I might be being prematurely optimistic, but things might be starting to look up. It now looks inevitable that Trump will be impeached, possibly within weeks. His dodgy links to Russia now look irrefutable, so much so that it must be only a matter of time before he’s booted from office. On this side of the atlantic, the shit is really starting to hit the fan with Brexit: all the economists predict a catastrophe, and calls for a second referendum are growing louder and louder. It’s only a matter of time before Corbyn heeds  his party and comes out against Brexit. When that happens, surely  this stupid farce’s days will also be numbered.

On both counts, then, I feel we can at last see glimmers of hope. I’ve always said  that it would be only a matter of  time before sensible people start to assert theirselves again and stop the    nationalist idiots. On top of that, we’re going to celebrate our friend Debbie’s  birthday  in the pub tonight (I’m still just on the Coke). Things are looking up.

Let me just say how much I like Edinburgh. It may be fairly hilly, and John had to really put his back into pushing me up one or two of those hills,  but it really  is a beautiful city. Some of the medieval architecture is stunning. We spent the whole of Tuesday there, first taking the bus to Crammond – a small village just east of the city where we tried to get to a small island, but were prevented by the tide – then going to a music evening in a pub in town. It’s quite amazing how much we managed to fit into just one day, although there was so  much more we could have done that we resolved to go back there.

Yesterday was also quite a day, but for other reasons: John needs to fly to Poland today, so we needed to get back to the metropolis, and the cheapest way to do so was by bus. I’ll tell you now: eleven hours sat on a coach takes some stomaching. It wasn’t quite as bad as I had expected, as I’d brought a book to read and John had his laptop so we could watch a film, but nonetheless it isn’t an experience I wish to repeat in a hurry. Next time I think we’ll go by train.

Just to record this moment , I’m sat in an Edinburgh pub after a long fun day. I’m surrounded by people, including four of John’s friends. I can’t see them from the low sofa where I’m sat, but there’s a band playing. It’s rather cool, but I really must record that I think this the first time I have ever heard rap in a Scottish accent, and I think I like it.

I’m writing this on the coach again, although this time I remembered to take a pee before I got on. We spent the morning in Leeds after enjoying an excellent Ethiopian dinner and a good nights sleep. I must say I found Leeds intriguing: it’s city centre is small and walkable, and old industrial buildings seem to juxtapose with modern shopping centres in quite an awesome way. There is an arcade with a new glass roof. You can see it was once a normal street, but it’s roof gives it the feel of the Trafford centre or Westfield in Stratford. I couldn’t help musing to myself that someone had definitely been reading their Walter Benjamin.

John and I are heading for Leeds en route to Edinburgh for a few days. He suggested it a few days ago and I thought, why not? We looked into taking the train but it was too expensive so we decided to go by coach. It takes a bit longer, but it’s something I’ve never experienced before. It’s going quite smoothly and we’re about halfway to Leeds, but about ten minutes ago I found I needed the loo. I’ve been for pees on planes before no problem, but I honestly think I just took the most dangerous piss of my life. Two sets of stairs….through the most narrow door ever…on a bus going at seventy miles per hour. Next time I’ll just hold it in.

Just to pick up on an old subject and one of my  big fandoms, the Independent is reporting that the majority of americans now think Idris Elba should be the next James Bond after Daniel Craig. Why the Indy is reporting American opinion rather than british isn’t clear, but this nonetheless echoes my opinion since the possibility of a black bond first cropped up three or four years ago. Why can’t 007 be black. Daniel Craig has apparently signed up to do a couple more Bond films – and I definitely think he’s capable of them, although he is said to be tiring of the role – but after that the door should be open to take bond in a new direction. Fail to do so and the franchise risks stagnating.

Not that I want to advertise, especially for a company like Disney, but  my jaw dropped when I saw this trailer for the new version of The Lion King. The graphics/imagery look incredible. Imagine watching it in  a darkened cinema auditorium on a big screen.

There must surely be a point at which the people of any country must turn to the government and say ‘enough is enough’, and I think we have reached that point. I just came across this shocking Guardian article on a UN report due  out next year on the devastating effect Tory austerity has had on the UK. It is utterly fucked up: Britain was in breach of four UN human rights agreements relating to women, children, disabled people and economic and social rights. The limit on benefits payments to only the first two children in a family was “in the same ballpark” as China’s one-child policy because it punished people who had a third child. Cuts of 50% to council budgets were slashing at Britain’s “culture of local concern” and “damaging the fabric” of society.  Between this and the utter stupidity of Brexit, how the hell  can we let these contemptible embarrassments to humanity remain in power.

I’m not sure how impartial  or unbiassed it is, but if true the allegations reported in this Young Turks video are very worrying indeed. It reports that Donald Trump is actively trying to have his political opponents jailed. Apparently according to the New York Times, the  p’tahk wants people like James Comey and Hillary Clinton put in jail simply because they  are political adversaries. If there is even a grain of truth to it, surely this is very  worrying indeed: Trump is acting more and more like a dictator, demanding power  over everything. Surely as a responsible, mature democratic nation, it’s only a matter of time before the US grows up, gets a grip and replaces this insecure child with a proper president.

I just came across this anti-Brexit video/song on facebook, and just had to flag  it up here. It’s very catchy, and will probably be stuck in my head for a while, but that’s cool. More and more  things like this are appearing online every day, to higher and higher standards. I get the impression that a distinct artistic and cultural movement is amassing against brexit; so much so  that it is now just a matter of time before the bollocks is stopped.

I’m heading back to London after a weekend in Manchester and Chester. After visiting Jenny and steve a couple of weeks ago, I decided it was time to pop in on Charlie and Alex. I stayed at their beautiful new Manchester house on Friday night, before we drove to Chester yesterday. Rather awesomely we bumped into our friend Becky while enjoying a kebab at a christmas market in Manchester; and the evening at a barn dance in Chester last night was like nothing  I’d experienced before. I just waved goodbye to C at the platform at Picadilly, tired but refreshed. Although as she told me, it isn’t without it’s problems, Charlie seems to be slipping into life as a teacher well: I’ve always thought my old university friend is a born teacher. She seems to have a boundless, infectious enthusiasm which has left my head buzzing with ideas and a fresh optimism, so does Alex, and I’m travelling home determined to be more creative.. I think this weekend has done me a world of good.

Have you ever noticed how that irritating twit Jacob Rees-Mogg always tries to present himself as a master of language? Not only does he try to sound articulate, but he goes out of his way to correct people on the language they use. Yesterday, for example, when a news anchor asked him if a coup was in ,process, the pretentious little p’tahk replied that it was not technically a coup, giving some facetious bullshit reason. 

It was perfectly obvious that a coup was in progress: Rees-mogg and his chums were, and are, trying to force May from power.JRM was trying to get himself in to a position of power rhetorically. By correcting the reporter so overtly, he was trying to appear superior. He tries to make himself look like a philologist, and so take ownership of the Symbolic. That is the only way the outists life him can present their views as having any credibility, stripped as they are of any other form of logic. In other words, he’s basically saying people should listen more to him because he speaks more articulately, when in truth he is just as moronic as any other outist. By presenting himself as a master .of the symbolic order, he seeks to figuratively dominate what people say. It.’s a cheap trick easily seen though, but I thought it worth pointing out..

Just to divert everyone’s attention away from Brexit a bit, how about this for an interesting new bit of tech. A company in america have found a way to manipulate video to make it look like people have said things they haven’t. I find it interesting to watch how they change the appearance of the muscles  around the mouth so that it matches the sound coming out of it. While you can easily see how  this sort of thing would be useful for dubbing films into other languages, you also have to worry the this would make fraud a lot easier. We can no longer trust video evidence when it comes to what people have or have not said.

I think this New European  story/video is well worth  drawing your attention to.Dutch MEP Esther de Lange was applauded in the European parliament  when she pointed out the hypocrisy of Nigel Farage. The piece of shit just sat there smirking and  shrugging as de Lange stated the obvious. “This is a man who led his party and country to the Brexit vote – only the next day to admit he lied and tricked and jumped his ship and leave his party.” The fact that the p’tahk has the gall to still attend the European Parliament as if he has the right to be there (presumably still picking up his wage) shows us what a despicable  little hypocrite  he is. The sooner he is rotting in jail where he belongs the better.

Although, to my knowledge, none of the money in my wallet is purple or any other colour apart from the usual grey, green and brown, I think this is definitely worth flagging up. Today is apparently Purple Pound Day, which is intended to draw attention to consumers with disabilities. “Shopping can be frustrating at the best of times, but for many disabled people it comes with even more unnecessary challenges – narrow aisles, no step-free access, rushed shop assistants. But one businessman and wheelchair user has turned his frustrations into a national event – Purple Tuesday – in a bid to get hundreds of retailers to improve their customer experience and tap into the £249bn disabled customers spend each year.” A step in the right direction – albeit a modest one – if you ask me, although as the bbc article itself points out towards the end, it is not enough to just have one day to acknowledge consumers with disabilities. Surely ‘we’ should be included and accommodated all year round.

Something rather cool happened this morning.

My friend Lee Donnelly  was a big WWE fan. I hadn’t really thought about wrestling since I was about ten or eleven, but it was  mentioned at donno’s funeral and I’d been thinking about it since then. Wrestling is very strange,  when you look at it: it’s obviously theatrical, yet it claims to be real, and the pretence of reality  is taken far further than any  other form of theatre. To any other person, it looks  pantomimic, yet it takes itself so seriously. It seemed very odd to me.

When  I turned my computer on this morning, I found this article about Wrestling on the BBC website.  I read it, and came across the name of an academic I didn’t then recognise Dr. Ben Litherland. Deciding it was time to look a bit further into this  bizarre phenomenon,  I plugged the name into google expecting to find a musty old academic, but the strangest thing happened: it turned out that I already knew the guy, and he was a school friend of my brother Luke.  We had chatted before, six  years ago, having come across each other not through Luke but  a mutual friend, James C. I love  how the web works sometimes.

We got chatting (again) and I told ben of my newfound interest.  Apparently, there is a growing literature on the subject, but Litherland said he was against the idea of a  ‘wrestling studies’. That seemed curious to me: if wrestling is an art, shouldn’t it be studied  like  any other (narrative) art form in terms of it’s characters and storylines? But he seemed to be suggesting it was something else; not just a weird panto about men hitting eachother or a type of soap opera. It has a real world, political dimension, especially when you consider that Trump has  appeared on it, and Vince McMahon was one of the biggest backers of the Trump campaign. That which I once dismissed as childish and puerile now seems worth looking into deeply.

Something very, very strange is going on with professional wrestling. It’s obviously fake, but claims to be real. It is presented rather like a soap opera, but disbelief is suspended and the illusion of reality is kept to the extreme. Ben even introduced me to their word for it: Kayfabe.  Something which might appear childish does in  fact take itself deadly seriously, and to it’s fans is  as real as any other sport. These people cannot actually be hitting one another or they would be seriously injured;  and the way in which the camera captures events outside the ring suggests the action is somehow planned and choreographed; yet, as in sport, events are shown live and the audience seem  to think they are watching events which have not been rehearsed. Thus I am baffled – what is it? Theatre? Sport? artform, or something else? How  can something which appears so silly have so much cultural impact? When I read a book or watch a film, I know I’m dealing  with a created artefact – something designed or created by someone to tell me a story or convey a message to me. Wrestling is obviously a similar kind of creation, yet it refuses to admit it is anything other than real (undertones of Lacan there, maybe?) I must admit I’m intrigued.

The world being as dangerous as it currently is, with nationalism dangerously  on the rise, I think I ought to flag  this article up.  ”French President Emmanuel Macron has urged world leaders marking the centenary of the World War One Armistice to reject nationalism. Addressing leaders in Paris – including US President Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin – he described it as a “betrayal of patriotism”.” A truer  word has never been spoken. To love one’s country is to love the things which makes it unique. By extension, that means one loves  how your country contrasts with others, which means engaging with other countries and cultures. To me, then, to just love your own country is folly; one must relish the whole of humanity in all it’s diversity,  working together across petty, arbitrary borders. We need to work as one, not compete. That is the only way we can avoid repeating the type of barbaric stupidity which ended a century ago today.

Just to update yesterday’s entry, late last night my good friend Debbie sent me  a link to an Ipad  troubleshooting forum. I just checked it out and  tried  one of the fixes I found there, and it worked. I suddenly have a  voice again. Hearing that  mechanised voice was such a  relief! I owe debbie a hug, and  a coffee! The trip all the way to the Apple shop in Stratford was pointless; it just goes to show how much  those so-called experts actually know, or rather, how  much they want to pressure you into buying new merchandise rather than giving you the solution to your problem.

I’m afraid to say that it has been a long, rather annoying day. Ipads are fantastic, useful machines – until they go wrong. Late yesterday afternoon I suddenly lost all sound output from my Ipad. That’s quite a problem for me  as I use mine as a communication aid. I had a look at it but couldn’t get it talking again, so today I took it back to the guys in Woolwich I mentioned  a couple of entries ago. This  time, though, they couldn’t do anything, and suggested  I take it to an Apple shop. After I’d returned home for a coffee, I set off for stratford – after all, I still rather like it up there. After I’d found the Apple shop, I told the young assistant what the problem was, and he kindly fastracked me to see a technician. The guy looked at it but couldn’t do anything: it turns out  that the headphone mode had somehow been locked on, even though there are no headphones connected. I was told I either had to reset my Ipad, losing all my data and specialist apps, or buy  a new Ipad. Needless to say, I came home feeling very frustrated indeed. Does anyone have any other suggestions?

I went up  to the British Museum yesterday. My friend John suggested meeting up there, having first proposed a trip to Oxford, and I thought it was an awesome idea. Seeing Oxford again would have been lovely, but we’d left  it too  late. Getting there was easy enough – just two busses – and once I was in there I was instantly fascinated.  They currently have an exhibition on on Syria, so  there were many ancient stone tablets from the middle east on display.  The Rosetta stone, of course, took pride of place, but there were many more around it. I couldn’t help feeling, though, that it was all decontextualised: taken out of their original places and transported several thousand miles to a rainy city in northern  Europe, these objects inevitably lose some of their original meaning. Wouldn’t it be better to see these fascinating pieces of art where they were made? And isn’t having them in the british museum in the first place all essentially an act of imperialist theft? Then again, you might say it is  better to house these artefacts here, where they can be correctly preserved, than leaving them in the war-torn Middle East; and leaving them in the countries where they were created would mean people like me would never be able to see them. I couldn’t make up my mind  either way, and came  home vowing to go  back there to see more when I can.

It worries me how dense I can be sometimes. A week or so ago, I was going down a steep slope in Maryon-Wilson park when I slipped out of my powerchair. I was fine,  as was the chair,  but a while later I noticed what appeared to be  quite a big crack in my Ipad screen. I tried to ignore it at first but as the crack got bigger I thought I better get the  screen replaced. Yesterday, then, I went down to Woolwich  to get it sorted. I asked in a couple of shops whether they do Ipad screen repairs, before being directed to a shop on General Gordon Square.

I handed the guy in there my Ipad, having first asked  him how much a  new screen would cost. Almost immediately, though, he smiled: the screen was fine, he said; I’d just  kinked the screen protector! I had completely forgotten we had put one on a few weeks ago.

The  guy replaced the protector, cleaned up my ipad, charged me a tenner for it (a bargain compared to the seventy quid a new screen would have cost) and  sent me on my way, feeling rather silly.

You   may recall that the very last entry I made before my  old blog went offline was about the summerhouse in chalton park. It had stood abandoned for as long as I’d lived in charlton, but I was interested to see that it’s renovation had begun. Well, I’ve been keeping an eye on it since then, and it has been fascinating to watch the building get transformed from a  derelict old shell. I would say it was halfway there now, but what’s cool is what it could now become. I popped into Charlton house this afternoon to ask about it: it  dates from about 1610, and was originally used as a banqueting hall. It must once have enjoyed phenomenal views northward over the river. Excitingly, at last week’s film festival meeting, there was talk of using it as a screening venue. And having hung around so many contemporary theatre students at uni, I’d wager it would make a great performance space. With that it mind, I just tapped it into Google and found this update on the Summerhouse’s restoration and refurbishment. It certainly looks like the old shack has a bright, interesting future (and I’m glad to see that it will be wheelchair accessible.

I just want to state this once and for all: from now on, as far as I am concerned, Brexit is illegal. More and more detail is  emerging  of the crimes committed by the Leave  campaign. It’s now quite clear that they broke the law over their funding. At the very least,  the Brexit process should be halted while the  electoral commission investigates. The only way  out of this mess is  to  hold a second referendum – now that the shit is truly starting to hit the fan and it  is becoming clearer and clearer that the 2016 was reached illegally, how  else can things be put right? Until then, however, I’ll continue to view the path the uk is now following  as illegal. How can anyone possibly respect such a dubious underhand and damaging result?

You would think that a man whose arrogance and stupidity has caused so much damage would have the  good grace to shut the fuck up and keep out of politics, but apparently David CaMoron is considering returning to frontline politics. Words completely fail me. Has the P’tahk any idea of the damage he has done and the division he has caused? To even be considering such a return implies that he thinks he is held in some kind of esteem, when surely anyone capable of independent thought views him with a mixture of derision  and contempt. He called  a totally unnecessary referendum to try to fix a problem in the Tory party, it backfired on him and as a result the entire country will be up shit creek for years. How can anyone have the gall to think he still has a right to  help  govern  the country? CaMoron should be on his knees begging our forgiveness.

How I wish more bus drivers were like the one in this Evening Standard story. When nobody moved to make space for a wheelchair user, a bus driver in Paris ordered everyone off his bus and  told them to wait for the next one. Bravo that bus driver! Although to be honest I can’t really see anything similar happening on the 422 down to Woolwich.