Not that I’m particularly interested in the music charts, but this story is just too delicious not to flag up. ”Green Day fans have launched a campaign to get their 2004 anthem ‘American Idiot’ to number one to coincide with President Donald Trump’s visit this summer.” It is a great idea if you ask me. What better way to greet the egotistical halfwit currently claiming to be the leader of the free world than with a bit of this?

I’m still working on my book. It’s getting there slowly, and I am really enjoying the process. I’ve been recently going through a few of my old blog entries about inclusion and the whole inclusive education debate, leading me to reflect on how my attitude has changed since I wrote them. I used to oppose what I called segregated education quite militantly. I had been lead to believe, by various people I had met online, that segregated education was totally needless, and that special schools were more or less designed to deliberately oppress disabled people. To such people it was a black and white issue, and for a time I agreed with them. After all, why can’t everyone get taught together?

It’s a lovely idea, but these days such militancy worries me. In the disability community, these self-proclaimed activists seem to think disabled people are oppressed as black people or women once were. For instance, I’ve come across one or two people seemingly branding the death of Alfie Evans an act of murder. They go far too far in making out that the problems we face are deliberately put there, as if they want to think of theirselves as freedom fighters in the same vein as Gandhi or Martin Luthour King. One of the reasons why I volunteer at Charlton Park Academy is to avoid falling into such dogmatism over the issue of special education.

I am not saying we don’t face problems – of course we do – but, at the risk of being a bit controversial, I’m starting to think some of these ‘activists’ are just in it for the self-promotion. They go on and on about how disabled people are so oppressed, and how they courageously fight for all our freedom, but most of them only have mild impairments and very little first hand experience of the things they claim to be resisting. Education is not a black and white issue, and one size does not fit all. Trying to teach certain children alongside kids who don’t have special needs sometimes does more harm than good. This is not an issue we can politicise or be dogmatic about, just because you like being an activist.

Today was quite a grey and cold one, but summer is definitely on it’s way. When I went to the park earlier, I was greeted by a glorious sight: the first cricket match of the year. I cannot tell you what a marvellous sight that was. It feels like an age has passed since I was last out there, watching local team the Mighty Eights bowl a few overs. I have always loved cricket, and, sat there this afternoon, I thought about Dad, who introduced me to the sport. It also made me think of all the glorious summers spent watching cricket or playing it with my brothers. It put me in one of those relaxed, reflexive moods where everything gains a little perspective. And suddenly, sipping coffee as the game slowly got going, all the world’s troubles seemed to vanish. The sky may have been grey and it may have been cold, but it felt like summer had arrived.

It’s time to dust off my pink tutu, I think. I just came across word on Facebook of a drag protest against Trump’s visit. Details are still fairly sketchy, but the idea is for everyone to dress up and meet in central London on the 13th of July to show Trump how angry we are about how he treats LGBTQ people. ”Due to the appalling way the Trump administration has regarded the rights and welfare of LGBTQI communities of the US, the idea of a Trump visit to the UK is unacceptable. Let’s get visible, stand with our sister’s, brothers and others in America, and show that we are a country that celebrates diversity.” It’s an awesome idea if you ask me: bigots like Trump have no place in world politics, and what better way to show that p’tahk he is unwelcome here than with a festival of frills, petticoats and bright pink lipstick.

I try to steer clear of talking about cases like Alfie Evans. They’re a minefield: people get so emotional about situations like his, and you can never get it right. Is it better to try to continue to care for him, or let the poor kid pass away? Continuing to care for him doesn’t offer much hope – he’ll never live a full, proper live, or even become fully conscious. Yet if you let him die you are effectively playing god; choosing whether anyone lives or dies is a decision nobody has a right to make. And you can then extend that line of thinking to say that if you stop the support for babies like this, you could then justify stopping support for various other people, perhaps with less serious conditions.

It’s an extremely difficult one, but I really don’t like how worked up various people are getting over it. The doctors involved have apparently been receiving death threats. I find that the worst part to all this: people adopt a stance on it, and then refuse point blank to hear the other side of the story; they then become quite violent over it. By all means campaign for this child to be kept alive, but to act like a fascist about it does your argument no favours because it just makes you look ridiculous. Even writing blog entries on the subject like this one risks attracting angry comments from people like that, which is why I try to stay away from doing so on here.

Lyn and I were in the cafe in the park yesterday afternoon. We spent quite a while there, talking to our friend Debbie. Yesterday was colder than it has been, so towards the end of the afternoon we were in the small cafe talking about this and that, when we got onto politics. One of the regular customers there, whom I know mainly by sight, was wearing a Jeremy Corbyn T-shirt. I told him I liked his shirt, but I only disagreed with Corbyn on Brexit. At that, his wife told me that they were socialists, but had voted for Brexit.

Predictably, that set me instantly off. I felt my usual stab of rage, before starting to try to explain that I saw that as a contradiction. The woman said the EU was essentially about capitalism, but I told her that the worst forms of capitalism would now be set free in britain. She did not realise she had directly aided the system of greed and selfishness which she thought she opposed. I worked myself into my usual spazzy huff and probably went too far: she was a lovely woman perfectly entitled to her view, and I had no right to shout at her.

I tried to calm myself down and instantly felt guilty. Deb knows me rather well now, and she has seen me get like that before. Chuckling, she told me to cool off. I apologised to the lady, and she told me that there was no harm done.

Yet it seems to me that there is a firm moral to this tale. It isn’t just me who gets angry over Brexit; the whole country is torn in two, with one side furious at the other. That is a ridiculous, childish position to be in. We should not be enemies of one another; remainers should not hate outists, or blame them, or call them stupid or racist. That only leads to more devision. I should not hate the couple in the cafe. What happened two years ago, happened; people voted how they voted. Continuing this argument only breaks up friendships or prevents them forming.

I told myself to write something more lengthy on here today. Most of my recent entries have only been a few lines long, and it’s high time I posted something of at least four or five paragraphs. But then I came across this video of Michael Wolff in conversation with Armando Iannucci and decided that it was essential that I flag it up. They discuss Trump, of course, and it seems to me that their conversation goes to the heart of the matter. As they say, there is a tendency for us to assume that all the gossip about Trump being as thick as two short planks has been exaggerated, and that he can’t be as moronic as he is taken to be. Yet, as Wolff says, he really is that stupid. Thus this video presents us with two experts, one in politics and the other in satire, discussing an utterly absurd situation, beyond even the best writers of political comedy. When the most powerful country in the world is being lead by someone with no idea what he’s doing, sometimes all we can do is sit back like these two men do, scratch our collective heads and ask each other how the smeg we got to this point.

lI usually try to steer clear of Saturday night talent shows like Britain’s Got Talent, but I think it absolutely imperative that I direct everyone here. I’ve been broadly aware of ‘Lost Voice Guy’ Lee Ridley for a while, but I think his appearance on Britain’s Got Talent last night was a major milestone, not just for him but also for communication aid users in general. His performance is genuinely hilarious: he comes across as witty, charming and self-aware, clearly impressing his audience. It is awesome to see a VOCA user blowing everyone away like this, demonstrating to everyone what ‘we’ can do. I really, really hope Ridley goes all the way in this competition.

It may be a couple of weeks old, but I think I’ll just flag this video of Stephen Colbert interviewing Dr. Evil about his firing from Trump’s cabinet. I’m not that much of an Austin Powers fan: I like parodies, and have nothing against parodies of James Bond, but Mike Myers’ parody of him seemed a bit too unsubtle to me. That said, this use of Myers’ take on Blofeld seems perfect. After all, the only way we can respond to a cartoonish, grotesque president is with equally cartoonish, grotesque characters. You do not need to be subtle and nuanced when it comes to Trump; the childish toilet humour of Austin Powers suits him perfectly.

It was pretty weird when, last year I bumped into someone from my old special school at powerchair football training in woolwich. Hebden green is miles away in a quiet corner of cheshire; that was a world I had assumed I had left far behind. To bump into someone from that world here in my new one was quite a turn up, but I am pleased it happened.

Dan is training to be a barrister. He was telling me about it yesterday, and about how he has been turned down from many interviews due to his speech impediment. Dan speaks more clearly than me or Lyn, and does not need to use a communication aid, so I was fairly disheartened to hear that was a problem for him. Nonetheless, in the interviews he does get, he does well, and is well on his way to becoming a lawyer. In fact, I just saw on Facebook that he’s been in the Brazillian Press about it. He told me yesterday that he has another interview today, so let me wish him the very best of luck.

I may have been wrong about my old school. I now know quite a few former students who are now doing very well for theirselves. I didn’t do too badly, either. I once dismissed it along with all special schools as little more than daycare centres. While I still say there are major problems with the system of segregated education, for me to dismiss all the staff who work in such schools as not bothering to teach students properly was clearly quite wrong.

It feels great to have things back to normal. Lyn got home late last night after I had gone to bed. It was so nice to wake up with her lying beside me again, as if normal life had resumed after a short interval. Mind you, in other respects, things aren’t so normal: high summer seems to have been suddenly sprung upon us, and I was able to sit out in the park in the heat for most of the afternoon. Lyn joined me there, then my fellow Hebden Green oldboy Dan, before we all came back here to sit in the garden. A truly normal day, then, but I really hope this lovely weather continues.

Peers have defeated the government on the issue of staying in a UK-EU customs union after Brexit, the BBC reports. I always knew those old duffers were useful for something. Let’s just hope this is a sign of things to come, although I suspect that as the reality of leaving the EU becomes clearer and clearer, such defeats for the Outists will become commonplace.

Mind you, I’m only occupying my mind with such matters while I wait for my beloved to get home. I am starting to try to avoid politics altogether as it just makes me angry, and the recent news of Lee has reminded me that there are more pressing issues to worry about.

Smeg I miss Lyn! I haven’t seen her in over a week and, to be honest, it’s becoming painful. Since I got home, the house has not felt right: it has been empty and quiet, barren of music. I’ve missed looking over to Lyn’s studio and seeing her at her desk; I’ve missed kissing her every morning as I get up; I’ve missed kissing her goodnight on my way to bed. I’ve missed talking to her, chatting to her, arguing with her. I’ve missed the laughter, the puns, and the awful jokes. I’ve missed the cuddles and the warmth. I know it has only been ten days or so, but it has felt like an age. I know now how Mum must have felt when Dad used to go away on business when I was small. I miss Lyn badly, and can’t wait for her to get back tomorrow.

Believe it or not, but yesterday I finished the first draft of the book I’m working on. I am surprised how quickly it has come together, but yesterday I decided it was time to combine all the chapters into one document and send it to Lyn, my parents and a few of my friends for feedback. It may have needed a bit more work before I called it a draft, but it was getting there. At over twenty thousand words it’s quite substantial. Steve has already given me some excellent input, so today I started draft two. At this rate it should be ready in no time.

Mind you, I’m awareI’ve been neglecting my blog, so expect some longer entries on here soon.

I really need to flag up this week’s episode of Click. Towards the end, there is quite a cool segment about alternative and augmentative communication, and how technology like the ipad is being used to enable young children with learning difficulties to communicate. It is not too far from what Lyn and I use our ipads for, although the emphasis in the article is more on learning difficulties. It points out, for example, how tablet computers can now be used to supplement picture exchange systems. Great stuff well worth checking out if you’re interested, although I still think Lyn should be credited as one of the pioneers of the Ipad as a primary communication aid.

Can you believe yesterday marked this sites fifteenth birthday? I’ve been blogging for fifteen years. I think that’s quite impressive, especially given how regularly I post. Most blogs these days have decidedly shorter lifespans, or are only updated occasionally, but I’ve made an effort to keep it up. Here’s to another fifteen years of ill-informed rambling then, although this evening I don’t have much to say. The world, it stands once again on the verge of all out war, having been lead there by fools and megalomaniacs. I suppose we ought to hope we’re all still here in fifteen years.

These days, apart from the occasional twinge of beer-related lust in times of stress or sadness, I’m becoming more and more pleased with my decision to stop drinking. It has been almost two years now, and I have no intention whatsoever of going back to that stupidity. It would appear I’m right to take that attitude. According to this BBC report, just one drink a day can take years off your life. Not only is it dangerous in it’s reduction of bodily control, it’s also harmful to your health. Call me a party pooper if you must, but I hope others will now join me in stopping drinking altogether.

I’m safe back in Charlton. The journey down from Crewe was uneventful, although tellingly it took more time to get from Euston to Charlton than it took to get from Crewe to Euston. It was a lovely four days, and it was great to see my parents and Esther. I was just chilling out here, though, when I got a message over facebook. It was from Phill, an old school friend: Lee D, whom I’ve known since we were seven or eight, has been taken to hospital, having had a suspected stroke. He’s apparently doing well. My thoughts are now with him, and I hope he’s okay.

Mum, dad and I went over to Alsager this morning, just to see how much the village had changed. Call me melodramatic, but I’m now not sure I ever went to go there again: the place I spent six years making so many friends, the campus which means so much to me, is now completely gone. So many memories, now buried underneath an endless housing estate. It really was upsetting to see the place where I became who I now am, and where I first met people like Steve, rocky and Charlotte, and even where I first physically met lyn, now completely obliterated. It’s no longer the village I knew . I’ll never go there again.

We had intended to go over to Alsager today just to see how the place had changed in the eight years since I was there, but it’s quite miserable out so we decided to stay home and put a dvd on. Dad let me choose, so I selected the new Ghostbusters film. I suspected it would be crap, but I hadn’t seen it before and I just wanted something amusing to watch.

Having just watched the film I was right about it’s quality, but at the same time I loved it. It’s a strange piece, at the same time wanting to seem totally new yet constantly nodding to the original films. Bill Murray makes a cameo, for example, but as a completely different character. There may be two bound copies of my MA thesis on film upstairs, but I loved what I just watched not for any of the intellectual reasons I wrote about. Watching the film sat next to my father, in the very room where I probably first encountered ghostbusters as a child, for a few moments I was that fife or six year old again, sat next to his dad, laughing out loud at funny people zapping ghosts. The film may have been awful, but sometimes that isn’t the point.

I went over to see Esther in Crewe this afternoon. I hadn’t seen her in over two years. Writing this sat in my old family house, I must admit I feel very upset. I don’t want to go into too much detail on here as it would not be my place to do so; but this afternoon Esther told me the details of her brothers death. Suffice to say she has been through what nobody deserves to go through. Esther is not only one of my best friends but a person I owe a hell of a lot to: without Esther I would never have made it through university. To hear her tell me what she told me this afternoon, that she had to endure such sadness, broke my heart. I find myself wishing, if only there was something I could do to make it right.

This morning finds me at my grandmothers house in Harlesden, having just spent my first night outside Charlton away from Lyn in quite a while. I’m here with my parents; we drive up to Cheshire this afternoon. I’m going up for a few days, mostly because I want to visit Esther. After the sad news of the loss of her brother a few weeks ago, I really want to give my old friend a hug.

Seeing my grandmother en route made a lot of sense. She is rather infirm now, and needs a lot of support. I think she was happy to see me. Sitting in the same house I remember crawling around as an infant brings back a lot of memories.

We just Skyped my brother Luke. Most of those memories, of course, include him. He’s doing very well, currently living near Oxford. I don’t see much of either of my brothers these days except over Skype, something the news from Esther has made me determined to rectify. The loss of any sibling is tragic. Esther has long felt like a sister to me, and I want to support her as she has supported me.

Thinking artistically again, I still say postmodernity and remixing are the way forward. Both Mitch and John are here, and we were just talking about all the different genres of techno music that there now are. That got me thinking: these days, so much of music is about remixing. It’s about taking old songs and adding something new to them. Rather than making something completely new and original, music makers now often take two or more old pieces and fuse them together.

That interested me. It made me wonder whether it would work with other art forms. What if I took the text of one short story, cut it up and merged it with another? Of course, people do it all the time with video on Youtube: taking two clips and splicing them together is now quite straightforward with video editing software; I’ve started to do it myself. What interests me is the potentials this creates. We can have so much fun: your two favourite characters can now meet and talk to one another; someone from one narrative can now be placed into a completely different scene. Such possibilities excite me. As in music, they mash together beats and rhythms to generate altogether new meanings. Nothing is now set in stone, but can be reused and played with in this postmodern, ever-changing, remixed world.

I learned two things today: me, too much coffee and politics do not mix, and that I should not park my powerchair under the tree by the cafe, if I don’t want to get bird crap all over the control stick.

Even though it uses a few too many nauseating cliches, I think this BBC article is worth me flagging up. Did Stephen Hawking change perceptions of disability? I think he did. He was a figure to represent us all; both a spokesperson and a positive public figure. Mind you, one downside is, I have lost count of the times some little shit has shouted ”Oi, Stephen Hawkins (sic)” at me.

This just about sums up the situation in america.

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Something very, very disturbing is currently happening in the UK. Thousands upon thousands of people are now frequently marching against Brexit, yet you never hear a word about it on the BBC or any other mainstream media outlet. It’s like these protests are deliberately being covered up. As wary as I am of conspiracy theory bullshit, it’s clear something strange is going on, and opposition to Brexit is being hushed up.

I didn’t think I’d blog today, but I just saw this story on the evening news: ”A shortage of special needs funding means growing numbers of children are being left without suitable school places, a teachers’ leader has warned. National Education Union leader Kevin Courtney said official statistics showed 4,050 special needs pupils were without a place in 2017 in England.” Kids with special needs, it’s becoming clearer and clearer, are being failed by the tories. Their cuts are denying increasing numbers of children with additional needs the education they deserve. It’s utterly scandalous. But will the Tories admit this is a direct effect of their cuts? Will they hell.