought to direct you here today, to an e-petition aimed at stopping, or at least calling a halt to, the government’s proposed reforms to the disability benefit system. As it says ”Unfortunately since then the economy has gone in to crisis and the government has simultaneously embarked on a massive programme of cuts. This has created a perfect storm and left disabled people/those with ill health, and their carers reeling, confused and afraid. We ask the government to stop this massive programme of piecemeal change until they can review the impact of all these changes, taken together, on disabled people and their carers. We ask the government to stand by its duty of care to disabled people and their carers.” please go and sign.

Lyn and I hate macdonalds, and said she would refuse to eat there. Well, we once got caught out, and started to get very hungry…

[img description=”undefined image” align=”centre”]/images/lyn macdonalds.jpg[/img]

I don’t usually just link to videos I find on YouTube, but I think everyone needs to see this. It concerns a young girl who has what appears to be very severe autism; everyone supposed she had severe intellectual impairment, until one day she went over to her Dad’s laptop and started to type. It is a very clear illustration of the importance and power of communication: all too often, such kids are condemned to the scrapheap of humanity, when people don’t realise is that all they need is help finding away to comunicate. I usually avoid such videos, as they are often too patronising, sentimental or mawkish, and this one indeed has it’s share of sentiment, but the story it tells and the message it delivers is just too important for me not too flag up.

Mucking around in tutus is all very well and good, but I should write something about this. The government proposals to ‘cut the wealthfare bill’ by trying to avoid giving benefits to disabled young people was defeated in the Lords this week. They were trying to deny young crips their automatic right to benefits if they are fortunate enough to have moderately wealthy parents. Labour said that proposal ‘crossed the line of British decency’; I’d go further – it crosses the line of human decency! Even the daily mail called the proposals callous. My proposals weren’t poor, but growing up they needed the extra money they got from my benefits to help support me. Bringing up a kid with something like CP isn’t cheap: we need support and special equipment to live. That costs money. I daresay, hard working and industrious though they were, there’s a chance that, without the extra financial support they got from my benefits, my parents would have had to put me in a home. I dead to think what impact these proposals might have on other families.

And what really gets my goat is that the Tories now intend to force these proposals through the Lords by the back door. That really does get me worked up as it smacks of arrogance – they are putting their interests in cutting the deficit before the concerns of the Lords for the needs of people with disabilities. Something really must be done to get these inhuman arseholes out of power before they really start ruining people’s lives!

I initially envisaged the videos I made yesterday as two separate short films, distinct but contrasting with each other. I think they should still be seen that way, which is why I am leaving them online. But Lyn and I were talking over dinner, and it occurred to us that, without reading my blog entry yesterday, hey might not have the impact on their own that they do in juxtaposition. We therefore decided to make a third film, which compounded he two as well as tidied it up a bit. It can be seen here.

Ever since Lyn and I made Spastic Ballet and posted it to YouTube, we have been receiving comments that suggested that we were being forced to cross dress and perform. People thought that some amoral human being had captured a pair of cripples who didn’t know what they were doing, dressed them up in dancewear, and shouted ”dance, spastic, dance!” Of course, Lyn and I howl with laughter every time we get another comment like that, but I recently came up with an idea. I decided to make a follow-up video, showing me actually changing for ballet. But then I had to decide which route to go down: was I to show a disabled man being forced to dress up, thereby conforming to the commenter’s’ preconceptions, or a man with a disability choosing to dress up, thereby showing them to be flawed. The solution is as obvious as it is great: make both.

So I did. I know they’re a bit rough, and should probably be seen as first drafts (I only wrote the scripts this morning) but Changing for ballet 1 can be found here, and Changing for Ballet 2 can be found here. I hope you like them, and don’t mind a glimpse of me in my pants. In a way they should be seen as one piece, the one in juxtaposition with the other. Anyway, let me know what you think. Massive thanks are due to Laura for being such a sport.

I think it essential that I send you here today, to a damning report, entirely funded and written by people with disabilities, which clearly spells out how concerned people are about the coalitions reforms to the wealthfare system. It’s conclusions are shocking: parliament has effectively been mislead by the government about their proposed reforms, as they hid key bits of information have been kept hidden from it. It also seems that massive numbers of disabled people stand to loose their benefits under these reforms, especially those whose conditions fluctuate. I don’t really want to attempt to paraphrase it all, as I need to read it several times first, and besides I think everyone should read it first hand.

My sister in law Yan just sent me this link. The bbc are looking for new presenters with disabilities. I think that is great news, of course: anything that increases the profile of disabled people is to be welcomed. I’m not sure I’ll be applying, though – it certainly sounds like fun, but the question is, can I communicate well enough to be a television presenter? That’s why I have always seen myself working behind the camera, as a writer or director. On the other hand, the prospect of being a presenter is intriguing: if I did apply, one day I could become the spastic version of Michael Palin or David Attenborough. And that certainly is an enticing thought. Right: time to go fill in the application for.

There is something I love about Sundays, and Sunday afternoons especially. I was reflecting on this yesterday: there is something I’ve always loved about that time of the week. It was on Sunday afternoons that dad used to drive us home from visiting my grandparents in London, nodding off in the car; it was on Sunday afternoons that we used to drive home after dropping my brother off in oxford at the beginning of every term. As a child, Sunday afternoons represented the last bit of thee weekend before school the next day; later they were about chilling out at home before a week at university, relishing my mum’s cooking, feeling her Sunday roast settle in my stomach. Sunday afternoons and evenings were when the best programmes were on tv: Michael Palin and David Attenborough documentaries, and later Top gear. I used to watch them in my pyjamas after my weekly bath.

These days, Sunday afternoons may be slightly different, but yesterday I noticed I still get the same feeling of warmth and homeliness. Now they’re about listening to Lyn compose in her studio; they’re about settling down with a book on the sofa, or mucking around on the internet. Yet there is the same old feeling of security, of home and family, I always noticed. The feeling you get when you know you have a hectic week ahead of you, so you relish being at home with the people you love.

And Sunday afternoons are still when the best telly is on.

Today I’d just like to wish Professor Stephen Hawking a very happy seventieth birthday. Given his thoughts on the necessity to colonize space, it seems only right that I simply direct you all here

I have two disability-related stories to direct you to today. Firstly, this shocking story of a wheelchair user ripped from his car and tasered by the police. He had forgotten to pay twenty pounds at a petrol station, but according to the cops that meant he deserves what sounds like a savage, brutal beating. How can they get away with such things?

Secondly, I just saw this story on the news of a young lady with autism. You know, now I come to think about it, I’m not sure why it was on the news other than to satisfy the public fascination with unusual people. The young lady is so confused by traffic that she can’t go out alone. I suppose by linking to the story I could be accused of being just as bad as the beeb, but I felt I ought to daw your attention to it so you could look at it critically.

we were having a coffee up at The Royal Standard Earlier – again a place not far from here, and geographically not very big at all, yet it has it’s own name – where Marta took the following picture of Lyn. It is just so warm, so beautiful, and for me so punctc, that I just had to post it on here.

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I have been thinking about writing this blog entry for a while, but I have not been sure how to go about it. Indeed, I am still unsure I have thought about it enough. I have lived in London for almost two years, and I think there is something about one’ relationship with space and area which is fundamentally different when you live in a city. That is to say, you see space differently in a city than when you live in a town. I grew up in a town in Cheshire; although, as a kid, it seemed a big enough place, looking back it now seems minute compared with the enormity of London.

The towns and villages of Cheshire are surrounded by countryside. Of one lived in, say, Congleton and wanted to go shopping in Macclesfield, you would have to get into a ca or onto a bus and travel the seven miles or so between the towns; there is a clear division between the two places, a definite space between them made up of fields. This is not the case in a mega-city like London. London itself is the size of Cheshire, by my reckoning, and indeed has it’s own subdivided areas, such as Charlton and Woolwich and so on. As shown on this map, which I came across a few days ago, such places were once clearly divided – before they became incorporated into London, they were towns unto their selves. That is presumably why Woolwich still refers to itself as a town with it’s own town centre, and Charlton is still referred to as a village.

The thing that I find a bit odd to reflect upon, as a writer, commentator and flaneur, is that these areas do not function in the same way that they usually do. A ‘town’ in

London is not the same as a ‘town’ elsewhere. Towns seem to occupy less geographical space in London than hey do outside of it. That is to say, the area known as Woolwich is far smaller than, say, the area known as Congleton; and although its called a village, I reckon Charlton is more akin in terms of the space it occupies to a hamlet. Areas with their own individual names are also much closer together than they are elsewhere: I can easily get to Woolwich in my chair from here in Charlton, but would be very reluctant to try driving between Congleton and Macclesfield – it is just too far. In fact, I think Woolwich is closer to us than my parents place is to Congleton town centre. Moreover, down here places blur: because there are no fields down here, no ‘buffer zone’ between places, only more houses, it is hard to say where Charlton ends and Woolwich begins.

This does strange things to how you perceive space and geography mentally. Your concept of what is near and what is far away changes. For example, my grandmother’s house in Harlesden can be no more than seven miles away from here as the crow flies, but in London terms, because the route we’d have to take to get there would be so complicated, my mental perception is that it is very far away. It is as if London is it’s own world with different geographic rules. You come to see space and area differently down here; you think less about direction and more about bus routes and traffic when considering how to get somewhere. I suppose Walter Benjamin was right when he said that living in a cit does strange things to one psychologically. I don’t thin I’m going anywhere with these mussing, and as I say they are probably incomplete, but it strikes me as odd that one’s sense of geography is so different down here.

I was just in the bath, thinking about film. Lyn and I were discussing it earlier, and I was astonished to realise how much the subject still excites me. As soon as I started to talk about watching film in terms of it’s internal structures, I felt like a schoolboy again, telling his friends about Tolkien. I have a tendency, which could be related to my cerebral palsy, to get very excited about such things.

After our conversation I decided to take a bath, where the greatest idea occurred to me. I was thinking about The hobbit yesterday: I now know how, if I was Peter Jackson, I would start the first movie. Wouldn’t it be cool if, before the whole thing began, before even the titles, we had a shot of a man at a desk, marking exam papers. Suddenly, he turns one over; we see that the paper is blank, and we hear him say ”hmm’ and start to write. Only then would the film proper begin.

I think this is a great idea, and I’m seriously thinking about writing to Mr. Jackson to tell him about it. The film is probably already in the can though, which is why I’m recording it here for posterity. It would be a lovely in-joke for he fans, and a great tribute to Tolkien himself.

While I still think that anyone should be allowed to do what they want with their lives, including ending them, I still have grave misgivings about the assisted suicide debate. The subject has cropped up in the news again today, with the publication of a new report. The thing is, while I understand that some terminally ill people who want to, let’s say, ”get it over with”, might need help to do so, I still worry that some people will be pressured into choosing this as an option. Even though the report mentioned in this article seems to stipulate some quite rigid guidelines, I’m also still concerned that those guidelines might one day be loosened. In other words, I’m now worried that people with non-terminal disabilities might one day be asked, by some old woman with a white coat an fake grin, whether they thought it would be fairer for their families if they just went to sleep and didn’t wake up. That’s probably just me being paranoid, and I can’t really see it happening anytime soon, but I am still a bit concerned that legalising assisted suicide might just be the first step on the road to something much darker. After all, what kind of message does all this send to the general public about he value of the lives of people with disabilities?

[entry deleted upon request]. go here instead

I am suddenly incomprehensibly happy: Michel Palin, one of my childhood heroes and rolemodels, is making another series. This time he is going to explore brazil. Click here for his video about it. Yay!

Today has been my first productive day of the year; in fact, it has been my first reasonably productive day for some time, in terms of my thesis. I’m still working on it: if I’m honest, I put it off and usually find something better to do, like watching tv or [obscenity deleted]. Yet, when I knuckle down and start work, when the smell of books in my nose or he feel of paper between my fingers hit me, my thirst for knowledge is reborn. My problem now is, I get side tracked: for example, earlier I was reading an article on Godard’s Le Mepris which mentioned ford Maddox ford just in passing. Instantly, I asked Dominik to look ford up in my biography of Hemingway and work on my thesis ground to a halt. Yet I suppose that is how the acquisition of knowledge works sometimes. Oh well, at least I’ve started work again. Now, I just need to keep it up.

Rarely have I read a more biased, one-sided and agenda-driven piece of journalism than ths article in the Daily Mail. It’s about how Genetically Modified crops are leading Indian farmers to commit suicide. Their crops are apparently failing, leading farmers to become more and more desperate. Never mind that all sorts of other factors could be behind the failure, most notably climate change which has been far better established but which mail readers refuse to believe in; no, this must be due to the gm seeds the farmers were apparently forced into buying, and despite being rigorously tested must be inherently evil because they are new. Such biased, narrow-minded journalism really gets my goat. And what is the article based upon? Not numerous peer-reviewed studies but a four-day journey. According to this rag, people in rural India are dying slow, agonising deaths due to GM technology. That could well be the case – one must keep an open mind to the possibility – but the way it is presented in the article would lead one to believe that it is the only explanation.

I know I should be blogging about my life as a disabled man, but things like this really annoy me. Papers like this spread hatred, intolerance and stupidity, and the Daily Mail is the worst.

I just reread the entry I made a year ago today, and I can’t help thinking I can say much the same today. Again, I have had a great Christmas; I did not see my family on Christmas day this time, but Christmas herewith Lyn was wonderful. We spent new year’s eve here too: James was with us, and it was a very pleasant evening. Mind you, I really must remember not to talk about politics with James – at one point our discussion got rather heated. Probably the high point of he evening, though, was at midnight: by then, Laura Our PA had gone home, so we had to work out how to open the champagne. If you want a laugh, give three people with CP a champagne bottle to open. The incredible bit was that we didn’t spill any, although the cork almost knocked one of us out.

Happy new year everybody!