I was at a film festival meeting last night, the first of the year. We already have some great ideas for what to screen this year, but at the end one of my friends who I also know from the cafe told us what happened there. Apparently the bastards didn’t just rob the place – they totally wrecked  it.  They took the till, but then they smashed everything – the crockery, the fridge, the tables,  everything.  What sort of pathetic bastard would do such a thing, so needlessly. Fortunately the guy told us that the Gofundme  page they set up had already passed three thousand quid, but even so the news was heartbreaking.

Hurrah! We are officially back online. The last 36 to 48 hours or so have actually been surprisingly painful: Late Monday afternoon, I was most of the way through watching a film online when our internet went down. At first we assumed it was the router so  I whizzed down the hill and bought a cheap  replacement. That didn’t  work, and to cut a long story short it turns out L’s contract needed renewing. A  few telephone calls set thing straight, but it took a day for them  to put us back online, so all of yesterday I was left to  twiddle  my thumbs. While I could check my mail and do basic stuff on  my Ipad, I  couldn’t  surf the  web or watch random stuff on Youtube in the leisurely way I usually do, and it  was amazing just  how much I missed it.

I don’t know many details so I can’t write much about it, but the Cafe in the park was apparently burgled yesterday. When I was over there yesterday I  saw it was shut but I didn’t hang around due to the hail. L told me when I got home, having heard about it online. I was just over there again, and the cafe was still not open although a Gofundme page has been set up to help get the place going again. Who would do such a thing? Who would steal from a nice homely place like that? One can joke and say it was the local  stoners with the munchies after a midnight snack, but it really is despicable what people can  stoop to.

The Tories  are now saying they might need  to ban social media firms if they do not censor images of suicide. Of course, suicide is a problem which ought to be addressed, but I must say  that strikes me as a very convenient excuse to get rid of the public forums where the government comes under the most scrutiny.

The Ghostbusters franchise is a complete mess right now. Like most fans, I was  not at all taken with the 2016 all female reboot and thought it did a disservice to the original two films. However, I just came across this Midnight’s edge video: there’s going  to be a new third Ghostbusters film, this time with men. Apparently the 2016 did so appallingly and pissed off so many fans that the producers, Bill Murray included, decided to try again. However the   video goes into all the politics behind that move and  it truly  is a car crash. Because it was given so much of a feminist, ‘girl power’ spin, anyone who disliked the 2016 film was apparently branded a ‘Basement-dwelling  Trump supporter’. To my knowledge, I have never dwelt in a basement or supported Trump, but I thought that film sucked; let’s hope the second reboot is a bit better.

Part of me is a bit worried that I shouldn’t have posted yesterday’s entry, and that incidents like that are best kept private for fear of upsetting the people involved. After all, entries like  that have landed me in quite a bit of trouble in the past. At the same time, I think I have every right  to write about such incidents: disabled people have  to put up with things like that quite regularly. Moreover, by  writing about it on here, I find I can put across my viewpoint far  more articulately than if I took the issue up with  the  person in question face to face; by writing what happened from  my point of view up  as a blog entry, I can explain  precisely why it made me so upset. The disadvantage to that is, it makes public an incident  someone else may not  want publicised, and makes them seem like a bad person when of course  they aren’t. They are a good person, but if anyone speaks to me like I’m five or adopts the  stern, overly-authoritative  tone  she did towards me, I have a right to note it here. Should I blog about things like that? To be honest I could do with some advice.

I think I better write this out simply as a form of catharsis. A few days ago at the park cafe, I was sitting drinking coffee with the guys when one of their various dogs leapt up onto the table and started licking it. That struck me as very unhygienic – people have to eat off those tables, after all – so I started shouting at the mutt to get it off. Instead of getting the dog off the table, though, one of my cafe friends, who I’d rather not name, turned to me and sternly said ‘No!’ as if I was the one at fault for shouting at the dog. The tone of her voice was that of a teacher telling a young child off, and to be honest it really pissed me off.

In fact it made me quite furious, both at the fact that she didn’t care the dog was on the table, and at the fact she assumed she had the authority to speak to me that way. I’m a thirty-five year old man with a master’s degree, not a five year old; and I had a perfect right to object to the dog being allowed to behave like that. Perhaps she didn’t mean to speak to me that way, but it felt like I was being spoken to like a child, and it made my blood boil. I flew into one of my rages. It was just a short, simple ‘No.’ but it felt endowed with an unearned authority which I found infuriating: the past few months have been very hard ones for me for various reasons, and the last thing I need is to be awarded less respect than a fucking dog.

I just got in from a long, fairly chilly walk to Woolwich to find Dom had sent me a link to this video of a 2015 TED talk. By David Steindl, it’s fairly philosophical, but  hit a chord with me. The key to being happy, he says, is gratitude; you must appreciate what  you have. I know what he means: so far in life I’ve been incredibly lucky. I have good, supportive parents and more friends  than I can  shake a stick at. I  know how much harder my life could have been. Moreover, when one is grateful, Steindl says, one is not jealous or envious. If one focusses on what one has rather than does not have, you are, almost  automatically, much happier. While you can watch talks like this  and cynically dismiss them as cliche or twee, or fret about slight religious undertones (the speaker never says whom we should we grateful  to) I nonetheless feel this is a wise, timely message we can all take  a lot from.

I certainly think  this is worth popping on here. Believe me, I’ve lost count of the times I’ve had this problem.

I just saw on the evening news that a funeral has taken  place for six unknown Auschwitz victims. ”The remains of five adults and one child were anonymously donated to the Imperial War Museum in 1997.” At the ceremony, the conducting rabbi spoke of the need for  vigilance against all forms of racism, antisemitism and intolerance. Those words seem very timely indeed: across  the world, all forms of hatred and bigotry are  on the rise. I fear we  are once again mindlessly wandering down paths we promised to never tread again. As the bigots gain more and more power, the question is, how can we stop history repeating itself.

Another lazy blog I admit, but anyone eager for any snippet  of information about the new Star Trek Picard series aught to check this video out. I find it clarifies quite a bit, and IGN is fairly reliable, so perhaps my pessimism a  few months  ago was premature.  According to this  report,  the new Picard show will resolve the timeline issues brought about by the new JJ Abrams films, something which has bugged Trekkies for  years, whereas I’d previously heard that that divergence was down to copyright issues. We can only hope.

I’m  home again, back  in the capital, but I’m afraid this was just too topical not to nick

I just got back from visiting Esther in Crewe. I’m currently in Cheshire, visiting my parents. I’ve been here since Tuesday and return to the capital tomorrow. It’s lovely to see the old family house again, and sleep in my old childhood bedroom. Life in a sprawling, thriving metropolis is all well and good, but every so often you feel the need to return to your roots, eat your mums cooking and visit the people without whom you could never have got as far as you have. Esther is fine, I’m glad to say. Chatting to her this afternoon I could barely believe it is now almost ten years since she and I were stomping around university together. She’s still one of my best friends,though; I should definitely visit her more,, and i think it’s also high time she came to visit me in Charlton.

By now everyone will know the result of this evenings vote: the government had the biggest defeat in eighty years. What everyone predicted would happen has happened. The truth is I don’t think I can say anything on here to add anything to the debate. Brexit is more of a farce than ever, and the sooner the embarrassing mess comes to its inevitable end the better.

Mostly to distract myself from all the bollocks happening in the world right now, I’ve began to think about the Olympics again. With the next games in tokyo, the ’24 games in Paris and the ”28 games in LA, I still think a british city should bid to host the 2032 games. I know that will probably be the last thing on anyone’s mind right now, but I think we could all do with a reprisal of London 2012 to distract us and perhaps bring the country back together a bit. The thing is, I can’t decide whether I would prefer Manchester or London to bid again. I come originally from the North-West, so I had thought it was time to see a Mancunian olympiad; yet, with so much building work going on in London, with Crossrail (hopefully) opening this autumn, part of me reckons it would be awesome to show London off to the world again. The city is thriving, and we could all do with a flashback to London 2012 again; we need another party. By ’32, London will probably have entered another heyday, assuming the entire UK isn’t bankrupt by then. Thus I can’t decide which I’d prefer: London 2032 or Manchester 2032. I’m not so much interested in the sport side of things as the occasion aspect; the chance to show a UK city off to the world, with all the pageantry and spectacle. And of course, I’m dying to see another British Olympic opening ceremony, wondering what we could do to top the one in 2012. Who knows, if I’m the guy who gets another uk olympics going, they may even let me direct it.

Sorry it’s another Guardian article, and quite a long one at that, but I highly recommend reading this piece on populism. Farage and co. have apparently been touring  the country calling for a no-deal Brexit. trying to whip people into an Outist frenzy by claiming some sort  of victimhood. This new fascism, rebranding itself as populism, has to be stopped. The descriptions of Farage’s speeches remind me of Nuremberg. As it becomes ever clearer how damaging brexit will be, Farage tries to portray himself as some  sort  of freedom fighter rebelling against tyranny; yet those listening to  him, so captivated, don’t realise he’s a con-man who  would  see them stripped of their every right. It really is  scary, not to say infuriating, how easily people seem to fall for this xenophobic snakeoil salesman and his scheme to turn the country into a capitalist hell. They haven’t seemed to realise what to the rest of us  is painfully obvious: what Farage pretends is a fight for freedom  and sovereignty, opposed by a   supposed liberal  metropolitan elite, is actually  a   campaign to impose the most perverse form of  neoliberalism on this country by stripping us of our human and consumer rights.

Probably the best thing I can do on here today is flag this piece of Guardian analysis up. It sums up  just how ridiculous things on both sides of the  Atlantic  currently are. Here, the Tories are trying to push through a piece of legislation which they know full well has no chance of getting through, and they know  will  do serious damage to the uk economy. In  the states, the fool they  laughably call their president is determined to nurse his ego by demanding a ridiculous wall be built  on the border with Mexico. The wall would serve no practical purpose,  but cost billions of dollars. Both here and there, things are an utter, utter mess. The piece’s author, Garry Younge writes “The simultaneous unravelling of the Trump agenda and the Brexit process provides a useful lens through which to understand the trajectories of the past few years in both countries. Oppositional in nature, both Trump and Brexiters thrived on galvanising longstanding discontent and prejudice through inflammatory rhetoric and egregious falsehoods, and aspired to make noise not change.” In other words, both Trump and Brexit started life as jokes, never expecting  to reach the absurd position they currently find theirselves  in, and with absolutely no idea what to do next.

Although I have  a strange feeling that I have seen it before somewhere, I just  came across this apparently new John Cleese video on Youtube. It’s good to see that Cleese still has ‘it’ – that he still has the ability and resolve  to make people both laugh and think. This sketch is what people might do in  a traffic  jam, so in a way it’s a comment on modern society; but it’s also quite cleesian in it’s weird, middle class, quite English style. I also think he might be making a statement about the state of society at the moment, and the crazy, logjammed situation we are increasingly finding ourselves in.

For a while now, I’ve known that my cerebral palsy effects my emotions and how I express my emotions. I’ve always been strange in that department: the way I express my emotions has always been quite overt, compared to others. I’ve always squealed with excitement or banged stuff when I’m angry. It wasn’t until fairly recently, though, that I realised that this was something common to people with my type of athetoid cerebral palsy. I have written on here before about my rages – about how table-bangingly, door-slammingly furious I often get when it comes to politics. My brain handles anger and other emotion in a different way to people without cp, so I express it more overtly. It probably looks rather childish, but at least I now know it’s down to my disability.

The problem is, half the country now seems to be getting just as angry. On the news and over the web, I see people getting just as furious, displaying the same white hot anger I feel in myself. It worries me. People all over the place seem to be losing it, especially over Brexit. Everyone seems to be becoming more confrontational and less tolerant; people shout at one another in the street more. Who knows why this came about, but I suspect it has something to do with the depersonalising aspects of the web. Online we’ve become so used to getting furious and arguing with the screen, we forget that venting that anger to someone’s face is not acceptable. It’s apparently happening in America too. It’s quite frightening, and to be honest i’m starting to worry about it: the amount of anger currently flying about cannot be good.

I have to say I don’t agree  at all with what Bryan Cranston says in this article. The American actor has defended his casting as a disabled person in his new TV show, The Upside. While of course I’m always happy to see people with disabilities being represented on television, I think that, where at all possible, they should be  played by an actual disabled person. It’s no longer acceptable for white  people to ‘black  up’ to play black people, so why is is still okay  for  able bodied actors to ‘crip up’, and indeed expect to get plaudits for it? While  Cranston points  out, “If I, as a straight, older person, and I’m wealthy, I’m very fortunate, does that mean I can’t play a person who is not wealthy, does that mean I can’t play a homosexual?”  I just think there are too few acting roles for people with disabilities already, without what there is being taken up by people with no real experience of  disability.

I’ll probably blog about Brexit quite frequently over the next few weeks. I know I’m  supposed to  vary my subjects, reflecting my life as a guy with a disability, but the truth is I’m now becoming very worried indeed about  what is  about to happen in the   UK. The more I read, the more frightening it seems  and he more certain I am that it must be stopped at all costs. I just came across this Guardian article by a Labour MP  spelling out what is going  on. If we leave the Eu,  we’ll have to join another international trade body.  The people pushing brexit ” want to take the UK out of the EU and join us instead to the North American Free Trade Agreement (Nafta) or the Pacific Alliance, offering free trade with these countries but none of the environmental, labour or consumer protection offered by the EU.” Our consumer and human rights stand to be ripped to shreds as  the Outists seek to  transform the country  into  an  ultra capitalist hell; the postwar, communitarian, liberal consensus will be a thing of  the past. I went to university and live pretty independently, but that was only possible due to various state-based support structures – structures which now stand to be thrown out the window as the economy  is  re-oriented to  a much more  commercial, American style one. I do not want that to happen. Brexit must not go ahead, surely we must urgently do something to stop it.

I just came across this video of David Attenborough talking about brexit, and what he says seemed so astute that I instantly knew I needed to look up the original and link to it here. As Attenborough says, he isn’t a political figure, but what is currently going on in this country  and elsewhere is so concerning  and foolish that we have a duty to speak out against it. Attenborough us one of the wisest people alive; he is dismissed at one’s peril.

I know The United States of America to be a nation of bright people, as intelligent and thoughtful as anyone else, so why the zark is it allowing a complete idiot completely out of touch with reality claim to be it’s president? I just turned my computer on to find this news:  Donald Trump is threatening to completely shut down the US government if it does not let him  build a border wall  with Mexico. Such a wall would cost billions and probably be completely redundant as migrants, legal and illegal, would just find a way around it. I know America is the world’s richest nation, but even so, if I was american I’d be  furious that this money  wasn’t going on something more sensible, like social services or health. I’d be completely embarrassed, and wondering why those who know what they are  doing weren’t trying to put someone more qualified into the White  House,, rather then a nonse who thinks appearing on a wrestling show is the height of sophistication. How can any self respecting country allow a complete egotistical moron spend billions on his own  moronic vanity project? Come on, America,  grow up!

I’ve now been using an old-style Neater-Eater  to feed myself for about twenty-five years. My parents got me my first manual one when I was about eleven, and  since then  I’ve never considered anything else. A day or so ago, though,  I had occasion to look up videos about Neater Eaters to demonstrate one to  someone over Facebook, and cam across this amazing pierce. The new  Neater Eater  looks  incredible: I love how the new arm kind of weaves in and out, and  how  you  can now program it with an iphone. It has certainly come a long way from the first versions. It’s  so beautiful and cool that I just had to flag it up.

Apart from for a couple of hours before midnight on new year’s eve, 2018 like 2017 was a completely dry year for me. I’m proud that I managed to keep it up, although I feel bad that  I broke  my abstinence in the end. It  was just a couple of glasses of champagne, but I worry that that one drink will  open the door and I’ll end up getting silly again. On the other hand, I probably shouldn’t beat myself up: in that moment  of celebration with one of my best friends, having won a huge  bottle of bubbly, continuing to resist would have looked churlish. I defy anyone to have said ”No, thanks.” For  various personal reasons, I’ve had a stressful recent few months, and, truth be told, being  able to let go in that moment on Sunday evening felt good.

Thinking about it on  my walk this afternoon, I  decided that I ought not to be too angry about it; nobody begrudges me the odd drink. Problems only arose  when I had too much and too often. Having been a T-Totaler for two and a half years, perhaps  it’s time for a change of rules. Henceforth, I will allow myself the occasional drink, but only with friends or on special occasions, and only if I know I  can get to bed without breaking anything. And of course, the moment things start getting out of hand, I stop again.

What a superb image for London to see in the new year with

Mind you, you should see the hissy fit all the Outists are throwing over this. Tres amusing.

I woke up in Chester this morning. Charlotte invited me up to spend New Year’s Eve with her a few weeks ago and I thought it would make a nice change. I didn’t realise what she had in mind, but, Charlie being Charlie, last night I found myself at a New Year’s Eve burlesque night in a Chester church, complete with burlesque dancers, a gay choir and a magician seemingly capable of producing doves from nowhere. It was quite a way to see in 2019. The most surreal moment, though, was when Charlie and I were crowned joint burlesque queens of the night (not that I was wearing anything particularly queeny).