Yesterday I enjoyed another of London’s theatrical treats. Truth be told, I haven’t encountered much Agatha Christie before, apart from the odd episode of Poirot on TV, so when John suggested going to see one of her plays called Witness  For The Prosecution I didn’t know what to expect. I met him up in Southwark yesterday afternoon, and quite to my surprise he walked me to an old London council building rather than a theatre. What I saw then amazed me: rather than being under your usual proscenium arch, the play was performed in the round, in an old courtroom. The audience was really drawn in to the action – about a man accused of murdering a wealthy old woman he’s been having an affair with in order to get her fortune.

The action took place entirely within the courtroom, so while this made the trial scenes feel very real, when the plot went outside the court case, the audience needed to use a bit of imagination. Nonetheless, the overall effect was really immersive, and the audience was really drawn into the action. I felt very caught up in what these solicitors were saying, and the fate of the guy on trial. It was a really effective, creative use of a space which, in a way, was built especially for dramas like that.

Thanks to my friend john I have had a great couple of days, going to The Globe on Saturday and then to see a quite wonderful piece of contemporary theatre yesterday. It made me think of my drama student friends from university: I could see Ricardio or Rockie directing a production like the one we saw yesterday. If you know where to look, the capital is a creative, inventive space, kind of like a vast university campus. After all, who but a contemporary arts student would think of using an old, probably victorian, courtroom as a theatrical space?

You know that you live in a great world city when you can just hop on a tube train and go see a Shakespeare play in a replica of the theatre where they were first performed. John  and I went to see The Merry Wives of Windsor  at the Globe last night. He’s over from Poland and suggested we go take in some Billy S, and who was I to decline? It had been a full  eight years since I last visited that magnificent theatre with Lyn Andrejz and Natalia. I just checked my blog archive, though, and coincidentally we saw the same play on the same day of the year. Last night, however, we were among the groundlings at the front  rather than up on the balcony, so it was a completely different  experience: much more visceral and intimate.  It was a much more physical performance last night, with a lot of  singing, dancing and choreography. The Globe is unlike any other theatre  I know, and I came home thinking I had visited one of London’s treasures. Mind you, I better point out that I was rather jammy because I could sit in my powerchair on a metal platform by the stage, while John and those around me had to stand  for  the whole show. Being me often has it’s advantages…

Although I was too young to get into Spitting Image when it first aired in the eighties, I daresay there’s  never been  a better time for this news  of the revival of the legendary satirical show. As the article says, with absurd characters like Trump and Johnson doing the rounds, this is an era  which virtually satirises itself. Something to look forward to watching, then, if just  to see what the real puppet masters can tell us about the wooden, soulless mannequins currently up on the political stage.

I had another of my random, crazy ideas this morning. I still like to help out at Charlton Park Academy, a local special school. Believe it or not, I’ve now been volunteering  there for nine years. Heading there this morning, I started to wonder about somehow putting them into contact with my  old special school in Winsford. I haven’t visited Hebden Green in over fifteen years, so it’s probably totally different to the place I  knew; but it seems to me there could be a lot of potential in introducing the schools to each other. Hebden always had a strong communication and AAC focus, something I doubt it will have lost. If that is so, think what both schools could  organise together. As well as that, imagine  what they could generate artistically.

Of course this is just another of my off-the-wall ideas; nothing may come of it,  although Caroline, the lady I work with at school, seemed quite  keen on the idea. I suppose part of me is looking for ways to hook my old world up  with my new one. Yet life has  taught me that there is always potential  for awesomeness.  In establishing links between two fairly unique schools on different sides of the country, who knows where we could end up or what could be created.

This was too witty and apt for me not to steal

Seriously though, it takes a sick, dark mind to try to twist the tragic murder of an mp into a motivation for something she was trying to stop.

With impeachment proceedings finally beginning against trump and Boris’ shenanigans over Brexit slowly being unravelled, it seems  at last  both messes began in  2016 are finally being cleared up. At last the two blonde assholes currently in charge of the UK and USA are being brought to  justice. It’s quite clear both Trump and Johnson are two over-privileged white men with no right being where they are, and  that they both should face justice. In trying to prorogue parliament and in trying to get Ukraine to interfere in US politics, what both men did was clearly unlawful, so let’s hope both spoiled  blonde pricks are held  to account. Rather than being above the law, it’s good to see the law catching both men up.

While I could of course post a rant about the ongoing political farce, Caroline, the lady I work with at Charlton Park Academy, has sent me  something far, far more interesting. Google has started to develop speech recognition software for people whose disabilities distort their  speech. According to the link she sent me ”if you have a speech disorder cause by a neurological impairment like ALS or multiple sclerosis, then using Google Assistant or Amazon’s Alexa will be off-limits to you. In today’s tech environment, that means missing out on a lot.

”That’s why Google is launching a new initiative to make speech technology more accessible to those with disabilities. It’s called Project Euphonia, and it incorporates a wide array of research directions, alongside collaborations with nonprofits and volunteers.”

Google is asking for volunteers whose speech is distorted to go in so it  can model the patterns of  their speech. Frankly though, I’m not sure how useful such an approach would be, since speech like mine isn’t that consistent: I might try to verbalise the same word or phrase twice, but it won’t necessarily sound the same. Nonetheless, this is certainly worth keeping my eye  on: being able to use things like Siri could make stuff much easier and faster.

At a  time when the Tories are a laughing stock facing their possible demise as a party, Labour not only fail to capitalise, but try to upstage the Tories by having a crisis of it’s own. The majority of labour voters and members want  to remain; Brexit flies in the face of everything the party stands for. Why, then, did it today vote not to openly back remaining in the EU? More to the point, can anyone tell me what the smeg has happened to British politics?

One of the things I like most about London is the number of ways you can get around. It’s quite a big city, but there is all kinds of public transport you can use to get from place to place. John and I ended up  using three of them yesterday. Lovely, sunny day that it was, we decided a day trip to Kew gardens was in order; but rather than just using the boring old tube to get there, we opted to go by boat up the Thames to Westminster. We could then take the District line down to kew. Although it wasn’t the quickest route, it certainly was pretty: the  city looked stunning in the autumn sunshine yesterday.

We eventually got to Kew at about four, but that still left plenty of time to have a look around before the gardens closed. I’d been there once before on a solo visit last year, but I only got a brief look then. Yesterday John and I started to explore the gardens properly, looking around the famous glasshouses and palaces. I say ‘started to explore’, of course, because the place is so vast that you could never fit it all in  in  one visit. Nonetheless, what we saw was sublime: I especially liked the Japanese pagoda, and the range of plants was truly mindblowing. Kew definitely is one of London’s treasures, and John and I are planning a return visit (perhaps with Lyn) soon.

London’s variety of public transport may be cool, but the range of places you can visit here is even cooler.

I agree with what Mark Kermode has to say about Ad Astra here, having seen it up at The Barbican with John  last night. I’d only add one detail: Ad Astra is  utter, utter crap. It’s written by someone who is only semi scientifically literate at best, and was so keen to ram Christian dogma down our throats that I almost walked out. And would  someone please explain how that violent monkey   got onto an  adrift space ship?

If you somehow still need convincing that we in the UK are bloody lucky to have the NHS, and that we should fight like hell to preserve it, check this out. It’s a clip of an Elisabeth Warren interview with  Stephen Colbert, in which Warren describes just how dire the American healthcare system is. There, insurance companies deny people the care they need, just to reduce costs. It is an utterly sickening system which has no right to call itself civilised, but it’s exactly what the Outists want to impose on us if they get their way.

I’m not sure what to make of the Lib Dem’s new promise to cancel Brexit if they’re elected outright. As much as I passionately oppose Brexit, I worry that this move is just a stunt to get votes. The Liberal Democrats know how vehemently some people oppose Brexit, and think this promise will make such people vote for them. My worry is, it will end up splitting the remain vote, and the tories will end up winning the next election by default. Either that or it will backfire and they’ll end up losing votes: after all, I don’t think even the most hardened Remainer would be quite comfortable if Brexit was just cancelled without a second referendum. It would look completely undemocratic and only serve to enrage the Outists. As much as I would like to see Brexit stopped, I worry that pledging to do so just to win votes in an election is clearly a ploy which may well backfire badly.

I have heard it said that London is not just the UK’s political capital, but also it’s centre for economics, media and culture. More than in most other western countries, London dominates the rest of the UK. Our biggest theatrical district is here, as are the BFI and the main TV stations.  Thinking about that recently, as fond as I am of this sprawling metropolis, I’m not sure that I like that: why should one city be so dominant over all others in a country? As I discovered yesterday (albeit via youtube) there are towns and cities in the UK which have just been allowed to go to ruin, and that that disparity was probably one of the main factors behind the Brexit vote. It is, of course, unfair that London should get all the attention while other places in the uk are left to fail?

Perhaps I’m as guilty of this as anyone else: after almost a decade living here, I’ve began to tend to think of London as the epicentre of the UK; the place where everything cool happens. But why should that be the case? Why shouldn’t places like Birmingham, Manchester, Liverpool or indeed stoke be just as culturally significant as London? I’ve also heard it said – by more than one person – that London isn’t really a British city but an international city alongside Paris and New York etc. I certainly see what they mean: there’s an exotic, unique mix of cultures here from all over the world. Yet that exoticism brings with it a differentiation with the rest of the country: international cities, by definition, cannot be said to have one single culture or belong to one nation. London has a different feel to it than the rest of the UK. I daresay that difference, both financial and cultural, is illustrated in the fact that so many people more voted remain in London compared with other parts of the country. If that is the case, though, how might London be reconciled with the rest of the country?

As much as I love this vast, multi-national metropolis, i’m really starting to get the sense that the London-centrism of the powers that be in this country is becoming problematic. London has been allowed to boom while other places have been ignored, and people outside the capital are starting to resent that disparity. London gets all the new buildings, transport projects and sporting and cultural events while everywhere else suffers from lack of investment. Surely it’s time to redress that balance, before even more resentment is provoked.

This morning I was messing around on google maps, as I often do, when I came across Stoke-On-Trent. It’s somewhere I went to quite often in my childhood and adolescence, but I haven’t been there in years. On a whim, media buff that I am, I decided to tap ‘Stoke-On-Trent’ into Youtube. I expected to find the usual range of city tours and local business adds, but I have to say what I found appalled me: video upon video  documenting an abandoned, derelict city. From what I saw, the city has been totally left to ruin. The contrast with what i’m now used to in this clean, shiny metropolis, is what strikes me the most: I mean, what on earth happened? How could any local council or government let a city go to waste like that? Of course, the reasons behind such a collapse in a city’s fortunes will always be complex, but with cities like London and Manchester clearly booming (for the moment at least) why are cities like Stoke-On-Trent being allowed to go through such harsh, devastating declines? The Guardian has done an interesting video series  looking at the city (second link), and  you have to see their point when they speculate that such mismatches in investment may have been one of the reasons why so many people in Stoke voted for  Brexit. Either way, I find the sight of such dereliction, with row upon row of boarded up shops and houses, chilling.

Perhaps the best thing I can do on here today is to direct everyone here, to the Captain Ska Youtube channel. I just came  across it, and was  instantly taken with it’s political yet catchy music. I better warn you, some of their songs will get stuck in your head. If you ask me, though, things like this are precisely what we need in terms of politics and culture: the tide of public  opinion is now quite firmly against brexit, and that tide is growing stronger every day. The problem  is, people on both sides of the argument are getting angrier and angrier, and I’ve started to see talk of a civil war being bandied about. I’m not sure how serious such talk is, but nobody wants to see this stupid little farce turn violent. It’s far better,  surely, to resolve this debate creatively, through art, which is why catchy little tunes  like ‘F**k Borris’ and ‘Nigel Farage is a Racist’ are certainly worth getting into.

It was great to see so many EU flags at last night’s Last Night Of The Proms. I only caught a bit of it, but I had to raise an eyebrow at seeing so many EU flags at such a traditionally patriotic event. Of course, there are those  who will try to dismiss it, and  put it down to London being such a fervently Remain city; but I think this is a clear sign that the public is rejecting brexit, If people are now so passionately opposed to Brexit that they politicise an event like Last Night Of The Proms, surely the tide is turning and it’s days are numbered

I don’t think this should come as a surprise to anyone. The Tories have admitted not considering the impact a no-deal Brexit will have on disabled people. From losing out on European funds  to losing access to potential  personal assistants from the EU, as usual those of us with disabilities stand to be the hardest hit by Brexit. But does the government give a toss? They haven’t even carried out the proper impact assessments! They are so concerned with achieving brexit, just so they can maintain the integrity of their party, that they let even the wellbeing of the citizens  of this country fall by the wayside. How deplorable can a government get? They can’t even guarantee than nobody will die as a result of brexit, but they still want to continue with it. Surely it is clear to any thinking person that they are utterly unfit to govern this or any other country,

If you want to see an example of just how technologically advanced Fan art and fan  responses  to film is now becoming, check this out. While, as the article says, Star Trek Nemesis was a pretty dire film, this certainly demonstrates just how adept some fans are becoming at taking films, playing with them, and improving them.

The episode with Lee Ridley’s I’m Only In It For The Parking taught should have me never to say anything about books before I’ve actually read them, but I just came across this New Statesmen article about David CaMoron’s new attempt to justify himself in prose. How the man can possibly have the gall to  try  to absolve himself of responsibility for the catastrophic mess the country is currently in is beyond me. According to the article,  in the book the p’tahk tries to claim that a referendum on EU membership was inevitable, but we all know  he called it to resolve an internal Tory party  issue. The  country was perfectly happy in the European Union: any  moderately aware person  could tell leaving it  would be utterly stupid, and risking it in a vote would be complete folly. Yet CaMoron got cocky, chose to put his party interests before those of the country’s  and we all  have to pay the price. The imbecile can write all the books he likes, but it won’t change the fact that history will record CaMoran as the man  who totally screwed the country.

Far from the ongoing  and ever-deepening farce that is Brexit, there is no doubt in my mind that this is the biggest, most profound news story of the day. Scientists say they have found a potentially habitable planet orbiting a star 111 light years from earth. “Astronomers have for the first time discovered water in the atmosphere of a planet orbiting within the habitable zone of a distant star. The finding makes the world – which is called K2-18b – a plausible candidate in the search for alien life.” This is potentially mindblowing,  earth-shattering news if you ask me: the first tangible sign that we aren’t alone in the galaxy. It’s just a shame that we’re all currently so consumed with the political drama to  pay much attention to it.

I was making my way to Eltham in my powerchair this afternoon to sort out a few things at my bank. I go there quite regularly these days because I want to get to know the area. I was going along quite happily, when all of a sudden my right tyre blew. I’ve been having a lot of trouble with my tyres recently, and it’s getting irritating. The bang it made made me jump out  of my skin.

I was about to turn back and get  the bus straight back to Charlton, when I remembered seeing a small mobility shop on Eltham high street – perhaps they could help me out. It was worth asking. I headed straight for it, and then something awesome happened. Within ten minutes, my chair had a new tyre and innertube fitted, and I didn’t even have to get out  of my chair. The staff were so supportive and professional I was very impressed. What  could have turned into  a bit of a catastrophe was sorted within half an hour. I was so impressed (and relieved) that I thought it definitely worth a blog entry.

Just as an update on an issue I touched upon two or three  weeks ago, I just came across this beeb piece on whether James Bond could ever be portrayed as a female. It’s quite a thorny, complex question: by all means, modernise the character. Bond  has always changed to reflect contemporary attitudes, with each of the franchise’s six  actors bringing something new  to the role. Yet they all play Bond within parameters defined by Ian Fleming; stray too far beyond  those parameters, and he stops being 007. The question therefore becomes exactly what those parameters are and whether they include 007’s gender.

I’m not sure what  to think. As much as I love  the franchise, I think perhaps it is time it was opened up to fresh ideas and new directions. All art should always be open to new ways of seeing things. Then again, I need hardly say that such experiments have in the past been known to backfire catastrophically. This is a very old, well loved  franchise which viewers expect certain things from. Change it too much and you start to loose their interest and affection. At the end of the day, the only way  to see whether a female Bond would work would be to get a woman to play 007.

The beeb screened a couple of documentaries on Monty Python last night, obviously  kicking off the fiftieth anniversary celebrations, but I have to say I wasn’t that impressed with what I saw.  For one,  both docs, aired back to back, covered pretty much the same ground: both were  histories of Python, largely telling the same stories, even using some of the same footage. The second felt like a repeat of the first, although  it mentioned the 2014 reunion.  Yet that was the briefest of references, so I was left feeling unsatisfied: that reunion –  python’s revival after so long – warrants a lot more exploration. This is a golden jubilee which obviously deserves to be marked; it’s just strange that the bbc would do so just by airing two very similar programmes in quick succession.

If Monty  Python has had an impact on British comedy as big as the one both programmes said it has had, I hope the beeb celebrates it’s fiftieth anniversary far more lavishly than this. I felt it was a lame start to a birthday party which should be far more stupendous – this is Monty  Python, after all. Even if another on-stage reunion is out of the question, I just feel something awesome needs to be done to mark Python’s legacy on  British and world comedy.

The2019 Charlton and Woolwich Free Film  Festival began yesterday and continues to the fourteenth. As I said a few days ago, I’m  a bit low that I didn’t contribute to it this year. They are a wonderful way to get film into the  community, and of showing films’s relationship to culture at  street level. I keep thinking about writing something lengthy  about such festivals  and other forms of filmic love like cinephilia and fandom, but predictably I haven’t got anything onto paper  yet. It seems to me that, in the way they are planned and organised by a local society – from the ground up, so to speak – means they have a unique link with a particular urban community,, and perhaps we can read something about it’s  character in the films it’s  members  chose to screen. I reckon that might be interesting to explore to some depth. What could opting to screen a certain film at a certain time tell us about the attitudes and outlook within a given  community? Could choosing  to screen, say, Wonderwoman (to pick a title from this year’s CWFFF list) imply certain opinions on gender, say? Or is it silly to try to psychoanalyse an entire metropolitan borough? Either way, if you’re in South-East London, please check out some of the screenings.

After watching the news today I decided to submit an  update to the dictionary, just to make things simpler.

Anyone who can’t see all the money the tories suddenly  magicked out of thin air yesterday  to plough in to services they have cut so savagely until now as the electioneering gimmick it is, is obviously deceiving theirselves. I’m sorry  to go on about politics, but things really are getting stupid. After years  off cuts to vital services so their rich friends can pay less tax, with their backs to the wall, the tories try to distract voters by reversing some of the cuts they theirselves forced upon us, and trying to frame it as some kind of heroic act. Mind you, it tells us the tories know they’re up shit creek, or else they wouldn’t be trying to distract us: they know they’re responsible for utterly fucking up the country and are now trying to appease us by undoing their own  cuts. Surely that  tells us all we need to know about this bunch of p’tahks.

As for the idea of an election this autumn, I’m in two minds about it: part of me would loved to see Boris and the tories kicked out of office, but at the same time, perhaps they should be left to clean up the hideous mess they theirselves caused. Of course it is obviously a trap, though, as it means Johnson could simply change the date of Brexit in order to leave with no deal. And here again we see the duplicitousness of the scumbags we are dealing with.

I just saw this on facebook and it made me crease up with laughter!

It may be satirical, but this short Newsthump article posted in reaction to the beeb airing the first part of The Rise of The Nazis is worth a chuckle. Apparently, the outists  are getting all huffy and puffy because  they think the beeb might be taking a dig at them through it. It was, of course, an  excellent,  fascinating documentary timed to mark the anniversary of the beginning of World War Two, but you have to wonder  there is some truth behind the satire: this won’t  be the first time echoes of 1930s germany have been noted; it is very possible to see the airing of these programmes as a type of  warning. I can’t help feel that this article is making a valid point, as well as taking the piss out of Outists at the same time. And if they really are getting angry at the beeb over these shows, surely that  tells you something about them  too.

Bojo is now threatening to call a general election if  Tory MPs rebel and vote to delay brexit. That tells us all we need to know about the p’tahk: he thinks the possibility off losing their seats is enough to make MPs side with  him, as though they are shallow enough to put their personal careers before the future of the country. I’d prefer to believe that not even a tory could be so wretched, and Brexit is shaping up to be so obviously catastrophic that  any intelligent person would vote to delay it. Then again, we live in fucked up times, and I suspect the possibility of losing their seats to the bunch of scumbags Farage calls his party might be enough to make the tory tosspots fall into line. No doubt that’s what johnson is gambling on.

Today will always  be remembered as the day the Pope got stuck in a lift.  ”’Pope Francis has apologised for arriving late for his weekly prayer in St Peter’s Square, saying he was stuck in a lift in the Vatican. The 82-year-old pontiff said he had been trapped in the lift for 25 minutes because of a power outage before he was freed by firefighters.” Mind you, it’s a bit odd that God would let such a silly thing happen to  the man supposed to be his earthly representative. Oh wait….what’s that you say?…Maybe  god doesn’t exist…..Now there’s a thought…