Yesterday was an awesome day indeed, just as I thought it would be. We had to get up very early (for us) at 6am, to be there before the festival started, despite Lyn not being scheduled to go on stage until 4.45. However, that gave us the day to look around the Liberty Festival and Queen Elisabeth Olympic park, which are both wonderful. While the stadium itself is still closed for it’s conversion, there was more than enough to see and do. The place is so vast, in fact, that as I did not have my electric chair we decided to borrow a mobility scooter – probably the one and only time I ever use such a thing, as I much prefer powerchairs, and yesterday confirmed I was right in my preference.

The afternoon was spent in the park, then: we had a snack and a drink at quite a nice bar there, before Lyn went on. She was wonderful! Lyn had been given a 25 minute set, so she chose to play a few of her compositions, over which she added improvisations using an app called Thumbjam. It sounded amazing, and went down well with the sizeable audience. I was sat out front, having met a couple of associates of mine; we really got into the groove. L is getting really awesome at her new performance technique, and I really want to see more

After Lyn’s slot we decided to come home – I think we were all getting tired. As I had predicted, it had indeed been an amazing day. Most importantly, Lyn seemed thrilled with how it went – at such times, it’s great to see her in her element.

A video of lyn’s set can be viewed here

Every now and again – albeit with alarming frequency – life with Lyn leads me to something truly awesome. I have seen her play at the paralympics and at buckingham palace. With her, I have seem monty python play live, and hawking run over cox, and experienced many more incredible things with her. It amazes me how often they occur, and how historic and earth shattering the usually are: events at which I can look back and say, with everlasting pride and glee, ‘I was there’.

In fact, while I better not go into too much detail I can announce that another awesome event will happen tomorrow. Lyn is scheduled to play at the Liberty festival up in stratford tomorrow afternoon. I don’t know many of the specifics, but it promises to be another awesome day; an event that I suspect will demand to be included on my growing list of truly phenomenal occasions. I really am excited about it: as I listen to L practice in the living room, given all the amazing things which have happened in our life together so far, I cannot help wondering what fun tomorrow stands to bring.

I do not think Euroskepticism is a very good word, as if one is skeptical about something, one does not believe it exists. Europe and the european union obviously exists. Rather, the term I think we should all be using is Europhobia, which, alluding to xenophobia, is much more akin to what those opposed to european cooperation feel. For theirs is a hatred, fear and intolerance: they want to shut britain off from the rest of the world, just as salmond wants to shut Scotland off from the rest of britain. Both may talk of democracy and ‘the will of the people’; both frame their arguments in all sorts of pleasant-sounding ways. But at a time when greater cooperation between the people of the world is needed, the both want to put up borders.

I heard today that tory mp Douglas Carswell has defected to ukip: a guy has moved from one collection of idiots to a collection of even bigger idiots. It’s not that surprising, and, now it comes to it, I find there is not much I can write, except that it adds a veneer of respectability to a party who, by rights, deserve only to be laughed at. At the press conference, carswell even referenced disability rights, forgetting to mention that, should the party he had just joined come to power, the welfare state would be decimated and we’d all be going begging to charity. Thus such men will say anything to appear nice, modern and tolerant, but scratch the surface and you find the oppressive out-dated attitude beneath. So let the jackass join ukip; I just hope people can see beyond the nice words to the bigots beneath. They’re not skeptics, but phobics.

On monday my old friend from uni, chris, nominated me to do the ice bucket challenge. While some might think it rather ridiculous, it’s all for a good cause and a bit of fun, although it did not seem so at the moment of drenching. Thus I can now direct you here. My charity of choice is muscular dystrophy research. In turn I nominate Luke my bro, Paula my neighbour and my friend Charlotte.

My voluntary work with the RIX centre at UEL is looking online for stories/narratives about independent living by people with disabilities. It’s interesting work, if not very taxing at this stage as I’m just data-gathering for now. However, I just found this – a british library site with hundreds upon hundreds of oral recordings by disabled people, telling their life stories. I’m not sure how useful it will be for our project – I’ve barely started to go through the collection – but it is certainly blog worthy as a major and fascinating contribution to the history of disabled people.

I just checked the headlines, and I am suddenly deeply, deeply sad. The bbc reports that Richard Attenborough has died, aged 90. Like his brother David, Richard Attenborough was a great man: when I first saw Gandhi ten years away, it blew me away, opening my eyes to a part of history, a man and a way of thinking I knew nothing of. Brighton Rock and In which We Serve are classics, and of course I adore Attenborough in Jurassic Park, touching upon the last scene from it in my thesis. Today is a very sad day indeed, for British cinema and world cinema as a whole, has lost one of it’s greatest.

Further to the row started by Richard Dawkins the other day, which I note here, I just came across this Mirror article. It reports how a young lady with downs has just passed six GCSEs, albeit at grade E. Her parents are obviously very proud, and call Dawkins an ignorant idiot sitting in an ivory tower. E or A, that is quite an achievement, and, given the girl in question is obviously enjoying life, I think it certainly puts pay to Dawkins’ attitude.

I had not been to ouch in ages, but this afternoon being a slow, lazy saturday afternoon, I thought I’d give the beeb’s old disability website a look over. It has changed quite radically from the Ouch I often frequented a decade ago – it’s now a blog. While there, I came across this diary, written by Charlotte documenting her first days at university. She has cp, and also studied film and cultural studies. I only scanned it, but I could see a lot of myself in those words, especially in the words ”Ok, I may get a massive hangover but I have already had to miss out on so many normal things that teenagers do and this would be yet something else to add to the list. Screw personal safety that’s what I say, well that’s how I feel sometimes!” Although we differ in some aspects – I think she is more conscientious about work than I was, and she is religious – I was reminded of that chap ten years ago, fining his way in the brave new world of university, hoping he would fit in. I wonder, too, where this young woman is now; I hope she got as much out of university as I did.

I was struck by an interesting idea or a blog entry yesterday afternoon. Which is cooler: 007 escorting the queen to the Olympics, or Professor hawking singing the galaxy song. I adore both, and thought it might be fun to compare the two. I could not decide anything firm, though, so I decided to sleep on it. This morning, however, I still did not know how I could type such an entry: the central issue is, of course, how one could define ‘cool’. Like awesome, it is a term everyone uses yet is highly subjective. In fact, when I consulted Lyn about this last night, she simply clicked her fingers, which struck me as very astute! So trying to evaluate the relative coolness of two very cool things is no easy task. On the one hand we have the most suave, sophisticated spy ever alongside the queen doing something nobody could ever have expected her to do; on the other we have the king of physics running his fellow physicist over, then singing a song bout the galaxy. Both play with our expectations and our conception of roles – who could have predicted either, but there they are. Yet at the same time they both seem in character, given that bond is indeed one of her majesty’s agents and that Hawking is known for his expertise in cosmology and the galaxy. While the Bond film has higher production values, and perhaps breaks convention to a greater extent – it was the queen entering into the world of James Bond, after all – both films excite me, make me laugh and thrill me. They are both examples of a type of play with convention and expectation I love, although I’m not sure I can say why. They are both irreverent; they both break the mould. While there is more I can get my analytical teeth into with the bond film, the Hawking film adds another connection to my spiderweb of awesomeness. The former unambiguously alludes to the parachute jump at the opening of The Spy Who Loved Me, one of my cinephiliac moments I write about in my masters thesis; the latter occurred on possibly the most fantastic night of my life. While some may view this as a silly question, I find it interesting to examine the motives behind my adoration, and to speculate about which of these short films makes me squeal with glee more.

Which is cooler? Who knows! to me they both just rule.

Long ago, I decided to stay away from debates such as those over abortion on my blog. That was primarily because I could not decide who was right: Is a foetus alive? when does life begin? right of foetus vs right of baby, and so on. I turned my computer on this morning, though, and found a link to this article in the independent: Richard Dawkins as advised the abortion of foetuses with down syndrome, saying ‘Abort it and try again – it would be immoral to bring it into the world’.

Oh smeg…and so it begins!

The guy is, of course, entitled to his opinion; and as I said, I ca’t fully decide who is right myself. Yet I instantly think of the guys I know from school, with all sorts of conditions, who may have been aborted using this ‘moral’ logic. Indeed, using it, others may have called for my euthinisation after my birth: Dawkins says that he draws the line between DS and other conditions such as autism because people with autism can make a contribution to society. But when I was small it was not clear how intelligent I was, or how much I’d be able to contribute; the same, I assume, goes for Lyn, and now look at the pair of us – a master’s degree and a record producer. Moreover, people with ds certainly can contribute, albeit in their own way: I’ve seen people with downs syndrome make music, create art, sing beautifully. It would have been a great shame if they had not lived.

Life is precious. I don’t mean that in any religious sense, but that it is hugely varied and beautiful. Any human being contributes to the world in his or her own way, be it with a Masters thesis or smiling at a carer as she feeds you. Any life is worth living if it is a happy one. Thus Dawkins is wrong, and deserves the shitstorm which is now no doubt coming his way.

I have finally found the Stephen Hawking section of monty Python Live I loved so much when we saw it. Although it is a fan upload, and thus is prone to be taken down, the piece of epic gloriousness can be viewed here.

Today we are shown how depaived man can be, and the barbarities he can stoop to. How can one man take a knife and behead another? And in the name of what? Religion! Faith! The very thing which is suppose to make us live in peace and harmony. It is enough to make one sigh, or else shiver. What have we come to. As the prince of Denmark asked in irony and despair: what a thing is man?

Every now and again – as I’m sure most people do – I catch mention of something that I suddenly feel inspired to Google. Earlier on the local news, Richard Branson was mentioned. ‘Cool guy’ I thought, ‘Let’s look him up’. So I did, and what I found initially impressed and even excited me: Branson’s empire of Caribbean islands, megayaghts, airlines, spacecraft and just about everything else under the sun seemed exotic. I thought I liked him at first – he did have a cameo in Casino Royale, after all. But then I looked a fraction deeper, and found a man who definitely is not cool: a man who has been accused of evading tax; a man who once proposed paying NHS GPs to refer patients to virgin healthcare. I soon saw him as just another capitalist, albeit a lucky, charismatic one. I had fallen briefly into neoliberal hero worship. Thinking about it this afternoon, I realised that such people should not be seen as heroes, for they are just greedy. Who cares how many private islands a guy has. It would be far cooler if he had used his energy and luck to contribute to society, to improve everyone’s lives not just his own. As I was saying to dad when he visited earlier, we must see ourselves as members of a group rather than as individuals. We need to progress as one. Yes, Branson might give to charity to salve his bourgeois guilt, and may even profess left-wing tendencies, but the essential fact remains others starve while he sips martinis on his private beach; and the same selfish mentality which won him his empire also motivates the Tories and their cuts, currently doing so much damage.

Islamic State militants could grow strong enough to target people on the streets of Britain unless action is taken, David CaMoron has warned. With more and more religious leaders weighing into the debate, calling for action to protect christians in Iraq against Islamic extremists, it occurs to me that this whole affair is starting to look like a crusade. We – the so-called western powers of Europe and America – seem to be being sucked into a religious war in the middle-east, fighting against a bunch of religious nutters seemingly capable of acts of utter barbarity. As I wrote on here a couple of days ago, I disdain religion in all it’s forms. Things like this crusade in iraq is just more evidence of it’s folly. That aside, though, the more pressing concern is where all this violence is leading: something tells me that things in Iraq are about to get very bloody indeed.

The beeb is reporting today that a survey of 52 of Britain’s 100 most visited attractions by charity Vitalise found 63% were not fully wheelchair-accessible.

I just thought I would flag that up, being the conscientious crip-blogger that I am, although it is hardly worth noting. I mean, what a surprise! Anyone who uses a wheelchair knows how hard it can be to get into and around some places. Most modern venues are okay, but older places can be a nightmare, so much so tat eventually one gives up even trying altogether. I suppose one must be thankful for the bbc for bringing the subject up, although it’s hard not to just greet the story with a derisory yawn.

The latter half of last night’s channel four news had me flying into a white-hot rage. On it, they reported how an evangelist christian singer in the states had come out as a lesbian, and how she was struggling to reconcile her sexuality with her fundamentalist faith. They then set up a debate between her and a pastor who claims homosexuality to be a type of mental illness, against god and so on. The question it left me wondering was, why do we still give airtime to such bullshit? I immediately tweeted to Channel four news,why do you have bigoted imbeciles who invoke outdated superstitions to promote homophobia on your program? That’s all it boils down to: the guy was using an outdated, irrational belief system to legitimise bigotry. In any other situation, no tv channel would waste their time on such stupidity. If, say, someone said they believed in a invisible flying monkey and that that monkey demanded he persecuted everyone who wore glasses, he would probably be institutionalised for his own safety and that of others. Why then are these pastors in america allowed to spread their hatred and intolerance? Is it not time we saw their twisted bastardised religion for what it is and treated them like the deranged bigots they are? Surely it is time we, as a civilisation, start to give religion the scrutiny it deserves, for that which motivated the bigoted homophobe also motivates people in the middle east to strap bombs to children and send them to die. If religion can be used to legitimise persecution; if it can be used by men to demand an authority they do not deserve simply by quoting a discredited, outdated text; then it is time we outgrew it. It is time we treated such ‘pastors’ as the hateful madmen they are, either institutionalising or medicating them as we would any other schizophrenic who claimed to have imaginary friends, or else ignoring them as we would ay other fascist.

Not that I particularly like country music, but just because it highlights some of the sexism in music videos of all kinds, and is as funny as smeg, I think I’ll flag this up. (I hope that link works). Lazy blogging I know, but those who know me will see why I just had to link to it; there are also some quite serious ideas behind it.

Last night we watched Dead Poet’s Society. Believe it or not I had never seen it before,, but Dom suggested putting it on. There is something strange about watching a film starring an actor you know has recently died: the film feels different, like when you look at a painting under a new light. It felt as if it had gained a weird melancholy, or even an ominousness; a feeling of punctum but one divorced from ideas of the contingent or accidental. It was like looking at a photo of people taken before some great war, and thinking ”those poor fools”. I suppose this applies especially to Dead Poets Society given that it deals with a suicide.

For me, the odd thing to reflect upon was how the feel of the film was changed completely, simply through knowing what had happened in the ‘real world’. Every line Williams delivered seemed somehow more profound, tinged now with sadness. It seems to me that we can never again watch any of this man’s films without sighing, without reflecting on the fact that the unbridled joy, wit and energy we see on screen is a mere charade; the teacher may have extolled the wonders of life and poetry to his students, but it seems now that such joix d’vive only went so far. The feeling of these films has changed forever.

[img description=”undefined image” align=”centre”]/images/captain my captain.jpg[/img] ”Captain my captain!’

I suppose I should type something today about Robin Williams’ death here today. He was, of course, a great actor, and one of my favourites as a boy, appearing in things like Hook and Aladdin. The truth is, like most people I suppose, I feel pretty miserable about it: he was such a great, funny man, so apparently full of wit and fun, that to now hear that he was so depressed and had so many demons to fight is a dark, dark revelation. Reflecting on that takes us all to a very bleak place: in fact, combined with the fact that both my chairs are out of action, I’ve ben feeling quite low about this all afternoon. I’m not sure what is worse: to hear that one of humanity’s brightest lights has gone out so prematurely, or to hear that that light was just an illusion all along, a tormented man’s mask to hide something dark and terrible.

Today is my brother Mark’s birthday, and his first since he became a father. I get to see lots of photos of Oliver as he grows up, such as the one I wrote about yesterday, although we prefer to keep them private to the family. They make me feel proud of mark: he has become a fine man, husband and father. I love him lots, and really need to sort out seeing more of him and his family – after all, I have a nephew to get to know. For now, though, I’ll just wish him a happy birthday, and hope that he, Kat and Oliver have a fun day.

A lazy, humdrum rather boring Sunday afternoon; I was just starting to nod off on the sofa, listening to the tv and the winds blow outside. But then, I came in here to check facebook, and saw something that made me well up: Kat has posted a picture of Oliver there, sat on my dad’s lap and holding a small toy cricket bat. What made the photo special – indeed, rather punctic – was the fact that they were sat at the old family kitchen table. At that table, my brothers and I grew up; the table of countless breakfasts and sunday lunches; the table where I used to sit and draw as a young boy; the table I remember Mum roll pastry on; the table where we played monopoly and Risk and Dungeons And Dragons. It is a family table, full of memory, and to see little Oliver sat at it now, the newest member of the family, makes me feel very happy, as if another generation is now growing up at it.

Simply because I can say ‘I know that dude’, and there is a disability link, I think I’ll flag this up today. Last night’s proms programme on bbc four was cohosted by Nick McCarthy, who Lyn and I know from the Paraorchestra. Appropriately, or otherwise, he was presenting a prom featuring French pianist Alexandre Tharaud performing Ravel’s Piano Concerto for the Left Hand. I just think it is awesome how, every now and again these days, I spot someone on the telly who I et through Lyn and/or the paraorchestra. I suppose it is to be expected when living with a megastar! Anyway, Nick is a top guy and its good to see him doing such things, as well as to see disabled people getting a bit of increased representation on the box. Enjoy the music.

I think everyone should read this wonderful article by Francesca Martinez. In it, she explains how she learned how to overcome societal pressures to conform, and how capitalism demands that everyone adheres to it’s narrow definition of ‘norma’. She explains how he used to, as a person with cp, feel the need to hide her wobble, but now she sees getting away from oppressive notions of normality as a form of civil disobedience. I could not agree more; it is what I try to do. We must all embrace ourselves and our diversity; we must overcome pressures to conform. We are constantly told we are wrong or strange by the right-wing press and by capitalists; but they are wrong. We are normal. As martinez puts it, ”Embrace your body, whatever shape it is and however it works, because it gives you this wonderful, crazy, beautiful, fleeting experience called life.” Please go read.

It is with the greatest pleasure that I can direct you here, to the video of my Masters graduation. The observant among you will spot that I graduated with the wrong faculty, but the fact is I could not make it to the cheshire ceremony, and besides I would not have been along students I knew there either having left campus so long ago. Either way, I’m very proud indeed that I graduated this year. As I wrote here, it was a proud, emotional day for me, marking my greatest achievement yet. To see my bit, zoom along to the one hour five minute mark. Cooly, as with my first graduation, I again got the biggest cheer, although that may have been simply because I was the last person to cross the stage!

I just stumbled over something incredible, almost completely by accident. I had never watched ‘A liar’s Autobiography’ before, and indeed had barely heard of it, but as it was on bbc four tonight and had something to do with Monty Python, I thought I would give it a watch. I just expected the usual mix of Python gags, and to go to bed chuckling. I quickly saw that it was an animation, of course, but the first ten minutes or so did not strike me as all that funny. However, I then realised something I did not expect: the animation styles were changing. It was jumping between animation styles, interspersing them with snippets of live action, in a way I had never seen before. It was as if film style itself was being played with, juxtaposed to fit the mood of the scene. It struck me as completely original. Moreover, it soon became clear that, while it was a film about a comic group and had many comic moments, the film itself was actually quite dark, telling the story of Graham Chapman’s life, including his fight with alcoholism, for example. I quickly became very impressed; I just watched an astounding, serious piece of film, very interestingly constructed, which would be well worth a second viewing.

I do not see the point of writing much on here tonight. For one thing, I missed yesterday’s commonwealth closing ceremony, not being that interested in what was essentially a pop concert, so I cannot post any kind of review. Further, today marks a century since the beginning of one of the most horrific conflicts in history: I cannot write anything, say anything, for what can one say about that folly? I could wax lyrical in my usual pretentious way about the savagery of it all; I could quote Wilfred Owen. But those would be the hollow words of a pampered cripple. I know nothing of war, save that it is the truest symbol of mans utter stupidity. And I can say no more.

It’s definitely time to chill today. The last two or three weekends have been fairly hectic for me, involving epic things like going to see Monty Python and graduating my masters. While both events were truly phenomenal, I think I need a rest today. Yesterday was a great day too: I went to watch the cricket in the park, and although my team, Blackheath, lost (they actually got thrashed!) all involved had a great time. We partied a bit after the match, so I currently feel a little delicate. Time, then, to kick back on the sofa, stay off the beer for a few days, get some rest and look forward to the next round of awesomeness.

Yesterday I was struck by the the idea of going to Destination Star Trek London. The curious thing is, I’d perviously dismissed the idea: I don’t know why, but I’d ruled it out. However, inspired by seeing Python a couple of weekends ago, and hungry for more fannish action, this morning I decided to set off for the excel exhibition centre to see if I could buy tickets.

Getting there was easy, and indeed rather fun: it involves going up to the O2 and then taking the Emerates airline over the river, by far my favourite mode of London public transport. You can see for miles up there, and it reminds you just how vast this city is. Then, on the north bank, it was a quick roll to the national exhibition centre. The only problem was, once there it emerged that there was no box office, and tickets were only available online. With python, I had simply sauntered up to the O2 and asked for tickets – I find it the best way to make sure everything, such as wheelchair spaces, are arranged. Yet it seemed I’d gone in vain. Mind you, I noticed some very coot things that side of the rive that might be worth further investigation.

With that set off home, once again enjoying the view from the cablecar. Once back, I did what I could have done all along and bought the tickets online. Nice and easy, but nowhere near as fun. And now it seems that we have something else to look forward to.