This probably isn’t the best place for me to broadcast my artistic ideas, especially ones so embryonic, but I just have to jot this down somewhere to get the ball rolling. I was watching the culture show last night, about Matt Stone and Trey Parker’s new musical about The Book of Mormon, and it ocurred to me that someone should take an equally irreverential attitudde to disability. I know that people like Francesca Martinez are beginning to show the funny side of disability, as do programmes like The Last Leg, but to some extent they hold back. What if we got really dirty? I mean, obscene to the depths of South Park. What if I could somehow expand upon the ethos behind Spastic Ballet? I mean, there was an anarchic element to that: I love the fact that people thought that someone had dressed wo cripples up and forced them to dance; I love that mismatch between perception and reality. Surely there is dramatic and comic potential behind that. What I aim to do now, then, is start playing around with ideas, start generating characters, perhaps use some of the comments people leave on youtube to create scenarios. My aim isn’t to take the piss out of myself or lyn, but to take what we started with Spatic Ballet a step further and develop it into a full narrative.

I seem to think the oddest thoughts. Last night in bed, for instance, I began to seriously wonder whether anyone had ever been christened Elisabeth Swallocks. It’s odd, when you think about it, because Swallocks sounds as if it could be a genuine surname, so it’s not inconceivable that someone, somewhere, at some time in the past has genuinely been called Betty Swallocks. I even went so far as to google it this morning, but that just turned up a few joke pages and didn’t resolve the issue..

I also continue to think about the Olympics. Last year made quite an impression on me. This morning, in the bath, I was mulling over the fact that London probably won’t see a summer like that again for a long time. I don’t mean that pessimistically, but realistically: London has hosted the games three times, the only city to do so; the first time was in 1908, then forty years later in 1948, then sixty-four years after that in 2012. The mid-point between forty and sixty four is fifty-two, so we’ll probably next host them some time around 2064, and that’s if we’re lucky. After all, the general impression I get is that Paris is just as prominent a world city as London – it might even outrank it, given it’s beauty – and if it wins is 2024 bid it will have been a century since it last hosted the Olympics. Thus I doubt London will be an olympic city again in my lifetime, as, if a city as great as paris can be ignored by the ioc for a century, and given that London is the city it has selected the most, then it has to be fair on other cities and ignore London for a while.

That made me think, though: I never thought I’d live in a city while it hosted the olympics, and, as I wrote here, I felt it a privilege to have done so. In the moment of that thought I felt a tinge of sadness that I’d never experience it again. But then, I thought, maybe not in London; if the fates conspired to plant me here last year, who knows where I’ll find myself in the future. Who knows where Lyn and I will be in five or ten years. While we are very happy in London, I don’t think we can rule anything out. We both like new places, after all. Thus if it is possible for me to find myself living in London during a summer in which it hosted an event it hadn’t hosted in sixty years and probably won’t again for another fifty, then it seems to me that I cannot rule out finding myself and Lyn in, say, Paris when it hosts it’s third games, or new york when it hosts its first. Nor can I rule out finding myself at a myriad other splendid happenings!

What an experience that would be. Living with Lyn I know not to rule it out: she has an air about her, something which says everything is possible. Knowing her, I could again watch her play an Olympic ceremony; in New York that would be amazing. Whatever the future holds, then, I’m sure it will be bright. I look forward to many more glorious summers with lyn, In London, Paris, New York, or wherever fate takes us. Who knows – during one of them we might find someone really called Elisabeth Swallocks.

Today I just want to post my annal birthday blog for my brother Luke. We dont see much of eachothr these days: although we both live in London, the city is so vast that it kind of feels as if he lives in another country. The fact that he’s such a busy goit that I don’t know when to Skype him doesn’t help, nevertheless he will definitely be seining my spasticated mush on his computer screen later tonight. Happy birthday bro!

Last night saw our first proper night out in a while. By that I mean a night of music ad song – a bloggable night. Lyn and I went to a monthly event at a local tapas restaurant, Cataleya, organised by our friend and all round top dude Gus. I think I’ve mentioned it on here before. However, last night was extra special, in more ways than one.

Firstly, last night ruled because Lyn did a set. While it is not an open mic gig, Gus asked Lyn to play a song or two. She was more than happy to perform, and, despite a brief struggle setting her kit up, Lyn’s music was warmly appreciated by the audience. Her electronica is quite different from the rock Gus and his friends play, but I really think the room enjoyed it. Lyn played two songs of her own creation, but I suspect Gus will ask her to do more at future events.

Last night was also special because my old friends Robert and Bernie were there. Yesterday afternoon, I noticed Bernie mention on Facebook that my old university flatmates were in town, and, remembering Rob’s penchent for rock, invited them along. To be honest, I thought there was only a slim chance of them making it, given te short notice and the distance they wound need to travel. But come they did. Sadly, though, thy arrived too late for Lyn’s set, but by then Gus was paying a few old school rock numbers, which I must say sounded awesome. It was great to see them: oddly, my uni days seem at once a lifetime ago and last week. Part of me cannot believe it has been three years since I left cheshire, but another part of me is equally convinced that I have always lived in London, and that I moved here a lifetime ago. Thus, when my old friends walked in, Rob’s brother with them, it was like I had seen them the day before and like I had not seen them in years.

I hadn’t, of course. I had last seen rob three years ago, on my last day on campus. He hadn’t changed much, yet it was great to catch up with him. Both Robert and bernie are doing well, and, dare I say it, seem to have grown together. We chatted and listened to the music: it was wonderful to hear instruments played by men who knew how to play them; there is something about the combination of to guitars, a drum and a double bass which is just plain cool. Gus usually plays on his own, yet last night he and his mates rocked. It’s only a small restaurant, and we were sat at the front near the band (in fact I almost fell on them at one point) so it was hard to hear each other speak at points. Even so, it was the coolest night I have had in weeks. I now think of gus as a fiend, so with Lyn there, and my old uni friends, it felt quite personal, quite intimate, and very special.

It would seem that Lyn and I have succeeded in creating a meme when we made Spastic Ballet. I don’t know what ‘Ufoporno’ means (presumably some kind of erotica for extra terrestrials) but I just came across this. It’s not the best video in the world, but the random, Banzai-like backing track with which they replaced the original’s Tchaikovsky appeals to my sense of humour.

I know it’s another piece of lazy blogging, but this is just too awesome for me not to share with you. This is a link to the world’s largest panoramic photo, taken recently from the top of London’s BT tower. It’s a stunning piece of photography. They mentioned it yesterday on click, and, having just watched the repeat, gave in to the urge to blog about it. Photography, with it’s ability to freeze time, intrigues me – I can spend hours on Google maps Street View – so no doubt this image will keep me occupied for quite some time. I must say the resolution on this thing is gorgeous; although it was taken over several hours, it’s as if London it it’s entirety was captured in a second. Now, time to go and try to find our house.

[img description=”undefined image” align=”centre”]/images/pistorious escapes.jpg[/img]

Credit to Don Naylor. Excellent stuff!

Although Lyn and I don’t use taxis very often, I’d dearly like a trip with the cabbie mentioned here. He is a poet, and recites verses to customers. He seems to be fairly good at it, too. I love it – where but in the metropolis can you find such things? Here, it seems, artistry naturally juxtaposes with privation, beauty with squalor, in a way even Walter Benjamin might not have envisaged.

My dad visited us yesterday. My parents are in town to help look after my grandmother, so Dad popped in while mum stayed with her. He had picked up a copy of the Metro en route, and while he was here we took a collective glance at it. Interestingly, dad spotted an article oddly relevant to us, about a man who had just been given a communication aid after being paralysed for twenty years. It was an interesting article – well worth a read. Mind you, it raised some interesting questions, like why now? Why did the poor fellow have to wait all that time for a voice? Given the way in which such devices are becoming less and less of a rarity, why was this article written in such a gushingly emotional manner? It was written as if VOCAs had only just been invented, and this guy was some sort of a pioneer. The media frequently take that stance – it always strikes me as a litte odd how they use such stories to elicit motion. What irritates me is the pitying manner in which they write about such things: it only reinforces negative stereotypes of disability. I wish this guy luck, but I also wish journalists wouldn’t use such cases as a source of pity, and instead ask why it took so long for him to get the equipment he needed.

Today I would simply like to link to the newly-established blog of my friend Ben. He is a friend from uni, and, excellent writer that he is, I think his output is well worth a read. Although he only has two entries online, he shows much promise, and as a fellow writer I fel it my duty to link to him. His thoughts on OCD are especially interesting. Check it out!

For me one of the most intriguing things about living in London is trying to work out what was here before the city. Rolling around the streets of the suburbs, especially here south of the river, I feel a sense of history. The place is a maze, a higgledy-piggledy mess of streets which could have only come into being if the place had built up over time. As I wrote a coupe of days ago, this gives rise to all kinds of fascinating combinations: ancient churches butt up to modern towerblocks; victorian terraces suddenly end, having been partially knocked down in order to make way for duel carriageways. The result is a palimpsest, a fast-fading echo of what was there and is no more. Fascinatingly, in some places, I think I can see the ghost of the hedge-rows of the fields which must once have been here. Old maps from the time of Pepys show this area surrounded by them: Charlton was once a village, miles from the town of london. Those fields have now disappeared under concrete and brick, replacing farm and river with a vast metropolitan labyrinth. And yet sometimes you can still see it – if ou look hard enough, you can still tell where the old hedges and lanes once lay. Thats perhaps why, whenever I go to Woolwich, I get the uncanny feeling I’m walking between fields as I once did in cheshire.

My James Bond DVD collection is complete again, after technically being incomplete for about five hours. Well, I needed time to go to ASDA to get Skyfall, didn’t I? I just gave her a second viewing – the first being at the cinema – and need now to reiterate how great I think this film is. I almost don’t know where to start, but I think the hype abt this film is well founded. It occurred ti me, as I was watching it, that this film is not about bond per se, bit about M and her past misdeeds. That is, M is brought to the fore while Bond supports and protects her. It was great to see Judi Dench being allowed to show her stuff rather than just being the person who sends Bond on his mission.

Now, I can’t say I think this film is perfect. There were points which I found weak, and I thought the second act could have been stronger. That is to say, the intrigue developed in the first half of the film was not fully carried through into the second. As I noted in my first review, there re also lines which don’t fit, as well as lines which are poorly delivered. Nevertheless, I still think this is a great Bond film, and a great film full stop.

007 continues to fascinate me. He is a character I find intriguing. He seems hold a unique place in our culture: only he, surely, could jump out of a helicopter with the queen, surely. I am still intrigued with that scene, what it could mean, and the significance of Bond in general. Skyfall only fuels my interests, as it adds yet another dimension to him. n this film we begin to understand why bond is bond, this cold, mysogynistic, ultimately imperial figure nobody should by rights like. Yet we do: indeed, in Skyfall, MI5 has to answer to accusations of being anachronistic – accusations that could be levelled at bond himself. It is a nice move, ironically demonstrating why this franchise is still alive: it simultaneously reinvents itself while staying the same.

For Bond is bond, fifty years old and forever young. The guy who defeated Dr. No and the guy who duelled with scaramanga; the enemy of blofeld and the guy who beat La Chiffre; the man who prevented goldeneye from killing thousands and the man who escorted Queen Elizabeth II to the 2012 London Olympic opening ceremony. Rhetorically, he is one man, one figure, we seem to need him, and probably will for quite some time to come.. His name is Bond, James Bond.

Every friday night, Lyn and I listen to Bob Lawrence on Radio Caroline. Bob is a very cool guy, and plays a very nice mixture of music. Last week I emailed him: Lee’s death was on my mind (it still is) and I wanted something to commemorate him, so I requested he played Jessica by the Alman Brothers. Lee, like Rich, loved cars, so the theme from Top Gear seemed apt. Long ago we had used it in the dance component of one of our school p.e classes. Unfortunately I was out on friday, but Lyn said he played it, mentioning me and Lee. I now wish with all my being that I had stayed home – I plain forgot – but, wonderful as she is, Lyn recorded the repeat last night. That Mr. Lawrence did this forme means more than I can say, and I am forever grateful to him.

I come from a town which, should you want to, can be walked around within two hours. I got to know it like the back of my hand. I doubt I will ever know London like that. I have been living here for two years, and still know but a fraction of her laberynthine streets.

Lyn and I are currently sat by the river. We are halfway through a walk: lyn has been following her nose, and I have been following Lyn. She took us down roads, that, despite my many independent wanderings, I had never been down before. She took me to fascinating places where ancient churches butted up to ultramodern tower blocks, And thus we ended up here, to a bench by the thames watching the sun set and the twinkling lights of canary warf. London. Is before me, it seems, and I have rarely seen a more beautiful sight.

I realise it is lazy blogging, but today I would just like to flag this tv program up. The Genius of Invention aired last night, but by then we had opened a bottle of a very good south african white, so the program didn’t have my full attention. However, I just rewatched it on Iplayer, and I’m glad I did. It’s straight up my street, offering quite a good potted history of photography, early cinema and television, albeit from a scientific rather than artistic perspective. I’ve been very interested in such things for some time, so I found it a great bit of tv. Of course, it doesn’t look very deeply into it’s subject – it is, after all, only an hour long – but for what it is, it is excellent. A good springboard for other avenues of research.

Lyn is my love, and lyn is my life.

Godspeed the day lyn becomes my wife.

Curled up in bed, side by side

She is my happiness, my honour, my pride

She completes me, and makes me feel new

Picks me up when I feel blue

I feel so lucky, so glad she’s mine

So fortunate to have Lyn as my valentine.

I just gave License to Kill another viewing. As I noted here, I don’t think I quite managed to follow the plot when I went through all the bond films in my mad marathon, so a second viewing was in order. I just got around to it, and, altogh I think I missed a few details, I think I was much more comfortable with it this time. It is rather more nuanced than it’s predecessors – there seems to be more in terms of plot and character, full of double-crossings and deceits. I do feel Dalton made a fine, convincing bond: his is a three-dimensional bond, capable of making errors and acting out of vengeance. Above all, the film is a rip-roaring adventure with the right balance of wit and intrigue. It’s also a film wich came out in the late eighties, so it made me feel young again. Two hours well spent, then.

Something odd just happened on the way back from London. As I said earlier, we went to the Apple store. After we had finished there, it was time to eat. We had a nice dinner in covent garden, and then came home. everything was going as per normal: at north Greenwich, we have to transfer from the tue to the bus, so Lyn and I split up. Lyn got on the first us- a 422 – and I waited for the second. This happened to be a 472, which I was in two minds about boarding as it’s slow and doesn’t go quite where I need it to. I got on anyway. One of my fellow passengers, a fairly young girl, asked where I was going. I told her ‘Charlton village’.

”This doesn’t go there.” She replied. I tried to tell her I was fine, and capable of getting home, but she insisted on ‘helping’ me. She asked the driver to let us stop at the next stop, and told me she would help me get home. I tried to explain I didn’t need helping, that I was fine, but she ignored me. The diver stopped and put his ramp out. I protested, but, mostly for the sake of the other passengers, got off. The girl followed me, so I decided to just peg it home under my own steam. After all, I wasn’t that far from home, and I needed to get rid of this irritating girl.

Pretty soon I had left her behind me, and was preparing for a chilly walk home. But that is when something quite remarkable happened. A 486, exactly the bus I needed, drive up and stopped next to me. I wasn’t even at a stop, but it put it’s ramp out and let me on. Heaven knows what that girl had done or said, but I was instantly grateful to her – it even stopped as soon as I hit the button, which was rather odd because you’re supposed to hit it before you get to the stop you need. In all, then, a pretty cool end to a pretty cool day; If I ever see that girl again, I intend to buy her a drink.

One of the best things about having an iPad strapped to one’s lap is I can now blog on the move. I am writing this, believe it or not, waiting to pay in an apple store. Lyn and I have been rather artistic recently: this afternoon we visited the national portrait gallery, and while up here I thought we may as well visit Lynn’s favourite shop. The pictures were ok, but, as far as lyn is concerned, computers are much more interesting.

Another cool thing about having an iPad is that I can check my email on the move. My parents are away at present, and I just got their last message from brazil. It is full of news of exotic foods carnivals and uncle David’s farm. It even mentions the noble steed Shadowfax. Life in London might be fun: this may be the city of the queen, the tube, bond and several apple shops, and I find it utterly thrilling, but in brazil they know how to party…and, I have to say, the weather sounds much better there.

Ahh, time to pay.

I was watching jacob rees-mog on TV Earlier lamenting the secularisation of society, and I felt suddenly incensed. It occurred to me that If a child says they tak to their imaginary friend, and that it guides them, you smile and hope they grow out of it soon. If an adult claims to hear voices which guide him, you send him to a doctor. So why shouldn’t we do the same for those who believe in god and use that belief to dominate, discriminate and oppress others? Those on the right look down on atheists: I get the impression that they think they’re better than us, that they 6hink we are bespoiling society by taking God out of it, and that we should respect their point of view. Well, it’s time to cut the crap. to believe in god isn’t a mark of wisdom or superiority: it just means you’re a gullible idiot clinging to superstition because you”’re unable to cope with reality. why should we be forced to tolerate these morons opposed to secularisation when they perpetuate intolerance? god cannot exist – get over it, and stop sneering at those who base their ideas on religion. If we are ever to have a free, open and tolerant society, it must not privilege one belief over another, which means basing it on reason.

I suppose it has been quite a nice little weekend, all in all. Nothing much happened…Well, I say that when what I mean is, compared to some weekends Lyn and I share, nothing much happened. No gigs at the palace or appearances with Coldplay. We did, however, go out to a very nice exhibition at the South London Gallery, Peckham, yesterday, to see an exhibition about gender. Although getting there was a bit of a trek (sorry guys – my bad), we saw a couple of interesting short films about transsexuality, crossing gender lines and so on. Right up our street, and definitely something I’ll have to follow up. It was there that, inspired, I jotted down yesterday’a poem. Great stuff!

Today was also cool, but far more chilled out. I’ve mostly spent it on the sofa, reading at first, then watching TV. Believe it or not, I dob’t think I’ve ever seen ‘The Search For Spock’ until today, or at least I hadn’t since I was small. Those early trek films can be hit and miss, and I mus say I wasn’t very impressed. Nevertheless, it was good to see the old crew played as they should be; as usual, I found myself wondering whether Bill shatner could ever play Kirk again. I doubt it, but stranger things have happened: after all, we live in an epoch where the queen can be escorted to the olympics by 007. (I know I’m obsessed by it, sorry!). True, he may be too old, and but has been just under twenty years since he pulled on that uniform, but part of me wishes he would. The same applies for Patrick Stewart – I long to hear him say ‘Make It So’ one last time. Perhaps that era is gone, and I should let it become history, but what is the harm in a little nostalgia on a wet sunday afternoon.

In all, then, a pretty nice weekend. Time, then, to get dinner going, go back to my sofa, and look forward to Top Gear and then the Baftas. Here, I wonder what clarkson and his pals would make of a crippled trekkie, presently sporting a nice purple leotard…

Gay and straight. Man and woman. What are these

But words? Constructs and creations,

Reducing and reductive. Intended to imprison. There are no absolutes, no binaries and no constants

Save one. Love.

And that sets us all free.

Much is currenty being said about benefit system reforms, disability tests and ATOS. On that subject, I think I can do no better than to direct you here. It is a forceful video blog by the artist taxi driver. I must say he is surprisingly well informed about disability issues and this issue in particular, and I think he gives voice to many of the concerns ‘we’ currently have, as well as the shock others are no doubt experiencing.

I know I said I’d stop blogging about Olympic matters, but this is disability related. Team Gb have won an impressive haul of medals at the Special Olympics Winter Games in Pyeongchang, South Korea. They have picked up thirteen medals, including six golds. The Special Olympics movement is the third sibling in the Olympic Family and at least on paper it is equal with the other two: the Olympics, the Paralympics and the Special Olympics. It is for elite athletes with cognitive rather than physical disabilities, although there is some cross-over.

This is great news, but I have to ask, if these games are on a par with the Olympics and the Paralympics, why isn’t this story headline news? Last summer every time team gb won a gold it topped the news bulletin. This story is not even at the front page of the beeb’s sport page! Do people with cognitive impairments matter less? Do they not deserve the same fanfare? Indeed, before this morning, I didn’t realise these games wee happening – why wasn’t it’s opening ceremony (assuming it had one) on TV? Where were the fireworks? This strikes me as very unfair, and indeed very disrespectful to athletes who no doubt work just as hard as any other.

Part of me thinks I should be writing more entries about Lee, and that not to blog about my old school friend would to be somehow disrespectful to him and his memory; writing about other subjects implies that I have forgotten about him, and that I don’t care about his death. But how can I? Where Do I begin? What can I possibly say on here that would convey what I feel. A guy who I went through my adolescence with is now dead, as indeed most of my classmates are. I can find nothing to say about that simple, brutal fact. So I’ll continue to blog about other things, and keep that issue off here from now on – it is probably best I keep that issue personal. I will never forget Lee Mayer, or indeed any other of my classmates, even if I might not mention them here.

Intolerance. Pure intolerance.

Pure unthinking prejudice,

Which, although denied vigourously

Is there, plain and undeniable

As it has been since the beginning of time

Binding the Other, shaping him to a norm he does not fit

And doesn’t even exist!

The gay marriage debate really does piss me off. Ordinarily, of course, I wouldn’t give a damn: I know enough sociology to realise that, in many ways, marriage is an outdated institution often trapping people – usually women – into violent and abusive relationships. Yet surely if we are going to keep marriage s an institution, it must modernise to stay relevant to the twenty-first century: it must broaden it’s scope or else we may as well do away with it altogether.

I therefore get angry when those on the (far) right demand we keep it as the pairing of a man and a woman. They say they are defending marriage; they speak of the necessity to respect cultural tradition. Given that if they had their way a symbolic devision between straight and gay coupling will be maintained, their views reduce down to a type of homophobia, but when this is put to them they deny it completely. they even have the gall to claim they are the ones being discriminated against as their religious views aren’t being respected. What bull! They are effectively saying that if you believe in x you have a right to discriminate, and that it is unfair for atheists to impose their secular views on them. Although it doesn’t directly effect me and Lyn, such poppycock infuriates me as it opens the door to all kinds of abuse and intolerance defended by cynical two faced cries of discrimination against ‘traditional values’ – using such logic, all kinds of barbarity can be defended.

I just came across this brilliant australian program about disability. I’m not sure which channel it aired on, but it is hosted by disabled people, about disability issues . This episode is about AAC and supporting kids who use communication aids; there is an excellent interview with Rosemary crossley, a personal hero of mine. ‘The Last Leg’ aside, I wish we had something like this, on mainstream tv, in the uk. Bravo australia!

I realised yesterday that It has reached the fucked up point where there are fewer of my classmates left than have snuffed it since we left school. The really obscene thing, when you think about it, is that I sort of knew it was coming: I knew it had been a while since I lost someone, so I kind of guessed that sometime soon I would get a letter or email or phonecall. That sounds pessimistic, but it’s the truth – a truth arising as a consequence of having been to a special school. Thus I find myself wanting to write another entry like this, wanting to tell you about the good times. Lee Mayer was a good bloke: I wrote about him in a piece of my GCSE coursework; he came to see me when I was at uni, and even cooked for me once or twice. I was eager for him to come and see me and Lyn down here, and I was looking forward to showing him around south London. That isn’t going to happen now.

Not again. Fuck.

The following appeared this morning on my friend Lee Mayer’s Facebook page. His Cousin told me last night. I don”t know what to say – another of my classmates, and a good friend, is gone.

”Just to let you all know that Lee passed away peacefully yesterday 31st January

His family would like to thank you for your support over the past few years.

He will be greatly missed by us all.

RIP xx’