Darryl is surely one of the coolest people I know. He’s so cool, he even has his own coffee brand. You can watch him talk about his latest coffee blend here. Unfortunately it’s based in Australia, so I probably won’t get to try any. What interests me about that video, though, is how Dazz opted to communicate: rather than use a communication aid, he has chosen to speak the words vocally and have Ferg (another excellent fellow) translate or convey them to the camera. It’s an unusual method, but it could perhaps be argued that the result is more personable or friendly than watching someone type into their communication aid.

This evening I would just like to wish my brother Luke a very happy 35th birthday. It has now literally been years since we saw each other, apart from online, and these days personal contact seems more important than ever. I miss him, but I’m very proud of him: Luke’s updates to the family over Skype get more impressive every week! I hope he and Yan are having a great day. Computer permitting, I’ll speak to you soon bro.

I know I’m a bit sad (ie uncool or geeky) to keep going on about the Olympic games, but I have to say, you have to feel sorry for the people of Tokyo. There they were, all geared up to play party host to the world, only to have it delayed for a year by a global pandemic, and even now it’s not absolutely certain whether the games will go ahead this year. As it stands, Tokyo citizens have been told they can watch and clap the torch relay, but not cheer for fear of spreading the virus. I can’t help thinking, can you imagine what things would have been like if the coronavirus bomb had dropped in 2012, and this had happened to London? I remember how geared up and excited the city – and country – were. We had been preparing for seven years; had the games been snatched away at the last moment, there would have been carnage. And on top of that, there’s the fact that the CEO of the Tokyo olympics is in hot water for sexist comments. What would have happened if Seb Coe had been so naughty? It kind of makes me relieved to think that the Olympics are now just a happy memory for us Londoners, but having hosted the games and the memories still being quite fresh, our hearts must go out to our Japanese friends.

This was one of the first things I saw when I got to my rapidly failing computer this morning, but I think it’s very pertinent these days:

My Imac has a problem: the screen has started to go blank, randomly at any second. It’s obviously getting old. Luckily my parents have helped me order a new one, but until that arrives and is properly set up, I’ll probably be stuck writing hurried little blog entries, hoping to get it published before the screen goes blank again. Bear with me – my normal half-assed political and social commentary will resume shortly.

According to this rather fascinating Guardian article, a group of scientists now think that the flipping of the Earth’s magnetic poles about 42,000 years ago may have caused, among other things, the extinction of the Neanderthals. “The Earth’s magnetic field acts as a protective shield against damaging cosmic radiation, but when the poles switch, as has occurred many times in the past, the protective shield weakens dramatically and leaves the planet exposed to high energy particles. One temporary flip of the poles, known as the Laschamps excursion, happened 42,000 years ago and lasted for about 1,000 years.” The effects of this flip were quite severe, and the only way humans survived was to shelter in caves. Rather worrying, though, is the fact that they are due to flip again sometime soon – ie, in the next few hundred years – causing catastrophic damage to our electricity network. When I read that, my first thought was that that really would be all we need right now.

You mean, NF doesn’t really care about Brexit and put us through this entire nightmare just to get attention? You don’t say!

Given that America is so full of Evangelical Christians, you might think that one of the worst Coronavirus death rates on earth, together with the worst snow storms for years would give at least some people pause for thought about the idea of an all-powerful, loving God. It strikes me as very odd how so many people can cling so fervently to an obvious delusion when faced with so much contrary evidence. Oh well, maybe all the intelligent Americans just work at NASA.

This is without doubt the picture of the day.

I was watching the footage of the landing on Mars last night, and got very excited. To pull off such a complex landing is an awesome achievement, both for NASA and humanity itself. What is even more exciting, though, is the fact that last night was only the beginning: as incredible as the landing was, as the Beeb notes here, Perseverance has two years of research and exploration ahead of it. I can’t wait until the real data starts coming back.

I reckon blogging has driven me a teensy bit mad. Ever since I started keeping a weblog, it has been a personal rule to upload an entry at least every two days. I know how lazy I can be, so I told myself to make an effort to keep it up. An entry every couple of days seemed reasonably regular. The thing is, you may have noticed that I usually blog every day; this is because, whenever I skip a day, on the second day I get rather anxious at the thought of knowing I must do an entry, so to avoid that anxiety I blog every day. It’s kinda crazy: I know nothing bad will happen if I don’t keep my blog updated – nobody will take my blog away from me. Yet this has been the state of affairs for about eighteen years. I try my best to blog and get anxious if I don’t, resulting in entries about all sorts of random things – even about getting anxious about not blogging.

I am starting to worry about how angry I get sometimes. It had been a nice day until about an hour ago: I had had a lovely walk through a couple of the local parks (I even found a new one) before buying lunch and coming home at about three. Looking for something interesting to get into for the rest of the afternoon, I thought I’d check for news about next year’s Brexit Festival. There”s still not much detail about it, and I didn’t find anything interesting; like most people, I’m still convinced it will be a complete waste of money. However, on Youtube I came across a political vlog about it. The video struck me as ambiguous, and I couldn’t quite tell whether the chap who made it was for or against the festival, so I thought I’d watch another of his videos.

This turned out to be about Brexit, and again the vlogger’s stance seemed hard to discern. I had no problem with it at first, but then it showed footage of someone I’ll name only as NF. I instantly began to get angry: NF is one of those people I cannot abide the sight of. He is a charlatan whose baseless, arrogant views have done so much damage to the country, if you ask me he should be denied the right to voice them. If he had his way, he would do away with the open tolerant society I hold dear and turn the UK into a backward-looking neo-victorian hell. Airing the footage he produces only panders to him and facilitates him when he should be ignored as the irrelevant embarrassment to human civilisation he is. I instantly felt my body tense up and shake with rage; even the merest sight of this person or sound of his loathsome, self-important voice is enough to reduce me to white hot anger. I know how illogical getting so angry is, but for a few moments I felt an intense, burning hatred: I wished with every fibre of my being that the pestulent scumbag on the screen would die a slow, agonising death for all the damage his lies have done.

Such thoughts horrify me: capital punishment is never acceptable, and one should never wish such ill on anyone. Yet I can’t help thinking such things, as if for a few moments I become so angry that I lose all perspective. In the end I had to turn the video off and move away from my computer. In my bedroom looking out of my window, I could feel my heart beating. I know many people with Athetoid Cerebral Palsy experience this kind of lack of emotional control, and that it is connected to the brain damage we suffered at birth. It only lasts a few moments before I calm down. Nonetheless, to hate someone so intensely, to begrudge him every breath he draws into his chest, and to feel so angry that you lose control of your limbs and have to consciously stop yourself putting your fist through your computer screen, is truly frightening.

I’ve never really considered applying for a job, but I just saw this story on BBC evening news. “The European Space Agency says it wants to recruit someone with a disability as part of its call for new astronauts. Esa will be accepting applications in March to fill four-to-six vacancies in its astro corps but it wants this draft process to be as inclusive as possible. The search for a potential flier with additional functional needs will be run in parallel to the main call.” The Trekkie in me really, really wants to apply. I’ve always dreamed of flying into space, exploring the galaxy and boldly going where no one has gone before. Then again, it might not be such a good idea: would I be able to look after myself in zero G? And given I can barely control my powerchair sometimes, who knows what damage I’d cause if the ESA let me loose on a multi-billion Euro rocket.

What? A Tory trying to avoid difficult questions about Brexit? Who’d have thought it?

How very telling.

I may be going out on a bit of a limb here, but I’m going to come out and say that I seriously do not think that anyone who believes a person’s ability to make money is as important as our security from a deadly virus is a fit and proper person to be anywhere near the government of this or any other country. It makes me furious to hear that a group of Tories is now lobbying to get the Coronavirus restrictions lifted as soon as May. They argue that the risks to public health must be weighed against the damage lockdown does to the economy, as if the two should be somehow perceived as equal, and the ability of individuals to make money is just as important as peoples right to live long, healthy lives.

Do such people not care that lifting restrictions too soon practically invites a third, even more severe wave? Do they not see that the sudden return to normal they crave would mean everyone coming out and mixing, transmitting the remnants of the virus, leading to many more deaths? Of course they don’t: all that matters to these Tory monsters is their ability and the ability of people like them to make money. The way they see it, who cares if others are dying as long as the economy is on the mend and they’re getting richer. After all, an improving economy makes the government look good.

Theirs is a selfish, arrogant worldview which values the greed of the few over the welfare of the many. A country should be governed for the good of all. Thus, given that their views pose such an obvious danger to our health, I seriously think that the members of this group of tories (no doubt the same despicable charlatans who conned the country into voting to leave the EU) should be forced to resign immediately.

Regardless of how depressing – and disturbing – the political news from both sides of the Atlantic is becoming (it seems that, in the United States, no matter how obviously guilty you are, if you’re Donald Trump and you’re being tried by the Republican Party, you can get away with anything) at least those of us interested in the exploration of space have this to content ourselves with. “The United Arab Emirates’ Hope mission has returned its first picture of Mars. The spacecraft entered into an orbit around the Red Planet on Tuesday, making the UAE the first Arab nation in history to have a scientific presence at Earth’s near neighbour. This first image will be followed by many similar such views of Mars.” Taking the politics surrounding the UAE as read, the pictures being returned to Earth are fascinating. I hope this goes to show that, no matter how divided we all are right now, there should always be things such as scientific research humanity can come together over.

Sometimes all you can do is wonder what might have been, but this could have been pretty awesome if they had pulled it off. According to Screenrant, Sam Mendes initially considered Sean Connery for the role of Kincaid in Skyfall. Of course, as the article points out, that idea was not unproblematic: casting Connery in the role may well have been too much of a distraction from the main plot of the film; audiences would have been too fixated on the return of the first James Bond actor to notice what was happening to the latest. Yet, I have to say I can’t help thinking it might have kicked arse: the elderly Connery would have been perfect for the role, and his return to the franchise may have been one of those delicious little throwbacks or extra-textual references I and others get so excited about. It would have been like 007 was returning to his roots just as he was returning to his family home. That could have added an extra dynamic to the film which may well have made it even greater than it was. In the end, I suppose the fact that they cast Albert Finney in the role was for the best – he did an excellent job, after all – but I still can’t help wondering what might have been.

I just came across this article about a film called Music by someone called Sia. I’ve not watched or heard either, but the film apparently has a character with Autism who is the sister of the main character. The author of the article complains that an autistic actor was not cast to portray her. As I’ve touched upon on here before at some length, that is an argument those of us with physical disabilities have been making for years, and it gets on my nerves how such so-called self-defining autistics seem to be using it as their own more and more, yet without any recognition of what went before. It feels like it has somehow now become fashionable to have some kind of disability or impairment and to take up the language of advocacy. I find seeing what can be a very profound disability being treated so flippantly deeply troubling and even insulting. The problem is, if this trend continues, voices like mine risk being drowned out as a result.

Yesterday was quite a dismal day. Stuck at home due to the weather,, at about four I was mucking around on Youtube when I came across a video about Who Framed Roger Rabbit. I was fairly dismissive of it at first, but it looked at how influential the film was in terms of film history, arguing that it more or less lead to a revolution in animation. It aroused my interest enough that I thought I would try to check the original film out – I reckoned I needed a bit of cheering up anyway.

I found Who Framed Roger Rabbit on Disney Plus (thanks Luke) and settled down to watch it. I vaguely remember watching it at home with my parents and brothers when I was six or so, but I don’t think I had seen it since then. I expected to be watching a children’s film, but soon realised Who Framed Roger Rabbit was far, far more interesting. While on the surface it was fairly lightweight and slapstick, it was obvious there were some pretty serious themes running through the film: most obvious, perhaps, was the clear cultural division between humans and toons, and the way in which humans treated toons as second class citizens being a metaphor for racism. On top of that, as demonstrated in this very good piece of analysis, when you watch Who Framed Roger Rabbit as an adult, you quickly find it is anything but a children’s film.As well as the fact that the dialogue is replete with double entendre, there are references to things like alcoholism, sex and violence children simply would not pick up upon, yet which are quite overt to grown up viewers.

I found the way in which this film thus worked on two separate levels intriguing, as well as the interplay between live action and animation. Who Framed Roger Rabbit might ostensibly be a children’s film, but it’s a very interesting piece of cinematic art: comic, slapstick but with noirish overtones and quite a serious subtext about prejudice and oppression. Not having seen it since I was about six, it was a great way to cheer up on an otherwise fairly miserable afternoon; yet, viewed as a work of art, there is a hell of a lot to explore about this film. I must admit I was quite taken with it, and now intend to look deeper.

The nice thing about cricket is that support for it never goes to far. No matter how impassioned rivalries on a pitch may appear, at the end of a day’s play, supporters of both teams should be able to meet in the bar for a beer. As I’ve mentioned a couple of times recently, I’m a huge cricket fan, and I still have vivid memories of going to Australia to watch the (dismal) 2006/07 Ashes series. The Ashes, of course, is one of the most well-established rivalries in international sport; when tests are on, things can get pretty passionate. Yet that does not stop me having a soft spot for Australia as a whole: it is an astoundingly beautiful country; my favourite band, The Cat Empire, comes from Melbourne; two of my best friends Darryl – through whom I first met Lyn – and James/Tesco – with whom I first went to see The Cat Empire live – are Australian; and so on.

The same goes for India. England are currently there, but watching them play just brings back happy, fascinating memories for me of my trip to India with John three years ago. It truly is an intriguing, exotic place, and watching the tests on tv just makes me wish I could be there watching it live.

The point I’m trying to make is that sport should never go too far. Sports are essentially games, after all, and games should always be played between friends. That’s why I’m so obsessed with the Olympics: what other event can bring people from all over the world together to meet in one city to play games, party and celebrate?

Yet this seems less and less to be the case with football. Only this morning, I saw a report that referees were getting racially abused online. Things seem to be becoming more and more partisan, with rivalries between teams, or the supporters of teams, becoming increasingly vitriolic. I suspect this is a reflection of the atmosphere in the country as a whole: Brexit has stirred up a maelstrom of nationalism and tribalism; people with certain socioeconomic and educational backgrounds, let’s say, seem to feel much freer to direct their animosity towards those they perceive as other, particularly European nations. Rather weirdly, I’ve seen this done more than once using football rhetoric, as if nationalism and support for the England football team were one and the same. That is to say, certain people seemed to think that flying the English flag automatically meant one was doing so in support of the English football team, as if nationalism and football were intertwined.

Thus nationalism/tribalism is finding an expression through football in quite a worrying way. It would be fine if such rivalries stayed on the pitch, but, possibly due to Brexit, the pandemic and the recession, they are overflowing into other areas of culture as people feel the strain more and more. Football lacks the nuance of politics – teams either win or lose – meaning complex issues get boiled down to simple binaries, and opposition groups such as Remainers/Rejoiners become perceived as enemies to be defeated.

It is a very worrying state of affairs: due to Brexit, the world seems to have become simplified into an us and them binary, and the British state has become akin to a football team to support as it plays against it’s European opponents. In such people’s minds, ‘we’ can either win or loose, seemingly forgetting that it is far wiser to remain friends, and to meet in the bar together at the end of the day.

I’m currently watching last night’s Superbowl. I’ve never watched a full American Football match before, so I thought I’d give it a whirl. I must admit I’m intrigued: back at uni, Ricardio used American football as one of his theatre warm up exercises, so I kind of knew the basics from there, but what I hadn’t appreciated was how tactical it was. Both teams have to predict the moves of each player, so it’s a bit like chess. However, what I’m not so keen on is how start/stop it is: play barely seems to go thirty seconds without stopping, so the game seems painstakingly slow (and I say that as a cricket fan). Each quarter is supposed to last fifteen minutes, but I’ve been watching the program for two hours and I’ve only reached half time. It really staggers me how much Americans pad their sports and other bits of culture out with adverts. How can they stand everything getting interrupted every five minutes (if that)?

I think I ought to clear up a bit of a mistake I made a couple of years ago here. I went down to Charlton Riverside yesterday, on one of my more lengthy rolls. Going through the area by the Thames Barrier, I remembered once bemoaning that that old industrial area, between the river and the A206, didn’t seem to be getting the attention that areas such as the Woolwich Arsenal and north Greenwich have had. Once home, I decided to look into it on Google, and soon realised how stupid I was being: through something called the Charlton Riverside Masterplan, that whole area is shortly going to be transformed into a mixed residential and commercial district. Things have presumably been delayed by the pandemic, but from what I have read, it should be in place by 2024. It just goes to show I shouldn’t start talking rubbish about areas of London being neglected before I know all the facts; and that I shouldn’t be so London-centric when, the truth is, huge amounts of money are going into redeveloping and gentrifying the capital, especially it’s south and east, while other parts of the country are being totally neglected.

I just want to note how great it is to see cricket on terrestrial tv again. It has been on Murdochvision for so long I’d almost given up hope of ever seeing it again, but these last two mornings I’ve been able to watch England play India over my morning coffee. With England batting so well, it has been great – a little ray of sunshine in an otherwise pretty bleak winter. I really hope they (ie both the England cricket team and Channel Four) keep it up.

It has been a long, frustrating afternoon. A couple of days ago I noticed a new COVID vaccination centre had opened not far from here, so today I thought I would go and see if I could get vaccinated. It has been a dismal few months, and like everyone else I’d like to see the threat of this virus lifted. Since I’m in close physical contact with people like Personal Assistants and shop assistants so regularly, and given that I can’t wear a mask, I thought there was a good argument to be made that I should get vaccinated earlier than people my age would ordinarily be.

At about midday, then, I trundled down the path to see what could be done. There, outside the small centre, I spoke to a friendly lady who, seeming to understand my predicament, explained that they would need to see my NHS number before they could help. With that I sped back home (via the off license – well, it is Friday after all). Luckily Serkan was still here when I got back, so he helped me find a letter with my NHS number. I put it in my bumbag together with proof of my new address and passport, just in case, and made my way back to the vaccination centre.

This time, though, things weren’t quite so positive: as friendly as the staff there were, once they saw my NHS number, they found I couldn’t book a vaccination. The program they used just took people’s ages into account, so as much as I tried to explain why I needed the jab, there was nothing they could do. The best they could do was give me a phone number to get someone to ring. At that I began to get frustrated: I am now reaching the stage where I would give almost anything to cuddle mum or dad, have a beer with Charlie, Chris or Steve, or be rolled down a hill in a plastic bag by my brothers (don’t ask), but I can’t due to this damn virus. I’m stuck, trundling around my local area in my powerchair, waiting for the day that things return to normal; hoping that neither me, Serkan or anyone else catches anything in the meantime. And on the one occasion I decide to be proactive and take the initiative, I get fobbed off with a phone number.

Well, at least I tried.

That the charlatan Johnson has the audacity to try to associate himself with Captain Sir Tom, eg using his picture on the 10 Downing Street Facebook Page, really, really takes the piss. One was a kind-hearted, noble old man; the other is a lying, egotistical embarrassment to human civilisation.

A few months ago during the first lockdown I asked my friend Charlotte to help me make a song. Lyn, as ever, was on my mind, and I thought rather than write anything in prose, what better tribute can I pay her than one in the art form which she loved? Charlie very kindly obliged: I wrote some lyrics and she skilfully fit them to music, and a few email exchanges later (together with C’s brother Hugh’s help on the accordion) we had quite a beautiful piece of music. The problem was, we agreed that it wasn’t quite finished: it needed something like an electric guitar solo to round it off. Since neither of us knew any electric guitarists, we sort of left it there; the project was forgotten about, and the file was left to collect electronic dust on my computer.

A couple of days ago though, I was thinking about Lyn and how I have yet to pay her a decent tribute. The news was about how Captain Moore was in hospital, with everyone paying tribute to him. I suddenly thought about Lyn’s Song, and how it had never received the airing it deserved. At that, I decided to put things right, creating a simple video montage to go with the track and uploading it. It can be seen here. The video is far from perfect, but the music is what matters. I miss Lyn, and always will, and this seems like a great way to remember her.

I think now more than ever, we need reminding of this. With coronavirus rates surging and the pandemic as worrying as it ever has been, we need to cherish the National Health Service more than ever before. We are lucky to have it, and it’s probably the only thing which redeems the UK as a nation at the moment. I think it’s worth recalling that, back in 2012 with the eyes of the world on London, Danny Boyle chose to pay tribute to the NHS; it’s now clearer than ever how much it deserved that place in the Olympic Opening Ceremony. It’s inclusion there meant the NHS was rightly recognised as something we should all be proud of. We surely must express our thanks to an institution which guarantees us all free healthcare, no matter who we are or how much we earn. I also think it’s worth remembering that, according to this clip, the Tories wanted to cut that part of the ceremony, a desire which should damn them now more than ever.

I’m quite fond of allegories or retellings. When you think about it, some of the best films are retellings of older, classical stories: The Crucible, for instance, is about the Salem witch trials, but can be read as an allegory for American politics during the McCarthy era. Jaws is a retelling of Moby Dick. The Lion King is essentially a retelling of Hamlet. West Side Story is a retelling of Romeo And Juliet. There was a program about West Side Story on tv last night, which made me muse about how adapting a story can add something to the original, and also how reframing real events can shed new light on them. That got me thinking, could something similar be done with Trump? He is, after all, almost cinematic or theatrical – even Shakespearian – in his pomposity. If so, what existing narrative could be reused?

The first thing which came to mind was Macbeth. There we see a man whose vaulting ambition drives him to commit greater and greater evils. Yet Macbeth doesn’t quite fit: Macbeth was spurred on by his wife, whereas Trump is driven by his own self-importance; and, as I was just reminded on Facebook, Macbeth starts the play as a good guy, whereas Trump has always been evil.

Another candidate could be Richard III, about a hunchback whose ambition drives him to murder his brother to become king, although I’d be wary of it’s ablest overtones. Yet you can see what I’m getting at, I think: I wonder if there is a classical narrative which could be adapted to describe this pompous, self-important embarrassment to human civilisation, whose deluded opinion of himself goes so deep that he denies reality itself. Is there such a narrative, or is Trump so depraved that not even our greatest writers would dare to create a character that hideous?