This is a very good question indeed, and says something about the sickeningly self-centred mentality of the people currently running the country.

This morning when I turned my computer on, Facebook informed me that it is Paul Levett’s birthday. Truth be told, I never had much contact with Lyn’s brother. We exchanged messages once or twice when Lyn died, but that’s about it. However, he seems oddly quiet: his Facebook page shows a distinct lack of activity and he hasn’t replied to any of my messages or emails in months. He promised to let me know about Lyn’s commemoration event, but I never heard back from him. His silence now has me worried about his wellbeing. If anyone has any suggestions about what I can do, I’d appreciate it.

I just came across something very, very disturbing indeed. After watching this Youtube video by The Times, the USA seems more fucked up and scary than ever. In northwestern America, a group of religious zealots are trying to establish their own fascist nation based on religion and the bible. They call it the American Redoubt, and as the documentary explains, it is “a movement to build a home for conservative christians and unhappy Trump voters [which] is being exploited by extremists planning for secession.” Needless to say, watching it I was enraged by the hate-filled crap some of these bigots were spewing: they are allowed to spout all kinds of racist, homophobic and transphobic shit from radio stations, political lecterns and churches, justifying it under the guise of religion. By rights they should simply have been sectioned years ago; or at least told to just shut up and/or ignored like the moronic bigots they are. It concerns me deeply that such views are now so popular in America. Nonetheless I think it is a documentary worth watching, if only to get an insight into just how distorted and warped the views of some Americans are becoming.

While a lot is being said about the queen’s platinum jubilee next year, I’d just like to flag up what I personally think is an even more remarkable anniversary. Next year marks seventy years since Sir David Attenborough started working for the BBC. While that’s mind blowing in itself, the great man will present a new program, The Green Planet, in January. When you remember that Attenborough has been making programs since 1954 – before either of my parents were born – and has a body of work behind him which no other television presenter or personality can come close to, your jaw can only drop in awe. For him to still be going so strongly is even more amazing. Attenborough is just as much a national treasure as the Queen, so I really hope his platinum jubilee gets the celebration it deserves too.

You may have noticed that I closed yesterday’s entry with the words ‘Merry Christmas’. Without wanting to sound like a miserable git, to be honest I was in two minds about doing that. I still feel, quite strongly, that religion is an oppressive, repressive force: a collection of myths used to tell people what to think and how to act. If that is true, then it follows that whenever we make statements like ‘Merry Christmas’ or ‘God bless you’, we play into and reinforce that system of social control. We – perhaps inadvertently – help the church maintain it’s unearned social authority by perpetuating the fictions that authority is based on. By closing yesterday’s entry like I did, it occurs to me that I was thus being a tad hypocritical; I was playing into a cultural phenomenon I claim to oppose. Then again, not to have done so might have seemed too bleak and cynical, so perhaps I better just chill out over this.

I really don’t have much to say today. After going for a lovely trundle yesterday, I’ve spent today at home on my computer. I just had a lovely long web chat with all my family, who seem to be doing well. I suppose the main thing I have to say today, then, is thank zark for webcams. Where would we all have been these last to years had the webcam never been invented? I know we would still have phones, but there is something special about being able to see someone face to face, especially when it comes to family. And remember, guys like me couldn’t use old fashioned telephones very easily. Thus things like Skype and Zoom have really got us out of a bit of bother these last two years. Sat here in this quiet flat, waiting for Serkan to arrive so my evening festivities can begin, I think that is something worth noting.

Merry Christmas.

I just saw a report that a mysterious red flying object about the size of a car was recently spotted leaving the artic circle. Despite it’s size, the Prime Minister ordered the Royal Navy to shoot it down as a precaution. Mr Johnson said the object had the potential to spread the Omicron Variant throughout the world. There is no word as yet about what the object was. More news to come…

So far, so good. The side effects from the vaccination which I was so concerned about yesterday never appeared, and apart from quite a sore arm, I currently feel perfectly fine. In the end, it was just a case of trundling along to my local vaccination centre and trundling back.

Today, though, I’d just like to draw everyone’s attention to something. On my way out of the centre last night, I made a point of thanking the staff there for doing such a wonderful job. This pandemic has really put how much we owe the NHS into perspective. This morning, however, I heard on the news that Australia is thinking about charging people who refuse to get vaccinated for their COVID-related healthcare. The Aussies have a system like the NHS, but the right to free healthcare will be suspended for anyone refusing to get jabbed.

This policy is obviously very controversial. The whole point of free, universal healthcare is that anyone has a right to it, irrespective of your status or ability to pay: surely that is one of the defining features of any modern, civilised society. Yet, to be honest, I can see their point. The only way we’ll ever get through this pandemic is if we all pull together and get vaccinated; if just one person refuses, it puts everyone else at risk as the virus might then mutate. We don’t just get jabbed to protect ourselves but all of society.

Refusing the vaccine thus potentially puts a strain on any healthcare system as it risks prolonging the pandemic, so I can see what the Australians are getting at. Indeed, part of me might even advocate implementing such a policy here. The NHS is one of the UK’s greatest features: to knowingly and wantonly put a strain on it by refusing to get vaccinated does a disservice to us all. Why should such selfish people have a right to free healthcare if and when they fall ill? Then again, the same could be said of smokers or people with other bad habits: Should knowingly doing something dangerous invalidate your right to free healthcare? Going down that route would open up a minefield of questions which would ultimately render the idea of free, universal healthcare moot. The idea of systems like the NHS is that everyone should get the medical help they need, absolutely no questions asked. The second we start playing around with that concept, we are all doomed.

All being well, I’ll get my third COVID vaccination later today, and to be honest I currently feel quite anxious about it. I know it’s necessary – even vital – to have it if we’re ever going to get over this wretched pandemic, but from what I’ve been hearing, the booster has some very nasty potential side effects. I could be in for a very icky twenty-four to forty-eight hours. If anything interesting happens, of course I’ll note it here, but if I fall a bit silent, now you know why.

Oh well, at least it’s for the common good; and at least I now have No Time To Die on DVD to keep me entertained.

I just came across some very interesting news indeed. Outside of the disability community, I doubt many people know what DAN stands for. I doubt many realise why it was established, or what it achieved. However, the 2022 television drama detailed here looks like it might change that. “Then Barbara Met Alan tells the story through the eyes of Barbara Lisicki (Ruth Madeley) and Alan Holdsworth (newcomer Arthur Hughes), two disabled cabaret performers who met at a gig in 1989 and would go on to become the driving force behind DAN – the Direct Action Network, whose fearless and coordinated protests pushed the campaign for disabled rights into the spotlight.”

If what I’ve seen so far – very little, admittedly – is anything to go by, this program stands to be utterly groundbreaking. The Disability Rights Movement and it’s history has been near enough totally ignored by the mainstream. If Then Barbara Met Alan can shed a little light on it, it could very well be a total paradigm shift. Alongside films like Crip Camp, it stands to shed light on a civil rights movement not many people outside the crip community realise even took place, and in doing so carries the aims of the movement even further. I really can’t wait to see this program.

Without wanting to sound too extreme, but it is now blindingly obvious that the Conservative Party of the UK is nothing but a collection of utter morons who do not understand what is going on or the damage they are doing. I was watching one of their toffee-nosed MPs talk on the BBC earlier, and he was attempting to flatly contradict the medical expert who had preceded him, claiming that we don’t need to take precautions against the virus, just to keep up their pretence everything is all right. With Omicron becoming so dangerous, in all seriousness their continued power actively puts people at risk. These idiots should be removed from government immediately.

David Frost should be referred to as David Frost; if he deserves a peerage I’m the zarking tooth fairy. Much is being said in the news of his resignation today, but if you ask me the anachronistic bastard should never have been allowed to get anywhere near government. The Tories awarded him a peerage purely in order that he could force Brexit upon us, something that less than half of us voted for in a referendum based on outright lies. Now Frost and those like him intend to use Brexit as an opportunity to turn the UK into a “low tax, low regulation” economy; in other words, a capitalist dystopia where the rich are free to lord it over the poor, the NHS and welfare state are gutted, and where the most able and privileged in society are allowed to hoard their wealth while disabled people are left to starve. If you ask me, such views and aims have no place in this or any other modern society. They are born of greed and selfishness, and the people who hold them are nothing but spoiled brats who were never taught the value of sharing and cooperation. That’s why I feel nothing but contempt for Frost and Outist p’tahks like him. They would turn the country into a Thatcherite hell driven by greed, instead of the caring, social, outgoing place it deserves to be, and why Brexit must be reversed at all costs.

Just to back up what I was writing about on Friday..

Needless to say, I was very pleased to wake to the news that the Tories took a massive arse-kicking in North Shropshire overnight. As I’m sure anybody reading this will already know, the Tories lost a seat they had held for almost two centuries to the Lib Dems. Politically this is quite seismic, especially given the size of the swing. People are obviously now starting to see Boris Johnson for the entitled, lying scumbag he is, but I would just like to point out something which the mainstream media don’t seem to be emphasising – at least the beeb aren’t: The party the Tories lost so massively to are a Remain party who want the UK to reenter the EU. If this was merely a slap in the face for the tories, if people simply wanted to show their anger and discontentment with the current government, they may have voted Labour or someone else. Yet the fact that this was such a landslide win for a Remain/Rejoin party, especially in an area which had voted Leave so strongly, must surely be a sign that the whole country now sees Brexit as the massive mistake it is. The country no longer wants the Tories in government, and it no longer wants to have left the EU.

I used to have a lot of respect for John Cleese. I thought he was a very clever, funny man. Yet after reading this and watching the interview it is about, that has now changed. ”’John Cleese has said he intends to put in a formal complaint about the “deception, dishonesty and tone” of recent BBC interview he took part in.” He feels he was presented as out of touch and harmful. Watching the interview, though, that’s blatantly not the case. The questions Cleese was asked were perfectly rational and justifiable, but the arrogant twat refused to answer them in his desperation to get his baseless, right-wing views across. People aren’t being over-protective as Cleese claims; we just refuse to tolerate the reductive, reactionary, xenophobic crap which held society back for so long.

The interviewer opens the piece by asking Cleese to state what interests him about the subject, which he does; but when she tries to dig deeper by stating that others my feel what cleese is saying is old fashioned, he becomes increasingly defensive, refusing to answer perfectly justifiable questions. Cleese is clearly apprehensive about the subject, as if he doesn’t know enough about it, or feels like he’s being attacked for holding opinions which, deep down, he knows he cannot justify. In the end he gets up and walks out, like a petulant child who can’t deal with being confronted, and in doing so looses my respect.

I don’t live particularly close to Hyde Park, and I think I’ve only been up there once or twice, but I think this Guardian article about plans to rewild the park is worth flagging up. Part of a project to rejuvenate London’s green spaces, the plans involve “more wild spaces, more scrub, river rewiggling and species reintroductions”. One of the things I adore most about London is it’s parks. I love how, when out on my daily trundles, every so often I come across an area of grass or an ancient-feeling wood; tranquil little areas away from the traffic which not many cities the size of London have. It’s good to see that, amid all the construction currently happening in the metropolis, effort is being made to preserve it’s quieter, greener spaces too.

A few years ago, when we were still living together, I remember Lyn saying to me one Christmas that she was glad I was with her as she had spent so many of her previous Christmases alone. I found that very moving: Lyn always was a very solitary person – I suppose she had had to be – and for most of her life had just had her personal assistants as company. Her Christmases had therefore been quite glum affairs, so she was grateful for my company, at least for a while.

My parents called me earlier. Until this morning, the plan had been that I would go and spend Christmas day and boxing day with them at the old family base in Harlesden. Yet for various reasons, that plan has had to be postponed. Not least, the COVID situation is becoming worrying again. Thus it looks like I’ll be spending Christmas here with Serkan. Yet while I was looking forward to seeing mum and dad, getting plenty of parental cuddles and eating lots of Mum’s Christmas pudding, I know I need to remember that this is something we’re all going through: it might be hard, it might be lonely, but I’m far from the only one experiencing this. I also know that Lyn and many more people like her go through far, far worse, particularly at this time of year. That’s why, when my parents told me the bad news this morning, I thought of Lyn and what she had once told me.

Things might be rough at the moment; the pandemic seems to be going on without end in sight. But end it will; we just need to be patient. I take strength from Lyn, and other people I know like her – people with the will to get through anything. If they had the strength to overcome so much, surely I can get through a christmas alone – surely we all can. And when this is all over and we get the all clear, I know there will be plenty of mum’s christmas pudding waiting.

It worries me how oblivious I can be sometimes. You may remember how, four years ago, I was thrilled to discover the great Danny Boyle filming at Charlton House. He was working on a series called Trust, about the Getty family and empire. Thinking about it this morning, I tapped it into google, and was happy to find that Trust is now available to watch on Disney+, which I’ve had a subscription to for a year. Of course I immediately started watching it and I’m finding it fascinating. I’m just gutted I didn’t realise where I could watch it months ago.

I know I give Disney a bit of a bad press sometimes, but I must admit they are currently producing some really good stuff. I’ve watched some really great films and TV programs on their streaming service this last year. Indeed, between Disney, Netflix and good oldd BBC Iplayer, I’ve really been spoiled for choice.

Just to pick up on my James Bond-related musings from a day or two ago, it seems to me that now might be a good time for a change of tone in the franchise. Daniel Craig and Pierce Brosnan before him played Bond very seriously; they both made colossal impacts on the franchise. Their films were action driven and largely humourless. I don’t envy any actor the task of following them, especially given the legacy of Craig and the mark he has made on the character, so now that EON are looking for someone new to wear the famous tuxedo, might a tonal reset be in order? After all, it has been done before: knowing he couldn’t compete with Sean Connery, Roger Moore camped up Bond and played the character for laughs. His Bond films are more comedy spoofs than serious action thrillers. Is now the time for a similar change in tone for the Bond series? After all, that might be the only way to follow Craig, and I’m quite sure we could all do with something lighter right now.

I’m not completely sure whether I should note this for fear of making myself look a bit daft, but yesterday I was in one of the posher local supermarkets when something odd happened. I still wear a cap adorned with anti brexit badges when I’m out and about. I was just leaving when suddenly a youngish guy walked passed me. Spotting my cap, out of the blue he exclaimed something like “Brexit! Yes! Best thing ever!” He may well have just been trying to wind me up, but of course I was immediately incensed. I started to shout a few choice words at him, which he either didn’t understand or ignored, and the incident was over at that. It was barely worth noting really, if only to say something about the strength of feeling and division which still surrounds Brexit in the UK.

I have recently come across one or two online speculations about the possibility of turning the Bond franchise into a television program or Marvel-style universe. Apparently in today’s Sun – not that I’d ever read that rag – there’s a story about a ‘war’ between Amazon and EON over it. I was thinking about launching into one of my longer, arty entries explaining why that’s such a stupid idea and why the James Bond films should remain films, touching upon things like the specificity of the cinematic experience when it comes to films like these; but I don’t think that is ultimately necessary. You don’t need a Master’s in Film Studies to know that changing a cultural cornerstone as beloved as Bond would be ridiculous. While I’m usually all for taking things in interesting new directions, we have all grown up going to see a new 007 film every few years; to mess with that formula now would strip it of all cultural and artistic integrity. It would be a repeat of what happened to Star Wars, in my opinion, once Disney started churning out ever more derivative spin-offs. I’m thus very glad to see that Barbara Broccoli and Michael Wilson are putting a lid on the stupid idea. Bond Films should remain just that: cinematically-released films about British special agent James Bond.

This was just too timely for me not to nick. Carrie was only a day late.

It would seem that the main news this evening is that Boris Johnson and his tory mates are a bunch of arrogant, entitled arseholes who think the rules governing the rest of us don’t apply to them. In other news, the Earth is spherical, water is wet and Brexit is nothing but a crime.

Seriously, if Johnson had any sense of honour, let alone any compassion for how much other people have suffered over the past two years, his resignation would be in this evening’s news.

I was going to leave blogging about this until I had finished watching all the episodes, but I’m currently on an Office marathon, and it is getting too amusing/interesting not to note here. After watching the first two episodes of the UK version last week, I decided to take it seriously and systematically go through the UK original followed by the American remake; I thought that would throw up some interesting comparisons to draw. I finished the original series on Sunday, and due to the fact that episodes are only twenty minutes long, I’m now up to the second season of the American version.

I suppose the first thing to say is that both series are utterly hilarious: watching the two seasons of the original had me in raptures. David Brent is still an obnoxious tosser – possibly the biggest wanker ever to hit UK TV – yet he is also a sublime comic creation on a par with Basil Fawlty or Victor Meldrew. He is arrogant and repugnant, yet there is a type of naivite to him which is almost tragic: he has no idea how outclassed he is by those around him, and in the end you can’t help pitying him. Watching the episodes in one go, though, it became clear that the program was not just about Brent. The supporting cast – if I can call them that – play a major role. Brent may think he’s the star of the show (which is kind of the joke) but the characters around him play off this repugnant creature, developing their own personalities, backgrounds and narratives so that by the end the program starts to feel like a serious series. While they all still have comic moments, people like Gareth and Tim eventually turn into characters we actually care about, which is ultimately what made The Office so great and influential.

I can already see the same thing happening in the American series. Before yesterday morning, I had never seen anything of The Office (US) but luckily it’s all on Netflix. Having just watched the first two seasons (there’s a lot more of the American version than the British one) I can already see the same dynamic of repugnant, arrogant boss surrounded by the same collection of slightly oddball employees. I find it interesting that this is essentially the same program, but reset and remade for an American audience. It was created to fit American tastes and use American cultural references. Has any other television show been rebooted like that? We thus see references to things like American healthcare and laws which aren’t in the UK original. It has the same initial concept and underlying structure, yet the program has been entirely remade using American material, as if the original program wouldn’t do and needed to be remodelled and presented as American.

That is not to say it isn’t funny: Brent’s substitute, Michael Scott (played by Steve Carell) is just as up himself as his British prototype; the supporting cast still bounce off him in the same natural yet hilarious way. The show has just as much to say about office dynamics and human nature. I’ll probably write more when I finish watching the entire series, but it is fascinating to see how America adapted a classic bit of British comedy to suit it’s own cultural norms.

‘Chuckie Egg’ is a name I can’t have heard in well over twenty-five years. It is the name of a game once played on BBC Micro computers. BBCs were very basic machines by today’s standards, but I still have very fond memories of them: in the eighties and early nineties, they were used in schools. My parents bought one for the family, in part so I could learn to type, write stories and communicate. You could also play basic computer games on them too, loaded using thin floppy disks. One of them, I vaguely remember, was called Chuckie Egg, a simple platform game. Every breaktime at school I either used to try to play it, or sit and watch my classmates playing it.

I had naturally totally forgotten about it. On the BBC’s Click program yesterday, it was mentioned that somebody has now created an online BBC Micro simulator. That of course caught my interest, so I just tapped it into Google. I’m not sure I’ve found the full simulator they mentioned yet, but I think this is worth flagging up. Chuckie Egg can now be played online, in all it’s BBC glory. I know computer games have come on a long way since I watched my friends playing this, but you can’t beat a classic.

I realise that the Emirates Air Line isn’t everyone’s cup of tea and doesn’t always get the best press, but if you ask me, London could do with more cable cars like it. Now, hear me out: London has one of the most advanced public transport systems in the world. It’s far from perfect, of course – nowhere near enough tube stations are wheelchair accessible, for one – but I can get around the city in a large variety of ways, from tube trains, busses, trams or even boats. Out on my trundle yesterday, I was crossing the river on the cable car, and it occurred to me that it was a great addition to the transport network. While it may be a bit of a tourist attraction and novelty, it nonetheless is an excellent way of getting from the North Greenwich Peninsular to the Excel Centre, affording passengers great views across the city en route. Now that there is more and more traffic on the roads, I reckon London should start building more cable cars like it, perhaps at other points along the Thames, or up in the city centre, say between parks. That way, fewer people would need to use busses, cutting traffic.

One of the first things I came across on the web this morning was this Youtube video about how the word Omicron was pronounced in Star Trek. It struck me as quite of-the-moment, although as someone who just goes by how their communication devices pronounce words, I don’t think there’s that much I can say about it.

I went to a GAD meeting yesterday afternoon. GAD is an organisation of local disabled people, based in Greenwich. The meeting, however, was in Woolwich: some people want to do a podcast made up of people with disabilities talking about their experiences, what they had to go through to achieve their independence and so on. It was quite a fascinating meeting, and I felt grateful to have been invited. I’ll flag up the finished podcast here when I can. I do, however, want to relay a story I heard yesterday: it was told by an older fellow with body deformities, and really stuck with me. He told us that a few weeks after he was born, his mother despaired at having a disabled son so much that she wanted to smother him. She believed his life would be so difficult as a disabled person that she couldn’t put him through it. When she was just about to do so though, he laughed. His laugh was apparently so lovely that she suddenly found that she couldn’t go through with it, and thus his laugh saved his life.

I find this story quite moving, not just because of what it tells us of good luck, but because of what that poor mum must have had to go through. It says something about the kind of assumptions people make about the difficulty of lives like mine. It makes you wonder, too, how many other disabled babies weren’t so fortunate.

Under current circumstances, I think this is well worth nicking.