Truth be told I’m going through a rough patch in my life. I’ve avoided writing about it on here, but Lyn and I stopped being a couple about a year ago. I’m still living with her,  but six months ago she asked me to move out, giving me time to get my own place here in  South London. We agreed that it was a change we both needed: I had become too dependent on her, and it was time for me to go it  alone. I think that L wanted a bit  of the space she used to have back as well as to encourage my independence.

Getting my own place has, however, proven easier said than done, and so far nothing has come up. I’m sure something eventually will, but with time growing so short I’m getting very, very worried. Being placed in sheltered accommodation, albeit temporarily,  is now a definite possibility. I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t very upset about the issue; I know I’ll never meet anyone  as incredible as Lyn again. Nonetheless, as I said, this was a natural next step both Lyn and I definitely needed to take, and she remains one of my best friends. All I can do is thank her for a great decade together. But if anyone knows anything about housing or can help me out in any way,  please contact me.

I’d rather not go into detail about why, but I now need to find a new place to live. If anyone reading this has any information or knows anywhere I could stay, perhaps until I get my own permanent place, could you please contact me. I’d prefer to stay in London, but as long as it’s accessible I’m open to all options.

It looks like we have a heatwave coming this weekend, only…

Enjoy whatever comes our way, I say.

All I want to do today on here is express my profound gratitude to my PA and friend Dominik. For the last few hours, he has sat laboriously cleaning out my trackerball. It stopped working yesterday morning: the ball would just stop rolling so I couldn’t use my mouse. We guessed that it had clogged up inside – quite a reasonable assumption given I’m still using the same trackerball I used through uni, fifteen years ago – so dom opened it up and gave it a thorough clean. I’m so grateful to him as, in the interim, I was forced to use my Ipad as a bluetooth trackpad, which, although usable, wasn’t easy. After the effort he made today, I owe Dominik bigtime! It’s working again now, but what concerns me is the company which made it doesn’t appear  to be online, so ordering a replacement might not be straightforward.

I have just come  across something which cheered me right up. The beeb is celebrating Monty Python’s fiftieth birthday in october with a series of programs and events. According to the  report, the celebrations will include an attempt to break the record for the biggest gathering of gumbies. I have one more thing to look forward to, it would seem. While there is no mention of the chaps performing together again, I still hold  out hope. 2014  may have been the last big show they do all together, but the golden jubilee in  October could entice the guys to perform a few of their biggest hits again. What’s the harm in hoping for one last Parrot Sketch or rendition of the Lumberjack Song?

[This is the first bit of something I started today, just for fun. I want to  add to it as  and when, perhaps turning it into some kind of artwork, but I thought I’d  pop the first bit on here, as a cheerful little entry.]

Rudi and Mimi were rather perplexed to see three customers enter their sociable little cafe in Charlton Park one morning. The first they recognised easily enough. Matt was one of their regular customers: due to his Cerebral Palsy, he used a powerchair and communicated using an Ipad. The second two gentlemen were completely new to the cafe owners: the first was totally bald and wore a strange red and black top with little silver pips on the collar. The second man wore an expensive-looking suit of the kind only available from tailors up in London.

The three walked in and seated their selves at a table. Mimi went to take their order. “The usual, Matt?” She asked. Over the years it had become easier just to assume the disabled man would have the same combination of a double espresso and cappuccino, rather than wait for him to type out a new order every day. Matt nodded his consent.

“And for you two gentlemen?” The Japanese cafe owner asked, turning to the two new men. Their answers took her aback. The bald, older man spoke first:

“Tea, Earl Grey, hot.” he said, rather sharply as though he had said the same phrase many times before. Mimi hesitated slightly, but turned her head to the other man anyway.

“And for you, sir?” She asked. The reply was, however, even stranger, especially given the cafe was not licensed to sell alcohol.

“The same please.” He said, but then added, “No, wait. One medium dry vodka Martini. Shaken, not stirred.”

Things are becoming very charged indeed at the moment with respect to politics; it is becoming really frightening. People seem to have lost their minds, on both sides of  the Atlantic. In America, people have started to talk of immigrants being put into concentration camps.  When I first heard that, I thought it was just silly talk: the death camps of nazi germany were horrendous, terrifying places – no matter how bad these camps in the States are, to compare the two must surely be going too far. If people use such language too much, they lose credibility.

Yet I  just came across this New York Times article, and it chilled me to the core. They might not  actively be murdering people there, but what is happening in such places must surely be  stopped immediately: kids are left to sleep on floors, infants are dying. People have objected to these places being called concentration camps, citing Godwin’s famous law, but Mike Godwin himself responded: “Chris, I think they’re concentration camps. Keep in mind that one of their functions by design is to punish those individuals and families who are detained. So even the “charged” term is appropriate.”

What goes on in these places sound utterly sickening. People are being treated totally inhumanely, just for trying to enter  America. All because the embarrassment to humanity currently  in the White House wants to look like a strong man. How the fuck can this be allowed to continue?

Yesterday while I was in the shower, I had another of my silly, random ideas I sometimes get. I was thinking about how both my friends Lyn and Charlie are into music, and how L creates music on her computer and Ipad while C conducts choirs. Then it struck me, what if we combine the two? I have seen communication aids being programmed to sing two or three times now, notably by the american Sarah Pyszka. I don’t know that much about how it’s done: I know she uses a Dynovox to create her music, but that’s about it. Yet of it is possible to get one communication aid to sound like  it’s singing, what would a choir  of them sound like. Granted, it might just produce a cacophonous mess, but I think there is a chance you could get something beautiful out of it. The harmonies between all the different synthesised voices could be incredible. Who knows, you could get something awesome going – a group touring the country, using their  communication aids to sing to people. Of course, I have no idea how you would start such a choir up, but I thought the idea was worth noting,

I just finished reading I’m Only In It For The Parking by Lee Ridley. I admit it has taken me far longer to get through than it should have, but I’ve fallen out of the habit of sitting down and reading properly. I didn’t give it the attention it quite deserved. Now that I have read it, though, I can see how stupid it was to instantly shun it when I first heard Ridley had published a book. While it isn’t perfect, I’m Only In It For The Parking supplies the general reader with a rare insight into the world of disabled people, and communication aid users in particular.

There is a lot I could say about Ridley’s book. The stage name he has given himself now strikes me as rather ironic: Ridley’s voice is far from ‘lost’. In this book it comes through quite clearly: he uses a simple, approachable tone to explain what life is like for him as a man with cerebral palsy. The experiences he details apply specifically to him, of course, so some of the things he talk about, like having a job or using pens, wouldn’t apply to all of us spastics. I also think his tone can be a bit too lighthearted and jocular at times: Ridley writes as if he is talking to people or doing a comedy gig, which I felt does not really suit the quite weighty subjects he tries to deal with at times. On the other hand, Ridley could just be employing this tone to make issues which might be very foreign to some readers seem more understandable.

Nonetheless, I would go as far as calling Ridley’s book quite a seminal piece of writing on the subject of disability: here we have a first hand account of what life is like for a communication aid user with cerebral palsy, detailing experiences ranging from dating to having epileptic seizures in a way nobody else could. He may have been given an opportunity to write and publish this book on the back of winning an itv talent show, but Ridley has used it to give readers a rare, valuable insight into a subject they may have been totally oblivious to. Far from being lost, Ridley knows precisely where his voice is and uses it to great effect. More power to him, I say.

I just stumbled across an old clip of the Monty Python guys on the Graham Norton show. It was obviously from their 2014 reunion. It had been posted on a Facebook page, so I put a question asking whether they could ever do another reunion show like that. Moments later, someone posted the obvious reply that they couldn’t do such a show without Terry Jones. Of course I had to agree: as cool as I think it would be to see the guys perform the classic sketches once more, they couldn’t do it without Terry J.

That got me thinking, though: If the Pythons can’t perform, who could? Their 2014 Reunion was enormous news, all over the media.  It was five years ago, though. Who else could make such a come back? Are there any other comedy groups or bands whose reappearance would make such a splash? Status Quo? The guys from Blackadder? To be honest I can’t think of any, but we all know we could do with a bit of a comedic distraction right now.

A second tv debate is airing as I type: a second debate for an election very few of us will get a vote in. Should I watch it? What would be the point? I would rather sit here and write blog entries about how pointless such debates are. It’s a complete waste of airtime if you ask me, only a fraction less farcical than the soap opera it replaced.

I must admit I did not watch last night’s debate so I can’t really comment on it. I have no interest in watching five self-righteous, spoiled men talk between themselves, congratulating themselves while being utterly oblivious to the suffering they and their party have caused. I  loathe every one of those men, and the p’tahk who thought himself too  important to be there. They think their class endows them with a right to run the country, yet none of them have any idea how the world really works. What’s the point of watching something when you know it would just make you furious? Why watch a  debate between a  group of highly privileged straight white men making bids for an election most of us can’t vote in? More to the point, how the hell can the uk still call itself a democracy?

Paper drinking straws might be nice and recyclable, but try drinking hot cappuccino through them, particularly if you have a tendency to bite down. Soggy paper straws really are unpleasant to drink through. Unfortunately more and more cafes and restaurants are stocking them rather than old fashioned plastic bendy straws, which are far nicer to use. These days I usually carry one or two reusable thick plastic straws around with me, a habit  I picked up from Lyn, but today I was caught short. I went up to the South Bank just for a walk, and decided to get the Thames Clipper back. On the boat I fancied a coffee.  The coffee was a good one, but, trust me, that’s the last time I leave home without a straw in my bumbag.

Over the last two or three days, I have kept coming across an odd notion which is so utterly implausible it just might be true. Two or three times the idea has cropped up that the Tories could elect Boris simply in order that he can run Brexit into the ground,  and when he does they’ll just  blame the ensuing disaster on him, cancel the whole farce and things can return to normal. Could that be true? I think it just might be: the tories surely  know as well as anyone that Brexit is an utterly stupid idea and always was; if it goes ahead, they and the country will be fucked. They can’t just stop it without looking completely ridiculous, so they  need some kind of scapegoat to blame the whole farce on. Could Boris be that scapegoat? this bumbling, bungling fool, already a laughing stock in the public eye? It’s quite a ridiculous notion, but at the same time, it’s intriguing.

I was watching Mock The Week last night when I was struck by a thought. I’ve almost finished Lee Ridley’s book (I know it has taken me a while). On the whole I think it’s a very good piece of text with lots of valuable insights into the world of people with cerebral palsy who use communication aids. In fact I’d go as far as calling it quite seminal, given how  Ridley uses gentle humour to introduce people into what you might call ‘our world’. (Of course, it’s not without it’s faults, and I could say a lot more about it, but perhaps I’ll leave that for another entry).. Last night, though, a thought came to me: could it now be possible to see a communication aid user like Ridley on a topical news show like Mock The Week? How cool would that be? After all, ‘we’ have as much to say about the issues of the day as anyone else. Thanks in large part to people like Ridley, communication aid users are gaining a bigger and bigger foothold in the mainstream media. I didn’t watch it, but Francesca Martinez also apparently made an outstanding appearance on Question Time last   night too. With guys like Lee Ridley and  Ted Shires on the assurgent, surely it’s only a matter of time before we see them going toe to toe with the likes of Ian Hislop and Paul Merton.

If you ever wondered who invented smoking weed, according to this, it was the Chinese about 2500 years ago. I suppose it had to originate somewhere, but that doesn’t mean the Tories can blame them for their failings.

If you’re as worried as  I am about the erosion of minority rights in the current political climate, I recommend checking this Owen Jones article out. Truth be told it’s a tough read, but jones outlines how the human rights of LGBTQ people are gradually being worn away and how homophobic and transphobic attacks are becoming more and more common. What vestiges of equality that had been achieved was hard fought for, but due to the resurgence of populism, the clock  is being pushed back.

As Jones puts it:  “Join the dots, look at the direction of travel: progress in LGBTQ rights has not simply ground to a halt, it is screeching into reverse. This is Pride month, but let us not have commercialised parades, pinkwashing dubious corporations, celebrating “progress”. Let’s have rage, courage and determination – because LGBTQ rights are under threat, and history shows that the only remedy is to fight back.”

Whether you’re LGBTQ or not, whether you’re a member of a minority or not, I think we should all be worried about the direction western culture is currently heading in.

Something tells me this will be well worth checking out when it airs on Channel 4 next week. A new adaptation of Catch 22, staring George Clooney, is on it’s way, and I must say it feels very timely indeed. What more fitting reaction could there be to an utterly absurd era than a story about the most absurd era of them all. In a way we are all currently in Yossarian’s predicament, trapped in an insane situation, unable to escape. Claim to be mad, and you must be sane. That’s certainly true: then as now, how  could any sane  person not recognise real madness when they see it?

As depressing and bleak as it is, I’d be a negligent blogger if I didn’t flag this Guardian article up. In it, Francis Ryan argues  that  the rights disabled people fought so hard to gain, from accessible public transport to independent living, are now being  eroded under the guise of austerity and  helped by the distraction of Brexit. ” Longstanding cultural prejudice around disability, combined with the demonising rhetoric of austerity, has exacerbated a sense of difference in society; an othering that perpetuates the idea that disabled people aren’t quite normal, or don’t want a life, a family, a home or an education like everyone else.” Sadly, I fear she is right

What is a city? What differentiates a city from a town, or a town from a village? I used to think London was enormous until I visited Delhi; and I used to think Manchester was huge before I moved to London. What, then, defines a city? And what makes a city great? Could it be it’s population? It’s architecture? It’s culture? To be honest I find such questions fascinating; it’s part of the reason I love to travel. Every city across the world is unique; each has it’s own character. I daresay this may have been what the great Walter Benjamin was getting at, at least in part.

What, then, defines a city, and what makes a city great? What makes a city stand out to the world? Think Paris, London, New York. Everyone knows about such cities, even if they have never visited them. What is it about these places which makes them such world cultural centres? I have been thinking about this quite a lot recently, and I think we need to celebrate such things more. Every city is unique and astonishing; we need as a community to celebrate that. The olympics pull the world’s focus onto one specific city through sport every four years; perhaps something similar can be done through culture. Of course, a city can be great without ever hosting the Olympic games – New York being an obvious example – but why can’t we let the world explore itself, one city at a time? Each metropolis could show itself off to the world through an artistic and cultural festival, televised across the planet. Perhaps then we would all see how similar we are, as well as how wonderfully diverse.

Every city could put on shows and events; there could be opening and closing ceremonies. Such events could function as a type of joint world exploration, with audiences brought into each city and shown what it contributes to the world culturally. They could happen every four years or so (probably not the same year as the olympics, though). The olympics is fine, but whereas it focusses on running and jumping and stuff, I reckon we need to establish an artistic equivalent alongside it, just as big, but dedicated to a city’s creative side. After all, art holds just as much cultural value as sport, if not even more. Such an event would also have the advantage of requiring less custom-built infrastructure, as most cities, especially larger ones, will already have theatres and cinemas in place.

Yet such events shouldn’t be just confined to the big metropolises. Cities like London and Tokyo get to host the olympics because they’re rich. This cultural olympiad, or whatever it will be called, will probably be much cheaper to put on, meaning places which might not be quite as wealthy could participate. Imagine how fascinating it would be to celebrate the culture of a city like Delhi or Cairo or Havana.

Of course, this is just another of my crazy ideas: how such an event would work practically would be anyone’s guess. Would people watch it without the thrill of competition? Would cities want to participate?  If other countries are to send delegations, as they do in the Olympic games, what would they contribute? Yet surely the idea of bringing everyone together and drawing the world’s focus onto a city in order to explore and celebrate it’s culture is a cool one.

I don’t give a rat’s ass what drugs Gove or Johnson claim to have taken in their effort to look cool,  more human or whatever stunt they’re trying to pull.  The fact is they’re still trying to force the far more  serious crime of Brexit upon us; trying to strip us off our consumer rights and turn the uk into a neoliberal hell. No  matter how much they try to distract us, no matter how much they attempt to appear personable, approachable, ‘down with the kids’ or whatever, we must not forget what these arseholes are trying to force upon us.

East London is beginning to feel more and more like Manhattan. I took myself up to the Olympic park today, just for my usual Saturday afternoon walk. I still like going up there, but what used to be a relatively green, open space is now a building sight. The plan is apparently to establish a new community there, complete with schools and shops, but I can’t help thinking that would make it just like any other part of London. The Olympic park should have remained a park; the area is now completely different to how it was  in 2012. The same goes for the area around North Greenwich. Of course a city is a city, and I must remember that such perpetual redevelopment is part of it’s nature. Yet it still seems a shame that an area which felt like a nice open park not long ago now feels like just another high-rise housing estate.

I know I shouldn’t just flag articles up without saying much about them, but I think everyone should read this today. It’s quite a long economics article in the Guardian, and I feel it reflects what I’ve thought for years: the premise of low tax  economy is inherently unfair and does not withstand scrutiny. It’s author  goes through the various moral and economic arguments spouted by those on the right for low tax economics, showing the logical flaws in each. The reason why some people are rich  and some are poor essentially boils down to luck; in  a civilised society, there is  no moral justification  for allowing some people to hoard vast amounts of wealth while others are left to go hungry. The author of the  piece articulates these ideas far better than I can so I won’t try to add much, save to say that having a physical disability probably gives me a slightly  different perspective on this:  I see myself as a part of society; I try to contribute to society in whatever ways I can, although I cannot have a regular job. People like me make a contribution to society,  so shouldn’t society support us? after all, if we all just cared for ourselves and forgot the whole idea of belonging to a society, all the infrastructure we need to function would fall apart. For guys like me to be able to make a contribution to society, then, we need society’s support – support which would not be there in a right-wing ultra-low tax hell the outists seem  to be pressing for.

We are currently marking seventy five years since the D-Day landings, in  which thousands of people died to liberate Europe from right-wing nationalism.  At the same time, the UK is  trying to leave the European Union, an international body set up precisely to prevent such  military operations ever being necessary again. I doubt I  am the only one who sees a monstrous irony in that. It is utterly tragic. Here we are as a civilisation, decrying the folly of nationalism in one breath and cheering it’s resurgence in the  next. The EU was created in the wake of the second world war to create a Europe-wide forum in which countries could settle their differences peacefully: how can we be even contemplating leaving it and going back to a situation where such barbarities are possible, and where countries see theirselves as  rivals rather than friendly members of a federation? I’m sure many others  will be making this very point today, far more articulately and perceptively than I can (see this for example); but it just staggers me how we, as a society, can be stupid enough allow such nationalism to resurface.

 

A terrible pun, I know, but it amused me enough to steal it. The question is, will it be Boris, Michael or Dominic July?

I should have taken my coat today, but it looked so nice and dry when I left for the  protest  this morning that I didn’t put it on. I got up to parliament  square at about half passed eleven, and the place was already filling up with my fellow Anti-Trump protesters. I try not to go up there too often these days for fear of getting too angry, but today I thought I’d chance it: it’s not every day that the buffoon currently calling himself the President of America comes to town, and  I just had to go up there to show my revulsion for him.

Seventy-five thousand other people had the same idea, apparently. In  spite of the weather, it was a massive event in parliament square, with a very carnivalesque atmosphere. I spotted one or two pro-Trump people, but the vast, vast majority were there to oppose the embarrassment to humanity. I tried to engage a few people in conversation, but kept finding that as soon as I had typed my sentence into my Ipad things had moved  on. That happens sometimes, especially at high energy, fast moving events like today’s.

I was  there for a few hours, first watching the crowds gather then  listening to the speeches. Luckily, they let me go to the front  so I got an excellent view  of the speakers; I especially liked David Lammy’s. Of course, it’s anybody’s guess what effect, if any, a protest like today’s will have, but we nonetheless have to try. What is now happening in the world vis a vis  things like Trump and Brexit can be seen as the return of a form of fascism. If that is true, then surely we must do something – anything – to try to stop it.

I know I shouldn’t laugh, as advocating violence shouldn’t  be encouraged, but this has me chuckling into my morning coffee. The band Killdren has been blocked from their Glastonbury gig this year. “A band criticised for calling on members of the Conservative Party to be killed have had their Glastonbury Festival booking cancelled.” I know it’s wrong but reading that tickled me. How hilarious would it be to see so many people  dancing away to songs about killing twits like Gove or Johnson? I suppose it’s  just a reflection of  the time, both in that society is now so politically furious that we  get bands singing songs about murdering politicians, and in that we’re now so insecure that we can’t allow people to listen to them at festivals.

I still think we need some kind of massive cultural movement  to counter Brexit, History teaches us that the best way to counter any kind of oppressive or occupying force is through some kind of nonviolent civil action. It is now quite clear that Brexit is that kind of force, and must be opposed. Surely the best way the country can show it’s opposition to the utter stupidity of brexit is through some kind of enormous cultural movement. It’s now obvious that if we don’t act, we can kiss goodbye to the NHS and will be eating chlorinated chicken before you can say ‘human rights’. Surely there must be a way for us Remainers to get together to create art and events to show our opposition to what is happening.

What I  have in mind would be massive – it would  need to be: festivals, events, music and film. Perhaps it could even be on the same epic scale as the London 2012 Olympics  (and London, being such a staunchly Remain city, might make an excellent host). Surely there must be some way to mobilise the vast swathes of actors, directors, writers and artists opposed to Brexit; and presumably most people in the mainstream media industry can see it  for the mindless fascism it is too. We need to get everyone together  to tell the government that we vehemently oppose what is going on, otherwise something  absolutely nobody knowingly voted for will be forced upon us. The only question is, how can we  get such a cultural movement going?

This afternoon I had the same problem I noted last Saturday, I just got in from a  nice long stroll to Woolwich and back. It’s Saturday, so once again I’m wearing  my Charlton football  shirt. The problem is, as I’m rolling along in my powerchair, people I pass – strangers,  usually men  – suddenly shout things like “Come on addicts!”  at me, completely out of the blue. The first time it happened, roughly here, it scared the living shit out of me. It took me a couple of seconds to realise what he was talking about  and remember that The Addicts or Addics is the nickname for Charlton Athletic FC.  I was a little more prepared the second time it happened and didn’t jump quite so high, but I must remember what happens the next time I put this shirt on. I mean, what am I supposed to be addicted to anyway?