It appears that my attempt to make music a few days ago had more of an effect than I thought it would.  I am currently  over the moon, as  look what I just found on Charlie’s facebook page. Apparently inspired by my effort  (I asked C), it’s  a joy  to watch one of my favourite songs sung by some of my favourite people (ie most of the Jones family). Just how awesome is that? Now I’m wondering whether this could  become a trend.

Earlier I came across  some nonse trying to usurp the spirit of Thursday’s applause to try to get everyone to have a similar clap for Boris Johnson on Sunday night. Needless to say I was unimpressed by the idea  – why should we applaud a scumbag whose party has gradually cut NHS funding over the last ten years? – and it seems the internet was equally quick to react.

”No society can legitimately claim to be  civilised if it denies citizens care due to lack of means.” Too me,  that statement is irrefutably true, which is why at eight last night I was outside my front door bashing a biscuit tin with a pair of scissors. The National Health Service  is one of the greatest things about the United Kingdom; knowing that if I fall ill I will be cared for,  regardless of how much money I have or whether  I have insurance must surely be one  of the greatest comforts anyone can want. This is when we need the NHS the most though, which is why I’ll just direct   everyone here, to the moment when our health service got the tribute it deserves.

Perhaps it’s time for a bit of perspective. A couple of days ago I came across a meme about Anne Frank, basically saying that if she can hide in a basement for three years, we can self isolate for a few months. That struck a chord, but I’d like to add something to it: people are now moaning that they’re bored, stuck at home, not allowed to go out; yet for me it’s not that different from when, say, my powerchair breaks, or from when before I got my first powerchair and was dependent on someone else to be taken anywhere.

And I had it easy. Boy, did I have it easy. I know from the history of disability that it wasn’t long ago that people with conditions like cerebral palsy, particularly severe cp, were confined to institutions and long stay hospitals: unable to walk, feed theirselves or communicate, they were assumed to have severe learning difficulties and treated like babies in adult bodies. People like Anne McDonald, who notably likens her institution to a ‘sugarcoated concentration camp’: she endured around fourteen years of her childhood lying in a hospital bed, barely being fed. Unable to tell anyone her wishes, or that she understood what was going on around her, she was seen as little more than a breathing doll. She was spoon-fed mushed up food, rarely taken out for fresh air. Such horrific accounts litter the frighteningly recent history of disability. Indeed, Lyn went through something similar. I can only imagine the tedium and frustration of day after day of being treated like that.

I cannot help but think of such accounts when I come across people on the web complaining about having to self isolate for a few weeks. Even after all they experienced, people like Anne McDonald or Lyn do not bemoan their fate but take it in their stride; the same goes for my mates from school who had muscular Dystrophy. They knew how much worse things could be and counted theirselves lucky; they all had friends who did not make it. What we are all going through these days might seem harsh and restrictive, but I know that there are far worse fates to endure. I can get up when I want, choose what I want to eat, sip my coffee and browse the web. And in a few weeks or months, life will return to normal. People might feel isolated compared to the freedoms they enjoyed a few weeks ago, but perhaps they just need a bit of perspective.

I just came across something rather interesting and quite nostalgic. Fiddling around on Facebook as usual, I saw my old school, Hebden Green, mention that an episode of the CBeebies show Something Special had been filmed there and was due to air this morning. Obviously  this aroused my curiosity, so I went to Iplayer to check it out. Now, let me make it clear that I don’t usually watch CBeebies, but today I held my nose and put it on. Sure enough, there was my  old school: It has been almost twenty years since I last visited the place, but it was recognisably Hebden. It is a place which I still have strong memories of, and I found myself scanning the background of each shot to try to make out where it was filmed. In this way, you could link this to my work on cinephilia, insofar as it is a fascination with the peripheral details of a  filmic shot. I tried to look past the nauseatingly upbeat presenter, Mr.  Tumble (but then, it is a show aimed at young children with learning difficulties, so I’ll let him off) to see whether I could recognise anything; and sure enough I recognised the very swimming pool I learned to swim in. That struck me as rather cool, although that joy is tempered with the sorrow at knowing that so many of my fellow students I knew from that place have now passed on: it would seem Mr. Tumble’s jollity is in direct juxtaposition to the darkness which inevitably comes with growing up in such places.

After writing my entry yesterday I realised I was getting a bit glum, and what we all could do with right now is a bit of levity and humour. We’re all stuck at home getting bored,  but that doesn’t necessarily stop us having fun: dire situations are often the easiest to take the piss out of. Realising that, I had an idea and got to work. It took a bit longer than I expected, and in the end I had to leave it for this morning to  finish. It isn’t perfect, and some of the rhymes don’t work, so see it as a first draft; but please  let me know what you think of this. Apologies, of course, to Eric Idle.

I can think of several moments in the last decade or so that remind me of life’s infinite potential for awesomeness; moments which still make me squeal spastically with glee whenever I think of them: James  Bond escorting the queen to the olympic opening ceremony in 2012; Stephen Hawking singing the galaxy song in 2014. There are many more such moments – points in time so ridiculously cool that it goes beyond words, yet remind me of the sheer potential of existence.  And yet, recently, it just seems to me that the last such event was a long time ago, and that we can all do with another one right about now.  Everyone seems so  subdued and frightened, told to huddle in our homes as if awaiting some awful apocalypse. I’m sorry to say it, but these days life  just feels a lot less cool. We all have  cool memories to fall back on, but right now they just seem rather distant. It is high time something awesome happened again, not just to cheer me up, but the whole world.

This is  just to wish my mum a happy mother’s day. Truth be told, these aren’t the most pleasant times, for me or anyone else. These days, things just seem to get more depressing with every news bulletin. Yet at least  I know I have my mum (and dad) to talk to at the other end of a webchat. She  has always managed to keep me on the right path, preventing me from straying too far into stupidity. I’m bloody glad I have both my parents, and that I can count on their wisdom at least every Sunday morning.

It’s a lovely sunny day here so I just got back from a short  walk. I’m supposed to be self-isolating,  so I can’t go anywhere with too many people (I’m already missing my rolls around Stratford) so I took myself over to Kidbrooke. I’ve found a lovely circular route there and back which goes through two quite outstanding parks. One, Sutcliffe Park, is fairly new, but is astonishingly beautiful: the river Quaggy runs through it, and  there are nice little accessible paths running beside and over  it. The  sight of the pleasant little stream flowing through the park is incredibly evocative. At one point it flows through a bit of woody marshland  bridged by well-made causeways, so, walking along  them  you can almost forget you’re in a city.

Just over the road from Sutcliffe Park is  another new little park. I think in has only just been built as the buildings close to it are all very new.  The river runs through that too, although it is slightly more developed and clearly more intended for children. There is a beautiful little waterfall I could sit next to for hours. It’s an astonishing little place  which I would really like to show Lyn  and my Parents when it’s possible and safe to do so again. It’s a wonderfully relaxing corner of the metropolis. From there,  I can just follow the footpaths back to Eltham, once again remarking to myself what an incredible  city London is.

It’s slightly random I admit, but this  little video of the guys up at the NMC doing a Superman dance – possibly aimed at reminding everyone to wash their hands – made me smile. I particularly like how  they achieved the flying  effect.

Yesterday I made the calamitous mistake of going up to my local medical centre and asking them to test if  I had coronavirus. My PA Alistair was concerned that I had a very slight cough recently, so I thought it would be a good idea to go  check it out, just to put his mind at ease. Once this new virus had been ruled out, I reasoned, my life could continue as usual. However, it was then that my  plan backfired badly: upon getting to the medical centre and explaining the situation, I was told to go straight home and self isolate. They didn’t even  test me.

So now here I am, stuck at home, with only the internet for company. My usual daily wanderings  have been ruled  out for a week at least. I  have no idea how I’ll cope, but at least I have the solace that about half the world is in the same position. What a  mess we’ve all found ourselves in.

Everything has gone so crazy and become so farcical that flagging this video history of toilet paper up is strangely  apt.  Bog roll is now such a crucial, valuable, even politically sensitive commodity that Youtubers are now making videos about it.  It may be my birthday, but I have to  wonder: Can things get any more bizarre?

I’m not sure everyone will be able to see this as it’s on Facebook, but I just came across this Scientists For The EU video which completely destroys the assumption I made in my previous entry about herd immunity. I thought I  was being cool and clever in advising everyone to chill out about this bug:  if some people got it, I thought, wouldn’t we build up the usual communal resistance? The chap in the video, however, explains why that logic is flawed, and why this new virus is so dangerous. It’s becoming clearer and clearer that I was wrong  to dismiss it: I might be fine, but not everyone in society is as fit and healthy as I am. In all seriousness, it’s becoming clearer and clearer  that this virus isn’t something to joke about.

I currently have a bit of a cough and sneeze.  Unlike what appears  to be half the world, though,  I have not assumed I have Coronavirus. Having a bit of a sneeze at this time of year is nothing out of the usual, and even if I do turn out to have this new virus, I would not automatically assume it was a death sentence. I would do the logical thing, stay calm and heed the appropriate medical advice. What I can’t understand, though, is  how everyone seems to have suddenly lost their  minds over  this bug:  doctors are currently advising that people should be unafraid of contracting it as it would help build up herd immunity; but online I’ve come across people calling that outrageous, and claiming that it means the authorities want to leave people to die.

It really is laughable how worked up people are  becoming over this. According to the advice, most will only be mildly effected, yet everybody seems to suddenly think it is the worst thing since the plague. For my part, I’ll chill out and carry on with life, just as I always have. When you lead a life like mine, you realise that there are far, far worse things than a new bug named after a weak, tasteless larger.

My ability to type with my extended keyboard, communicate with my iPad and cruise around London in my powerchair is all very well and good, but at this very moment, I’d  trade them all in if someone would invent a device for cleaning spectacles. If you think about it, it shouldn’t be that hard: whenever I try to clean my glasses, they always end up dirtier than when I started, so I just need some  little machine I could put my specs in to get them clean. How hard could designing something like that be?  Sat here, looking through a veil of post-pizza gunk, I’d give good money for such a piece of kit.

If  you want a song to sing while  washing your hands, just so you know you’ve washed them thoroughly enough, just go here. Thanks to Caroline, the librarian at Charlton Park, for showing me this little gem. It really amazes me how people come up with  such craziness so quickly.

Everyone seems to be getting more and more anxious about coronovirus.  At dinner just now, I had one of my usual dribble-coughs. I get them fairly frequently:  I swallow a bit of saliva and it goes the wrong way, making me splutter a bit. Yet it’s probably  a sign of the times that my PA Alistair asked if I could be coming down with  something. Everyone seems to be getting so worked up about it. What I’m more concerned about, though, is  what could be happening while everyone is distracted by this epidemic. I just came across this Financial Times article: do you realise that we are about to get the worst pandemic in decades at the very point when the uk is leaving some of the very international bodies which could best keep it under control? And  that the Tories are jumping on this outbreak to use it to disguise some of the worst, most draconian effects of Brexit? If you think about it, this emergency is precisely what the tories needed, at precisely the right time. Of course, I’m not suggesting they somehow manufactured this crisis – I don’t go in for that conspiracy theory nonsense – but I find it sickening that these opportunistic bastards  will use this tragedy to hide the damage they are doing.

I just watched the first episode of Noughts and Crosses, the beeb’s new Sunday night drama series, on iPlayer. I definitely wasn’t up to watching it properly when it aired, so I decided to wait before giving it a go. Now that I have, I find myself intrigued: it’s clearly a piece of television which one could write a lot about. For starters, the basic premise of a modern society in which ethnic roles have been reversed opens a giant can of worms: leaving aside basic questions such as how such a state of affairs could come about (one’s suspension of disbelief should deal with that), what I find more of an issue is that the fiction essentially assumes the audience already has ingrained notions regarding ethnic roles, which it then sets about playing with. That is to say, the premise of the fiction would not work if it did not presume the audience did not already have certain ingrained ideas about race and ethnicity. The only reason this television program might strike us as bold is because it inverts those roles, thus highlighting and exposing them; but that in and of itself assumes audience members already have certain ingrained ideas regarding notions like ‘race’. After all, go into the relevant literature and you will find that the very idea of race is a social construct, and a highly problematic one at that.

This is not to dismiss the program at all. I am sure I could go a lot deeper. Television like this virtually begs for analysis, and I can’t wait to read some of what no doubt will already have been written about it. The problem is, in trying to expose racial boundaries through their reversal, it automatically presumes that such boundaries exist, in effect reinforcing them. The fiction relies on real world notions and stereotypes, even at the very point at which it tries to reread them. Thus, in the program, people from Africa and Europe still behave in ways we stereotypically expect in the real world, even though the respective cultures would presumably have evolved very differently.

I won’t write any more until I have watched the rest of the series, but I must admit I’m intrigued, if just to see where the beeb are going with it. This program has the potential to be both controversial and problematic – plenty to get one’s teeth into, then.

It seems that at last I just came across some  good news. The release of the new Peter Rabbit film has  now been delayed  due to coronavirus. That is, a sequel to a film adaptation of a book which, to my knowledge, never had a sequel, has been postponed due to a pandemic of a disease which everyone seems to think is armageddon. Well, thank zark for small  mercies, although wouldn’t it be hilarious if coronavirus turned out to be spread by rabbits.

You know  Brexit is going well when our neighbours start taking the piss out of us. Check this little ditty by Irish trio Foil Arms and Hogg out. Topical and witty with just the right amount of bite,  I better warn you, it could get stuck in your head.

I have had a truly strange seventy-two hours or so.  I’m pretty sure I don’t have Corronavirus, but I haven’t been feeling myself at all. Apart from a  slightly runny nose I’ve been physically fine; but mentally  I’ve been all over the place. It was like nothing I’ve ever experienced before: my sense of time and place were very strange; my thought patterns were a mess; my memory was non-existent. Things just did not feel right at   all. I got so worried and confused yesterday I took myself to the hospital to check if something was seriously wrong. Fortunately my blood tests turned out ok, and  they couldn’t find any physical problem,, so I probably just had low blood sugar  or something.

Right now, I  am pretty much back  to normal, although I still have moments of this uncanny uncertainness. They’ll eventually pass too  though, and  I’m sure I’ll be right as rain in no time. But if anyone has any ideas what could have brought on this sudden change in mental state,  please get in touch.

My parents reminded me earlier that I forgot to wish them  a happy anniversary yesterday, when I should have, so I’ll dedicate this blog entry to them instead. They  are wonderful parents, whose support I couldn’t do without. Try as I might to be independent, Mum and  dad  lend me a guiding hand which I find invaluable. Setting up my own place would have been impossible without them. I hope they had a great day yesterday. They make a wonderful couple, and I’m lucky to have them both as parents.

When I read on Facebook that the release date for the new Bond film was being  postponed due to Coronavirus, I assumed that someone was just having an  annoying laugh. How could a film be affected by a virus.  But I thought I’d check, just in case,  and look, the world has officially gone stark raving crazy. Of  course we must be sensible and take precautions, but isn’t  this overkill? How does preventing people watching this particular film help? I  really think  everyone is overreacting to this bug. I mean, what possible good will delaying the release of this film until October do in helping to contain this virus? Everyone’s knickers seem to be in a twist about it all   of a sudden – even 007’s.

Going up into Eltham earlier I noticed something interesting: there seems to b a lot more traffic on the pavements these days, particularly around here. I don’t mean pavement traffic in the usual sense of anything which might travel along a pavement, walking or not. I mean, there seems to be  a lot  more motorised vehicles using pavements, particularly scooters driven by old fogies.  More to the point, though, we seem to be evolving our own highway code. I noticed this morning  people in scooters (and powerchairs) are starting to behave like cars do on the road: we know when to pass one  another and when to let each other pass; we wave to one another, comrades in the maelstrom. Out in Australia, thirteen years ago now, I remember our coach driver Peter waving at every car going  the other way as we drove along the outback roads. It was a form of comradeship. What  happens here reminds me of that, only instead of a comradeship between Australians driving through a vast desert, it is one  between cripples or old  people inn a vast city.

I just finished  watching The Godfather films. Believe it or not,  I had never watched them before – they never really cropped up, never really appealed. Yet I kept hearing them mentioned in relation to a few recent releases, so I thought it was time I sat down and gave them a viewing.

I don’t think I  can give them any sort of proper review right now, but I  must say that this strikes me as quite a difficult, problematic trilogy. At the end of the day, the Corleones are a family of gangsters and criminals –  I have trouble empathising with such thugs. The films seem to try to romanticise that kind of violent underworld. This is basically a three film melodrama about a family of Italian-American  immigrants who turn to crime as a source of social power. Having said that, it offers us a  fascinating glimpse of postwar American life, as well as saying things about family, immigration, American urban life, crime, the church, and so on.  I’m not dismissing  it by any means, but I don’t think this sort of film is really my cup of tea.

This chimes with both my opinion on the subject and my sense of humour.