For the first time ever yesterday, Lyn and I went for a walk in our chairs, just by ourselves. Before now, she has had to have someone pushing her in her manual chair; but yesterday it was just us two. Now that she has a powerchair, she can leave the PA at home and we can share a loving walk. It felt wonderful yesterday. Of course, we didn’t go far – I didn’t want to push our luck, and to e honest I felt a bit nervous – but Lyn drove well, and hopefully it was just the first of many. I think we’ll now be going on such walks quite regularly. It will help Lyn gain confidence in her chair, and it will be a wonderful way for us to spend some quality time together.

Believe it or not, I’m happy. Imagine that: little old spastic me, barely able to walk and talk, happy! What have I got to be happy about? Well, when you think about it, is it so hard to believe? I have a wonderful partner, a great home, a loving, supportive family, and live in the greatest, most exciting city on earth. What have I got to be sad about? Yet according to this excellent article by Tom Shakespeare, many people still assume that people with disabilities must be miserable; they associate disability with sadness. That baffles me, I must say. Certainly, having CP can be a pain in the butt sometimes, but that is most often due to external factors:* I’m not miserable because I use a straw to drink, but I’m miserable when a restaurant doesn’t have any straws. I’m not miserable because I use a wheelchair, but I am when I can’t go to places because there are no ramps or lifts. The situation is therefore much more nuanced than many people seem to assume. I do not lounge about all day feeling sorry for myself, just because I can’t physically do some of the things others can. I enjoy life: I write (using my special extended keyboard); I go for walks (in my wheelchair); I go to pubs (armed with straws). I have done so many incredible things in my life, I genuinely don’t get why people would assume I’m miserable, or that I live a less satisfactory life than anyone else.

*This is, of course, leaving aside the experience of going to special school. Watching one’s classmates pass away one by one is certainly not a happy aspect of being disabled.

I can’t claim I know much about TTIP. I know it’s a huge trade deal with america, and much is currently being said about it. It’s rules apparently state that a government body cannot get in the way of business, so some people think it’s a threat to the NHS. Outers are using the issue to scare people into voting to leave the EU. Of course, if it was true, I would be concerned too: the NHS is an issue which outranks all others, and if I thought our continued membership of the EU threatened it, I’d vote out. But it doesn’t. I just found this article on Labour list, explaining that health is one of the areas exempt from TTIP.

[quote=”Rachel Reeves”]As a US-EU joint declaration last month made clear, TTIP will not ”prevent governments, at any level, from providing or supporting services in areas such as water, education, health, and social services.” EU officials have been at pains to ensure that health services will not be covered by the deal. Cecilia Malmstrom, the Swede who runs the EU’s trade policy, has categorically said that ”health services will not be affected in any way by TTIP.”[/quote]

Thus the outers are using an issue we all care about to fool people into leaving the EU. It’s baffling when you think about it. Why would the EU suddenly want to destroy the NHS, when in the past they have supported it? And why would people who ordinarily want the NHS privatised such a Boris Johnson suddenly want to defend it? It’s a sickeningly cynical ploy on behalf of the outers: they are trying to play on people’s fears, pretending to champion a national institution at the very moment that, according to this Guardian article, the tories have embarked on a ”conscious strategy to run the service down to a point where privatisation can be sold to the public as a way of improving things.” TTIP is no threat to the NHS, and nor is the EU. For the outers to say it is, to pretend to suddenly care about something most of them want broken up, perfectly demonstrates the type of people we are dealing with. While I have a few concerns about TTIP, and, as explained here, one cannot be absolutely sure what will be effected until everything is worked out, in all probability the NHS will be safeguarded. For the outers to use an issue they wouldn’t ordinarily care about to try to fool people into siding with them, is utterly contemptible.

wonderful news! Lyn has a new electric wheelchair. We just got home from the hospital, and L is testing it out. I’ve never seen her like this: she looks so happy and confident, the change in her is amazing. It’s as if getting this chair has turned something on in her which was not quite there before. It’s a shame she had to wait so long for it – Lyn required some quite specialized adaptations – but now she has her own powerchair, I think this is the start of a thrilling new chapter in our lives.

It might be a few months old, but I just came across this interesting Youtube vid by Michael Palin about keeping a diary again. Having kept a blog for thirteen years, I can certainly understand the urge to record: something just compels one to write, every day or so, as if it makes time more concrete. What pricked my attention, though, were Palin’s comments on going back an editing an entry after you write it. An entry, he suggests, can only record one’s thoughts and feelings on a certain day; to go back and change it after it is written is somehow dishonest. I know what he means, and used to impose such a rule on myself, but the urge to edit or add to an entry after I’d posted it got to much, especially if it was about something I cared about. I suppose that just highlights the difference between blogs and diaries: whereas a diary is a very personal, static record of one’s thoughts in time, a blog is public, meant to be read by others, so if something changes, or you think of something you want to add, you can. Maybe the shift from one to the other shows how public our lives have now all become. I know I’ve written about this before, but it occurs to me that this is a symptom of our changed relationship with time: in this postmodern era, the past is no longer fixed; we can rewrite it, altering history. Perhaps some would call that dishonest, but it just shows just how intangible ideas like ‘the past’, ‘truth’ and ‘reality’ really are.

Where the fuck is Jeremy Hunt’s resignation this morning? The guy is a disgrace. The NHS is the most wonderful institution ever created; the medical professionals who work in it all deserve our respect. Instead, the p’tahk Hunt treats them like shit, thinking he can bully them into accepting a contract we all know will put patients in danger. Nobody is against the concept of a seven-day NHS. In fact, it already functions 24/7. This dispute is about how that is funded: to do so properly, the doctors argue more resources need to be put into the NHS, something the tories refuse to do. That’s where the problem lies.

Rather than listening to their concerns, the tories are blatantly trying to manipulate the public into turning against the NHS. The issue could easily be resolved, but the tories don’t want to – they’d rather make political capital. It’s sickeningly cynical. They say they value the NHS while treating it with utter contempt; no doubt this is part of their overall plan to eventually beak it up. If Hunt had any honour, he would resign; but he’s a tory, and none of those arrogant insults to humanity has any. They want to push the NHS so hard that it crumbles and the public start to turn against it, at which time they can foist an American-style free market system on us. The tories would welcome that: they hate everything fair and equal, and loathe paying taxes into a system which helps others. But where will it leave ‘ordinary’ people, or those with disabilities? Lyn and I try to avoid going to the hospital whenever possible, but it’s reassuring to know it’s there should we need it. The tories think that that safety net should only be there for those who can afford private health insurance, and to hell with the rest of us. That’s why they are trying to destroy the NHS, and why it is imperative we stop them. They’re pushing it and pushing it, hoping it will crumble. They are trying to cast the doctors as the bad guys, hoping that the public will turn against them. Thus I support the doctors’ strike and demand Hunt’s resignation: our greatest institution must be maintained, for the good of all.

I was just doing one of my regular searches for Star Trek news, and stumbled on to this piece of sheer awesomeness. A short film responding to people like Theresa May, who say that the ECHR somehow holds us back, it has Sir Patrick Stewart as a prime minister asking cabinet ‘what has the European Convention on Human Rights ever done for us?’ Thus not only does it use one of my favourite actors (who I have met, by the way) in clear reference to a classic scene from Monty Python (who I’ve seen live by the way) but it does so to make a very good point about the biggest issue of the current moment and something I care deeply about. I love it!

When it comes to the question of readership and influence, I try not to hold any illusions. I know very few people read my blog – just my family, friends, and a few people I’ve told about it. That’s why I keep my entries short, and write about things which interest me on any given day. I’m not out to persuade anyone of anything. I’ve noticed, however, that other bloggers take a different approach: they seem to think having a blog means you have power. They give themselves remits, finding subjects to blog about and sticking to that subject. In the disability community in particular, there are one or two sites which seem to have nominated their selves as ‘our’ prime news sources, taking it upon themselves to relate every bit of disability- and welfare-related news to us, as if they were our only source of information. I wouldn’t object – each to their own, and so on – but the way they insist in putting their links in every disability-related facebook page and forum implies these writers think they are of a higher status than the rest of us, when they have just as much access to the primary sources of information as anyone else. In a relatively small community like ours, I have problems with someone taking such a position for himself, and telling everyone to come to him for their disability and welfare-related news. It would be fine if such sites were just called blogs, on a par with the rest of the blogsphere; or else they could set up a proper disability news website with a proper staff; yet to inflate a site to such a position, as if it somehow outranks ‘normal blogs’ like mine, seems to me a tad egotistical.

I feel I should write something about Shakespeare today. He is, of course, a major influence in my life as a writer; I first came across him, like most British children, in GCSE English. We studied Macbeth, and from the first few lines I was in love with the sheer richness of the language. Something in the way he used words blew me away, both in their rhyme and rhythm and the imagery they conjured up. However, that is not an uncommon experience, and, truth be told, I’ve not had many dealings with the Bard for quite some time.

I was mucking around on Youtube yesterday afternoon, though, when I found this. It’s the first part of a two part appraisal of Klingon Hamlet. I’m flagging it up here for a couple of reasons: not only does it tie one of my favourite filmic franchises into a current event, but it is a great example of fandom merging with cinaphilia. The guy who made it is clearly very intelligent; he knows what he’s talking about, both in terms of Shakespeare and Star Trek. He has obviously sat down and thought about what he wants to say. More to the point, he alludes to a wide range of references, both classical and contemporary, mixing them with a great deal of confidence to form persuasive arguments. It strikes me that this is exactly the type of hybrid of fandom and cinephilia I speculate about in my Master’s. There is a type of joviality in his delivery – the type of playfulness we often see on Youtube videos of it’s type. Yet that is mixed with a high-brow refinement and an at least Bachelor’slevel knowledge of film. What he says in this as well as his other videos reminds me of the young turk writers of Cahiers du Cinema, unafraid to engage with texts from all sorts of levels, throwing in references to all manner of classical and contemporary sources.

I am thus deeply impressed with the stuff this guy makes. In fact, watching a few of his videos yesterday, I began to feel a little stupid: the arguments he was making seemed obvious, yet had not occurred to me before he put them. His knowledge is not only wide ranging, but rich and deep. He puts me to shame. Yet this impressive knowledge is communicated, not in prose, but in chatty videos, expertly edited to include all kinds of references. It is that combination of style and content which interests me: a new type of engagement with film, and a new way to display that engagement.

No wonder the Outers are up in arms today. While I didn’t see Obama’s speech, I just read this Guardian account of it. He burst so many bubbles, dashed so many of their fanciful hopes, that they have little choice other than to try to play it down. I, on the other hand, think Obama spoke a lot of truth: leaving the EU would lessen Britain; we would go from being a prime player in a community of nations to an inwards-looking, irrelevant little nation who cut itself off from it’s main trading partner. Far from trading directly with countries like america, we’d largely be ignored: America et al would just forget about us and deal directly with Europe. This isn’t to try to play down Britain, but to simply state quite an obvious truth. The outers can try to dismiss Obama’s intervention all they like – some of their comments get pretty close to racism – but it doesn’t change anything. His advice is valid and sound: stay in the EU and remain an active participant in world affairs; leave it, and become an irrelevance.

I think there’s a good chance I’ll soon be on Google streetview. I was just down at Asda, trying to make myself useful by getting some groceries. On my way back, I noticed an odd-looking car waiting at the traffic lights. It had an odd blue thing on its roof. As I got closer, I realised it was the streetview car. I drove right past it, so I think there’s a reasonable chance I’ll be appearing about here soon – keep checking.

I’m up rather early for me – I haven’t seen a 7am in quite some time. However, yesterday my old fried Charlotte came to visit: she has an interview down in Kent today, and needed somewhere to tay the night. It was great to see her. Last night, we all went up to the o2 for a meal, and had a superb time. The food was awesome, the conversation great. I was able to catch up with news from Manchester (that makes it sound so remote) and generally reminisce. We didn’t get back too late as C had an early start, although as usually happens when I see her drink started to flow – old habits die hard. I just waved her off, wishing her luck and hoping it isn’t too long before I see my old friend again.

I think I’ll just go with the flow today and wish the queen a happy ninetieth birthday. My feelings towards the queen are somewhat contradictory. On the one hand is the question of whether monarchy has any place in the twenty-first century. While I know the queen has no real power – theoretically at least – and the monarchy is just a tourist attraction, it is nonetheless a tourist attraction we spend millions on to maintain. That money could be much better used. Why spend so much tax payers money on keeping a single family, whose wealth and privilege was inherited and not earned, living like…well…royalty? All my leftist instincts say we should do away with the lot.

On the other hand, I must admit I have a soft spot for the queen. She has been a constant throughout most of our lives; she has been there since before I was born, and indeed since before my parents were born. I have to respect someone who is prepared to fill a role she never asked for for over sixty years. However luxurious it may be, just think how many events, openings that is. To be expected to go places, say nice things, and probably have the same conversation over and over again, year after year, must get wearisome. Most of us would have jacked it in years ago. That deserves my respect.

Mind you, I might have thought differently before 2012. Sorry to keep going back to this, but the queens appearance with James Bond at the olympic opening ceremony demonstrated that she didn’t see herself as ‘above’ popular culture. One might have expected her to say ”definitely not”, as if she was too noble or high born.

Instead, she was game. As I wrote here, I feel that that is worthy of my respect. It changed our relationship with the monarch; it made her seem less distant or remote. It showed she knows about the stuff we like. More personally, it also echoes the parachute jump from the Spy Who Loved Me, which I wrote about in my masters thesis – I love that the two are linked.

Thus while I know what I’m supposed to say about hereditary monarchy being an utter anachronism which we need to do away with, I can’t help liking old Liz. She has always been there – a comforting constant throughout our lives. She is like David Attenborough on the TV, ashes cricket, or the towel which you brought from your parents and remember being dried with as a child. Whether my attitude about this will change when the queen finally goes remains to be seen, but for now I’ll just wish her majesty a very happy ninetieth birthday.

Huge Attenborough fan that I still am – Richard and David – I think I must flag this quite incredible story up. Although I’ve often heard about Sir David’s famous Zoo Quest Series, I have never seen a full episode. It was his first work with the bbc, from 1954, and was shot in black and white. According to that report, however, ”when footage [of the original program] was unearthed by the BBC Natural History Unit last year it was found to have been shot in colour.” Sad film and TV geek that I am, I find that thrilling: not only are these programs often said to be milestones in British broadcasting history, but they also mark the beginning of the career of one of the few people one can truly call great. Better still, the unearthed programs will now air on bbc Four on 11 May.

I never got into Game of Thrones. I know I should have: it is a huge part of mainstream culture, and, fantasy and sci-fi geek that I purport to be, I should have sat down to watch it from beginning to end, but that would have meant making an effort to go get the DVDs, sitting down to watch them on a regular basis, and, well, you know…Anyway, I sort of lost interest once they killed off Sean Bean’s character at the end of the first season.

Nonetheless, today I just want to flag this interesting Irish Times piece up. Apparently, people are starting to compare Game of Thrones to Lord of the Rings, asking which is better. Fans of Game of Thrones say their text is more nuanced, complex and multi-layered; whereas in Tolkien’s work characters are either entirely good or entirely evil. While I see where they’re coming from, as the article points out, it’s not quite that simple. There’s plenty of nuance in Tolkien’s dramatis personae: look at Gollum, for one. How much more torn and schizophrenic can a character get? Then there’s Boromir, a good man brought down by sheer temptation. Thus, if you look at the text properly, I don’t think the accusations of simplicity and reductivism hold.

Besides, I don’t think such comparisons are useful. They always crop up in fandom, of course, most famously in the Star Trek Vs Star Wars debate. Yet the two are separate texts; they differ in style and form, and tell us different things. Both may be works of fantasy, but they were written in different eras and styles. LOTR was born of the wreckage of the first and second world wars, whereas GOT is more contemporary. Thus for GOT fans to try to start criticising LOTR for being too reductive, and to try to say theirs is somehow superior, strikes me as childish. In fact it reminds me of the Ghostbusters vs Turtles fights I used to have with my school friends when I was about five. We should instead ask what either text reveals of the human condition in it’s own right.

I think I’ll just flag this video from jeremy Corbyn up today (sorry it’s on facebook). It might just be my imagination, but the tone Corbyn uses in it is quite different from usual political vids. There is an urgency to it; a seriousness. It’s as if he no longer wants to play the game or muck about: what the tories are doing to the country, in destroying public services and the NHS; in ruining education and making schools compete, forces us to move beyond normal etiquette. It’s as if he’s suggesting we rise up, although he doesn’t say how. I agree entirely: this has gone beyond waiting for the next election. Day after day, I see reports of people dying due to the tories’ cuts; people are suffering because these stains on humanity want to cut taxes for their rich friends. Something has to be done [b]now[/b] – the tories have to go!

Another reason for me not being up at the protest yesterday was that I had plans to go to the BFI. Dom suggested going up there during the week: they are currently having a Shakespeare on Film season, and he thought it might be cool to go check it out. I heartily agreed, so yesterday he and I made our way up to the Southbank (another part of the capital I just love) to watch Roman Polanski’s classic, Macbeth.

I studied Macbeth for GCSE English, and this film had been mentioned then, but until last night I had never seen it in it’s entirety. It struck me as a masterpiece: while I think Polanski changes the scene sequence a little, it is a very faithful adaptation. I found myself reciting many lines as the actors were saying them, and was surprised how much I remembered. Then again, it is a very memorable text with a lot of dark imagery, which Polanski translated well to screen. There is quite a bit of gory violence, and zombified witches shown in the nude. In fact, it struck me that it went well with having seen Lyn’s new video earlier in the day; there were a lot of similarities in terms of aesthetic, and they seemed to complement each other in my mind. Yesterday for me was a very goth sort of day, it seems.

I had not been sure what Dom would make of it. He’s from Poland, and I was worried he would struggle with the Elizabethan english. However, he seemed to cope, and in fact said he recognised many things from Polish literature in the film. That would make sense, given Polanski is Polish. For me, it felt good to both reacquaint myself with a text I got to know as a teenager, and to see a classic piece of cinema. We both came out of the BFI having liked what we’d seen, then, and after a quick drink at the bar, were making our way home, resolving to go there again soon.

Forces of darkness, come hither! Prey go here, to Lyn’s latest music video, Bohemian Grove, a deliciously dark piece and one of her best. Quite where she got this new Satanic streak from I know not, but it’s one of her most expertly and artfully constructed pieces. The fusion of deep, oppressive music with some frankly quite disturbing imagery is perfect.

I’m currently seeing reports on Facebook of another large anti-Tory protest up in central London. The impression I’m getting is that it’s even bigger than the one last week, but that’s just going by what I can glean online. Thousands of people are apparently calling for CaMoron’s resignation. My chair is currently having it’s battery replaced, otherwise I would probably be there with them. The strange thing is, there’s not a word about it on the bbc website; you’d think they would be eager to cover such massive popular uprisings, if just to maintain their position as the uk’s primary news source. But then, we all know that the tories will want to keep this quiet, and that, post Hutton, the Beeb knows it has to behave itself. Thus I doubt we’ll be seeing much about these protests from the bbc or any of the mainstream broadcasters (and they say we are a democracy – ha!) but at least we can go to RT to see what is really going on. It’s just dismaying to see this news being subdued in the mainstream.

I think I need to flag this fascinating and well-argued Guardian piece up. It is an outline of neoliberalism, arguing that this small-government, individualist ideology is the root cause of most of our problems today. That’s pretty self-evident, when you think about it: a system which promotes deregulation, a minimised state and encourages greed while blaming the most vulnerable people in society for their own woe is bound to lead to a massively unequal society where natural and human resources are utterly abused. The problem is, until we stop caring only about ourselves and see ourselves as one society, valuing each person’s contribution however small, I don’t see neoliberalism ending.

I have given up watching Question Time as it was getting too agitated. I was getting so pissed off every Thursday evening that I was on the verge of breaking something. Such apploplexsysms of rage weren’t good for my heart, and led to Lyn giving me curious, disapproving looks. It seems I was right to stop, as this clip from last night’s show might well have had me destroying the TV. In it, a woman from the audience calls Tory scumbag Daniel Hannan up on tory cuts, outlining the damage and suffering they were causing while the wealthy were getting a tax cut. The venom, sadness and anger in what the lady was very obvious; but instead of apologising for causing so much harm as anyone with a shred of humanity would, Hannan tried to blame the EU for his crimes. While we contribute to the EU budget, the investment the UK gets from being a member is worth more, so for him to try to deflect the anger he and his party are rightly due onto his hate figure is utterly crass. The tories refuse to even acknowledge that what they are doing is hurting people who cannot defend themselves. He was trying to manipulate the audiences anger for his own ends – the EU has nothing to do with cuts born entirely of the tories’ greed-based, inhumane ideology. I’m deeply ashamed that we now have such insults to humanity governing the country.

Quite a bit is being made of Jeremy Corbyn’s change of attitude towards the EU; some say it shows a lack of integrity. Yet I think people are allowed to change their minds, especially on issues like this. When one has read and thought about something, to stick fervently to your original opinion is much more dangerous. Thus I was glad to listen to the speech the Labour leader just made: it was, I thought, a well-argued outline of the benefits our membership of the EU brings us, with a few criticisms of the tories thrown in. I agree that we should have an international outlook. As I wrote yesterday, coming together in partnership is the only way to solve the world’s problems. Corbyn put it much more eloquently though, so go check out his speech.

I think I’ll flag this fascinating documentary on the history of the EU up. I didn’t watch it when it aired last night, fearing it might throw me into a rage, but now that I have, I found it fair and balanced. EU history is much more complex than I thought, and while I’m still very much pro-EU, it has given me pause for thought: I knew nothing, for example, of de Gaulle’s betrayal of the UK or the arrogant, shitty things he said about us.

Even so, I’m still an ‘us’ kind of guy. There is something intrinsically noble about the people of a continent growing beyond their history to work together. We need to stop seeing ourselves as separate: Brits are not exceptional – no one is. We are different but equal; we have the same fears and needs. We face the same problems which we must work together to solve. While we have our cultural differences which need to be preserved, I don’t think our political union will lead to a paneuropean monoculture: the english will still play cricket, the french will still play patonc. Nor do I think that this some kind of conspiracy to foist a worldwide dictatorship on us all – as soon as that begins to happen, there would be mass rebellion. This is about accepting diversity rather than destroying it; and the first step towards acceptance is union.

As I mentioned earlier my wheelchair is being repaired so I can’t go out on my daily cruise. Left twiddling my thumbs, I was mucking about on the web earlier; I suddenly thought I’d check out the reviews of Monty Python Live on IMDB, to see what people had said about it. To my surprise, many were quite negative: people hadn’t taken to it at all, and were left cold and unenthusiastic. For instance, one reviewer notes ” Despite all efforts to imply the opposite, this largely felt like a troupe of rusty old-timers stammering their way through the material of their youth, minus the power, sincerity and resounding cultural relevance of their heyday.” That, of course, contrasted very strongly with my impression of it – to me, that show was one of the most wondrous things i’ll ever see.

That mismatch struck me as odd, but then something interesting occurred to me: these reviewers were talking about watching a recording of the show, whereas my impression was interwoven with the memory of actually being there. I was thinking about something I had experienced whereas they were criticising something more akin to a filmic text. While I saw it from one position way back in the audience, they witnessed it close-up from many camera angles – the artistic choice of a director. In effect, we were talking about two different things. An obvious question arose: what if I were to try to rewatch the show as a film? Would I reach the same conclusions the online reviewers did?

I asked Dom to put the DVD in my computer and sat back. I tried to put myself in the shoes of someone who had not been lucky enough to be there that night, and was watching the show as a film. On one level, I saw what these critics mean: as a film it is rather dull. It boils down to five men rehashing material they first performed forty years ago interspersed with dance routines. Looking at it objectively, there was nothing particularly new or novel in the show – not much apart from a few little tweaks and the sketch with Stephen Hawking we had not seen before. It lacked the edginess and audacity which got Python it’s name. Had I not been there on the night, could I be sure I wouldn’t have been just as negative?

Yet that question is not possible to answer. The fact is I was there and, watching the DVD this afternoon, I couldn’t divorce the two experiences. I kept thinking back to that night in 2014, and what I was thinking at certain points in the show. For instance, I initially thought john Cleese had needed prompting during the parrot sketch, but what I couldn’t see from where I was sat was that he broke off because the table in front of him was moving. Hence rewatching it added to my enjoyment, but that joy always referred back and stemmed from the fact I was there to watch it live.

I still count that night as one of the greatest moments of my life: I am so lucky to have been there; to have found this troupe, whose comedy i’ve loved since childhood, suddenly performing on my doorstep. I find that, as well as the luck of having moved to Charlton in time to see them, astonishing. For me the DVD functions as a souvenir of that night – a reminder, rather than a text in itself. It reminds me of the sheer joy I got from being there, surrounded by so many people, watching these men perform sketches I never thought I would see live. There was an aura in there: a deep nostalgia and love which no DVD viewing could ever convey. Just as Keathley describes how the early cinephiles valued certain films because they were rare and hard to obtain, I cherish having seen Python Live because I know it is a unique experience. One can put a DVD on any time you want, so it loses that specialness. Thus while some viewers of the dvd might not be as taken as I was, they have an objectivity I can never share, just as I have a passion they cannot have. Old timers rehashing old material they may have been, but that misses the point: that night was about affection, nostalgia, and something I cannot name. If it is viewed as a film, one could be critical of Monty Python Live; but to me it is a memory, an event – something incredibly special, and far more than a film. I was lucky enough to actually be there, watching these comedy gods bid farewell, and I will always get joy from being able to say that. Yet it interests me to start to analyse how the different modes of reception can effect how one sees the same event,

All I have to say about this is, ‘I want one!’ Engineers in Germany have created a Volocopter – a small helicopter with 18 rotors, so stable that anyone can fly it. Imagine whizzing around London in one. It would certainly beat my wheelchair, especially given it’s currently being repaired. If my experience of helicopters is anything to go by, it would be awesome. Mind you, the problem is it currently only has a 25 minute battery life, and besides, where would we keep it?

Predictably, the snivelling neofascist Farage has been caught red handed trying to weasel out of paying his fair share of tax. The Mirror is reporting that he set up a trust fund in the isle of Man. Of course he makes excuses for himself: he claims he was advised to do it, and that he ”set it up on behalf of somebody else.” Bull! There is only one reason why anyone would set up such a trust: to avoid contributing to society. Farage is a greedy, manipulative, power-hungry dissembler who should be ignored as the xenophobe he is.

Mind you, as predictable as it was, I’m glad this story came out. P’tahk though he is, pressure was mounting on CaMoron over his taxes, particularly from the outist papers. Those wanting to leave the EU saw an opportunity to discredit the leader of the in campaign; the hypocrisy being that the paper doing that most, the express, is owned by two of the biggest tax dodgers of them all (or so I’m told). At least now we have a counterpoint: the chief outist is a tax-dodger too.

The strangest thing about yesterday’s protest was the lack of cameras. I went up to whitehall yesterday afternoon: I had seen talk of a protest up there online on friday, and yesterday the reports on the web looked promising. The odd thing was, though, that there was absolutely nothing about it on the bbc; the only news channel covering it was RT. That made me wonder just how big the protest really was, so I decided to go there myself. After all, I’m always up for an anti-tory action.

When I got there I must admit I felt mildly disappointed. I was expecting – hoping – to see thousands of angry men and women beying for CaMoron’s blood; instead, two to three hundred people were gathered quite peacefully and merrily, singing and dancing, obeying the rules while the police looked on like parents watching toddlers. It was all very British and civilised.

There was no doubting the protesters’ anger, of course, but I couldn’t help wondering what, if anything, it would achieve. Sooner or later it would disperse, everyone would go home and the cops would reopen whitehall. Given the lack of media coverage the whole thing would go largely unnoticed, and CaMoron would remain in office. In other words, it had absolutely no chance of achieving it’s aim: it was a load of sound and fury signifying nothing, and I didn’t see the point. It allowed people to release their anger in a peaceful, harmless way, but at the end of the day, the cause of that anger would still be there. The protesters would tell themselves that they have done something, and contentedly go back to accepting the rule of a party now responsible for crimes against humanity.

If you ask me, we need to be a lot more angry and a lot more direct. Of course, I’m not advocating violence, but we need to do something bigger and bolder to get noticed – how else can we get these insults to humanity booted from office? For a start, that protest yesterday should have been much much bigger: thousands, not hundreds. We then need a general strike: bring the country to it’s knees; halt production and public transport at least. That is the only way for them to register how angry we are.

But of course we all know that none of that will happen. We’ll just tell ourselves to calm down and accept it, and wait for the next election – a task made all the more easy when the media keep telling us everything is okay. In the meantime, disabled people will continue to die, public services will continue to be sold off, and the tories will continue to remake the country in their greed-driven image. But hey, that’ll be okay as long as a few of us can go wave banners around in whitehall every now and then.

The New Cross Inn in New Cross is an awesome place. I was there last night with my mates from the cricket team, celebrating Wightie’s birthday. I’d been invited to it on Facebook, so on thursday made arrangements to go there with James. Last night he popped round at six, and together we got the bus to New Cross.

I was instantly taken with the place: it’s a rocker’s pub, full of big guys in leather jackets and beards. It had a good array of real ales, and had a nice, friendly vibe. Pretty soon things got going; nearly all the cricket team – most of whom I hadn’t seen since last summer – were there. There were also one or two guys I hadn’t met yet, including one chap I got talking about Hemingway with. About an hour later, a band started to warm up, and I could tell it was going to be an awesome night.

When they started to play, however, things took a turn for the worse. They were a rock band – okay, but nothing special. I was sat in the corner talking to my friends, when suddenly out of the blue between songs the lead singer decided to make a sneering comment about ”the Stephen Hawkings guy over there”, meaning me. In a room full of people, I had been singled out and made fun of. It was a totally uncalled for barely coherent rant, totally unnecessary for and very insulting. I felt utterly humiliated – it seemed unfair. I hadn’t come to be the butt of some morons joke. Furious, I started to head for the door intending to go home, but James calmed me down and talked me into staying. Nevertheless, it put a dampner on an otherwise quite cool evening. The arsehole later apologised (I think he was asked to) but it still hurt. I have no idea why he said it: maybe he thought he was being funny or cool or provocative or edgy; but in truth, he was just being a dick.

Fortunately the second band were much better, and worth staying for. The rest of the evening went without a hitch. We talked, drank and listened, and generally had a good time. I got home about one, reasonably compos mentis, fairly tired, and on the whole happy that I went, although part of me was still furious at having been singled out like that.

People currently seem to be linking two news stories which seem to me to be totally unrelated. They say the scandal over CaMoron’s taxes will effect how people vote in the EU referendum, because it impacts the leader of the In campaign’s credibility. But, frankly, I don’t see what the two stories have to do with each other: I loathe CaMoron, but I’ll still be voting to remain in the union. In voters at least will understand that this is about more than the personality of one man. It’s about something higher and nobler: about people across europe working together under a single framework. Indeed, one of the reasons we need to stay in the eu is because it’s rules try to clamp down on tax avoidance – rules which, I hasten to add, CaMoron tried to block. Thus while the outist morons will try to make political capital out of this, I don’t see that the two have anything to do with each other. After all, we already knew that CaMoron is a greedy, toffee nosed p’tahk – how do these revelations effect one’s attitude to Europe?

Lyn and I were out last night. We were up at the o2 watching the Buena Vista Social Club. Truth be told, I’d never heard of them, but Dom seemed keen to watch them and Lyn agreed, so a few weeks ago I rolled up to north Greenwich to get tickets. It turned out to be an awesome night: they are a Cuban group from Havana, with about twenty members, who have been going about forty years. While nearly all the songs were not in english, I loved their latin rhythms and salsa. At one sage, one performer produced one of the greatest drum solos I have ever heard; at another point a quite elderly singer sang a beautiful, energetic love song – Dominik said her rather mischievous energy reminded him of my Yaiya. I was captivated – it felt exotic and made me fancy a mojito, although I thought I’d better not. It was a great night out, and by about half eleven we were coming home, the Cuban rhythms still running through our heads

Last night, Newsnight did a piece on cultural appropriation. It would seem Justin Bieber has grown dreadlocks, leading some to accuse the nauseating, talentless canadian of stealing from black culture. That made me wonder, why? What’s wrong with mixing it up culturally in this postmodern age? I still like, from time to time, to dress in women’s clothes while still defining myself as a man: is that appropriating women’s culture, or playing with gender denominators? The argument goes that there is a long history of white people appropriating black culture and taking ownership of it; for instance Rock and Roll, now widely attributed to Elvis Presley, was actually a black peoples’ creation apparently. I’m not sure how true that is, but I get the gist: there is certainly a long history of dominant cultures assimilating subservient ones and taking the iconography as their own. On the other hand, it seems to me that the only way to draw cultures and thus peoples together, to make people realise that all cultures are equal and one, is for them to borrow from one another. Mixing things up is the best way for things to evolve, for new hybrids to emerge. It can often be fascinating, and I see no harm in it.

How the hell is David CaMoron still prime minister this morning? Leaving aside the fact that he didn’t deserve to be pm in the first place, he should have come clean about his father’s tax dodging last night and offered his resignation. I know he might not be personally culpable – and I stress ‘might’ – but the way he tried to swat questions away as ‘a personal matter’ tells us all we need to know about the man. He sees himself as above the rest of us; to him, members of the aristocracy don’t have to pay tax because they are of superior breeding. They don’t use state schools or the NHS, so why should they contribute to them? And why should they have to tell us plebs about their financial affairs? It’s an arrogant, elitist frame of mind which I’d hoped had been dying out, but was there to behold in CaMoron last night, as it is in most tories. We deserve better than this bunch of toffs looking down on us, destroying the welfare state, letting their rich friends evade tax while people who need help stave.

I’m not alone in my anger, of course. More and more people, I sense, have had enough: the rage and fury is growing; it’s becoming almost palpable. We can see what the tories are doing, and hate it. The problem is, we have no way of channeling or releasing that anger, no way of getting together and forcing the tories out. This leaves us susceptible to being manipulated: they distract us with things like the EU referendum, diverting our anger, leaving them free to get away with murder.

There is a similar level of anger in America: there it has found it’s voice in Trump. People are fed up with politics, fed up of being spoken down to by the elite, so they support a man who purports to be outside of politics. Trump panders to people’s gut instinct and urge to scapegoat; his boisterous, hate-filled shouting gives vent to their frustration. Nigel farage is doing something similar here by presenting himself as an outsider and giving people scapegoats to blame. This divides us and distracts us. There are now huge amounts of poverty in the uk; the tories are destroying the nhs and welfare state. We are suffering, but instead of getting together and dealing with our real oppressors, many are fooled into hating other things, such as immigration. This diverts the anger, allowing the real sources of our discontent to carry on. We are all getting angrier, but that anger is meaningless if we cannot focus it, as one people, onto the real sources of our problems. That’s why the tories want this referendum: they knew it would split opinion, turning us against one another so we’re too busy bickering between ourselves to be able to stop their crimes.

A blog is no place for a personal attack. This morning I wrote an entry on here venting my anger and frustration at someone I’ve recently become very very upset with. I needed to let it out, but I went too far. That’s not what my blog is for. I better just concentrate on other things. Besides, the government gives me more than enough to rant about.

Just to post a quick update on this entry, Guns and Roses are back, officially. They performed yesterday at a small venue in LA. According to this BBC report, it was only in front of 500 people, but comes ahead of a tour next month. That spurs my hopes that they might play in london one day in the next few years. If they do, I’ll be there.

I must admit I got into Guns and Roses rather late: the guys with Muscular Dystrophy, moody and adolescent, were into them, but it was only after they had grown out of them that I started listening to tracks like Paradise City. Thus I came to them quite late, although once I did, Guns and Roses quickly became one of my favourite groups. They still are, and the growing possibility of seeing them live has me very excited. After all, while part of me knows I shouldn’t get my hopes up, my experience has taught me never to dismiss any possibility. As I see it, if I can watch Monty Python perform or shake hands with sir Patrick Stewart, anything else is possible, including watching one of the most awesome bands ever.

I’m homeward bound on the Thames, having gone on one of my longer walks today. This morning I suddenly felt a hankering to go up to the south bank: I was feeling rather dramatic, and thought I’d check out the Globe. I took the tube to Southwark and made for the river. But I then turned left there instead of right, so I went in the opposite direction to the globe. Nonetheless, apart from the crowds, it was still a great walk. The city, it’s life and variety, still captivates me: I love how places like the south bank and Stratford are only tube rides away, waiting for me to explore. It is a world city, and world of a city; a vast maelstrom spread organically out, pockets of awesome like the dome or the globe just waiting for one to find. To me, London is an endless adventure, the broad river running through it, waiting to ferry me home.

I just go in from quite an interesting trip. A few days ago, Alan at GAD emailed me asking if I could attend a meeting in Woolwich – he’d have liked to have one himself but couldn’t. It seemed some guys from Greenwich council needed a wheelchair user to assess what improvements need to be made to the pavements down by Maryon park. I said I would gladly help, so today, having been emailed a rendezvous point yesterday, I headed down there.

It was a pretty simple task: all they wanted me to do was point out what might be improved from my perspective. We met at Samuel Street and walked to the park, the gentlemen noting what might be improved along the way, such as things that needed repairing or where they could put drop curbs. They didn’t need me long about half an hour – then I was making my way home, glad to have made a small contribution to accessibility in the borough.

I have just come across a bit of monumental breaking news. According to this Huffington post video,* Nigel Farage has made one of the biggest U-turns in political history. He has changed his mind, and will now campaign to stay in the EU. It has to be seen to be believed. I also heard that he will now support Labour, start campaigning for women’s rights and would like people to call him Mandy.

*Sorry I could only find it on their facebook page.