Is it just me or has British politics gone crazy this week? We have been busy the last two days – to be honest it has been a busy week altogether – so I have not had chance to keep as up to date as I usually like to. Lyn and I got home yesterday evening to hear some kind of controversy about Cornish pasties and storing petrol in your garage. Why on earth has the government decided to tax pasties? Indeed, have they, or have I misheard something? Surely I have misheard it, as no government could be that random. Why pasties rather than, say, pizza? And what is that kerfuffle about petrol? What minister in their right mind would advise people to store petrol in their garage? I heard today that woman seriously injured following that advice, yet francis maude, the MP who gave it, refuses to resign. This is absurd.

As I say, Lyn and I have been quite busy of late; glancing at the news, I have half a mind to stay busy and ignore all this bollox. Besides, it now seems that Lyn and I have much to look forward to, but let’s just say I’ll have to leave you to guess at what such things might be for now.

I have a feeling today and tomorrow are going to be rather busy, so while I have time, I’d just like to send you all here. It’s a brilliant website about New Wave Film: I stumbled onto it yesterday when I was looking for a definition of Hitchcockio-Hawksian. I haven’t had chance to explore it in any depth yet, but what I saw of it yesterday made me nostalgic for Alan’s office back at uni, being surrounded by books about people like Godard and Trufault. If you’re properly into film, this site is a good one.

Now though, It’s time to get cracking. The New–Wave will have to wait.

Rarely if ever do I agree with the daily Mail. I usually see it as the paper of bigots who think themselves too posh to read the News Of The World. After all, it has the idiot Peter Hitchens writing for it. but this article is one I think I need to link to. It clearly and chillingly spells out the effect the government’s reforms will have for people with disabilities. It doesn’t make comfortable reading for me at all; scanning through it, I gulped in fear for the future for me and my fiancee. Times like this depressions – tend to hit people like me and lyn hardest. When rancid pro-tory rags like the daily mail start questioning the government’s policies, it’s a clear sign that folk like us should be very, very concerned.

I just have a tv programme to flag up today. I recently had a couple of ideas which I’m keen to get working on, including a video involving forks, but I’ll write more about those in due course. Last night Lyn and I watched a very interesting, and somewhat inspiring, programme called ‘We won’t drop the Baby’ on bbc1. It was about comedian Lawrence Clark and his wife and their newborn second son. Both parents have CP, thus giving rise to the title of the show. They both appear to be excellent parents, and despite a moment when I almost shouted at the screen ”For fuck’s sake get a PA to do it”, when Mr. Clark was trying to change the baby, it is clear that they would never let their child come to harm. Thus I thought it was a reasonably good bit of television, showing that we crips can be parents too. I must admit, though, that it made me wonder whether I could be a daddy too one day, and I think it made Lyn Broody as well, but in reality I have long known that is a moot point for various reasons.

Anyway, time to turn my attention to forks.

Not having much else to write about tonight, other than to note the fact that Lyn and I just watched avatar (excellent film, even if it is slightly anti-disability in parts), I think I’ll just direct you here. It really did amuse me to hear that, after a young lady from Kazakhstan won a shooting competition, the spoof Kazakh national anthem from the film Borat was played by mistake. I bet there were a few red faces when they realised that they were playing a song written by a british comedian. I’ve yet to hear what Sasha Baron-cohen himself thinks about this, but I suspect he’s as tickled as the rest of us, apart from the Kazakh shooting team,, of course.

Thanks to my brother and webmaster Luke, the gltch in my website is now fixed. It apparently occured when the website hosting company changed hands. I can, at last, print the picture I wanted to yesterday.

[img description=”undefined image” align=”centre”]/images/birthday photo.jpg[/img]

Glorious, isn’t it? I’m now happy, so in honor of that, and to commemorate the fact that this being entry number 2222, as in tutu tutu, I think I’ll post a link to this again, too!

Despite the sun, today is fast turning out to be a pretty fraught day, not least because I just had my first dental appointment in two years. To cheer myself up a bit, then, I thought I would show you a picture taken on my birthday up in Congleton on sunday. It was a picture of me, lyn, my mum and dad and our PA John sitting on or next to a sofa in the conservatory. That was a truly special day for me, the day I finally took Lyn ‘home’, and the memory of it, I think, is going to be enough to brighten the gloomiest of my days for quite some time – even those involving dentists. Only, due to the bug my website seems t have contracted, I can’t seem to post pictures. It will have to wait for me to reprint it here, and You’ll have to take my word for it. Mind you, it just demonstrates the power of a good photo to cheer one up, and as good old Roland Barthes observed, photos can only do this on a personal level. That is to say, a photo hat means so much to me wouldn’t mean much to anyone else. In that respect, I suppose it is a good thing I can’t reprint it here, as it means I have to describe the impact it has on me, which is much better blogging than me lazily reprinting an image. It also forces me to reflect on the image and why I like it, which makes it all the sweeter.

I do not think I have ever recounted this story on my blog before, or, if I have, it has been a long time since I did so. Either way,it is a good story, and good stories deserve periodical retellings. Lyn and I were just at the cafe, enjoying a mid-afternoon coffee. Mitchell, our PA for today, started humming You Sexy Thing by hot chocolate. I hadn’t heard that song in a while, but it always reminds me of a chapter in my life now quite bittersweet.

Back at school, in about 1999, my class were involved in a wheelchair dance competition. I’m not sure how we became involved – I think our PE teacher, miss stoolberg, entered us into it. The class, mostly boys, weren’t that interested, but we thought we’d give it a go. We decided to have a bit of a laugh, and to base our display on The Full Monty, which was quite a big film at the time. We did our display to the tune of You sexy thing, at one stage ripping off our shirts to reveal Tshirts with things like ”you should be so lucky” printed upon them. Thus, as soon a Mitchell started to hum the song earlier, I automatically felt the urge to spin my chair to the left.

That competition now seems a lifetime ago. I still have the trophy for the disco competition that followed the main display competition; it’s still on the shelf in my parent’s conservatory, where, incidentally, it caught Lyn’s eye on Saturday. She and Dominic asked how I won it, so dad recounted the tale to her. Yet that tale for me is tinged with sadness, as three of that class have passed on, including the two ‘leaders’ of the display, rich Simpson and Andrew fox. Drinking my coffee outside in Charlton earlier, I remembered the day when my friends and I danced to Hot Chocolate with great glee, but those memories cannot help being tainted by events since then, by regret that my friends are not here to reminisce with me. I suppose it’s a consequence of going to a special school. I suppose, too, that most of all, such memories must be recalled with happiness – after all, not man people can say they performed the full Monty in a wheelchair.

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Lyn was looking at me and chuckling earlier, as we watched the budget together. I’m sure she thinks I must be mad, I get so worked up about it. I start shouting at the tv and everything – I can’t seem to help it. But the truth is I’m furious about what CaMoron, clegg and osbourne have done today: how they can claim to care about the less well off of this country is beyond me. They are slashing services so vitally needed just so they can give the rich a tax break. There was nothing fair or just about this budget; it was designed to reward greed. Of course, the Tories claim that setting taxation too high drives away business: I have always seen that as an excuse with which to justify the selfishness of capitalists. If everyone saw themselves as part of a community rather than individuals, they wouldn’t care how much tax they paid. The problem, then, is the Tory individualist mindset itself: that argument only washes because there are greedy people, and there are greedy people because such arguments justify their greed. The government shouldn’t pander to greed by keeping taxes for the rich few low, but encourage the most able in society to see themselves as part of a community that they should contribute more to. As it is, however, we have a Tory government intent ion starving the poor just so they can appease the wealthy few. They, and the minority of people who voted for them, should be ashamed of themselves; I have no words with which to describe my contempt for such selfish scum.

Please note that, due to some kind of technical glitch, the list of entries in my archive has disappeared. They are still there, but the links just aren’t displayed. this should be fixed shortly.