Yesterday I came across a tidbit of information which made me slightly puzzled. In France, certain university courses, at least Master’s courses, are taught in English rather than French. That is, English is used in Master’s physics classes in Paris rather than French. I’m not sure yet how widespread this is, but it struck me as very odd: The English language has become so widespread and commonplace that it is now being used in our neighbour’s institutions. If I was French, I think I would probably find that quite galling: I know how proud the French can be of their language and culture; to see it slowly being taken over by your old adversary, so that their language rather than yours was being used to access academic courses, would be quite upsetting. Can you imagine the uproar if the reverse happened here? Of course, there will be several reasons for this, not least the ubiquity of American English and it’s use in academic and scientific papers, but nonetheless, to see one language rise over all others like this is pretty weird.

Today I just want to express my sorrow at the sad death of Barry Cryer. He was one of a generation of comedians who made British comedy truly great. Although I must admit it has been a while since I listened to it, I love radio shows like Just A Minute and I’m Sorry I Haven’t A Clue: Cryer was one of the voices who made such programs so funny, and so remarkable. In that spirit, I want to close this entry by starting a game:

London Bridge.

I received some very good personal/friend news earlier today which I have been asked not to tell everyone about yet, so let me just say that it has been a great, joyful day, and that this evening finds me in the mood for a party… I mean socially distanced work meeting.

Having just watched Prime Minister”s Questions, I seriously believe that it’s now very clear that the UK has no government but a bunch of lying, self-serving disgraces to human civilisation categorically unfit to rule. The Tories shouldn’t just leave office but the party should be disbanded. The Conservative party has it’s origins over two centuries ago as an organisation dedicated to keeping power and wealth in the hands of a rich, landed few. To this day, that remains it’s sole aim, and it’s now clear that they will do anything, including blatantly deceive the entire country, to achieve it. This lunchtime, we saw the party rush to the man they call our Prime Minister, a known liar and charlatan, spouting blatant untruths in an effort to absolve him of responsibility for breaking the law. The only thing coming from Johnson should have been a grovelling apology and resignation; any other bullshit he spouted was an insult. This is a group of people which believes they are born to rule and thus are above the rule; they think they have a right to party while the rest of us mourn. They thus treat the rest of us with utter, utter contempt, and to a man are fit only to collect rubbish, not govern the country.

The United Kingdom deserves better than to be governed by this bunch of entitled, selfish, disgraceful scumbags. The Tories must go.

I rewatched Don’t Look Up yesterday afternoon, having watched it the first time over Christmas with my parents. It’s a very interesting Netflix film which seems to be splitting opinions. On the whole, Don’t Look Up struck me as quite a delicious satire, but I couldn’t help thinking that in reality the ESA would have blown the comet out of thee sky months before the yanks even spotted it! That is to say, it is a very Americano-centric film, where Americans are the chief players in a global crisis, and the rest of the world is completely forgotten about. Americans are the ones who first spot the impending doom and attempt (and fail) to find a solution to it, and the rest of us barely get a cameo. Of course, you can say that of any film like this (Deep Impact etc), but last night it really jarred.

Naturally, this film is supposed to be more American social satire than straight science fiction, so I suppose that focus is to be expected; but the way the film ignored the rest of humanity nonetheless grated. On the other hand, the film does what it sets out to do quite perfectly: as a comment on contemporary American culture, I don’t think you can get better. It is a delicious pastiche of Trumpism, american consumerism, and the control that a few rich white Americans have over the whole country. It is a commentary on American mainstream media, and their education system. It’s a witty, intelligent film; a comment on how, even when faced with unambiguous impending doom, some Americans still refuse to believe the reality in front of them. As a social commentary, it is great; I just wish it didn’t frame itself like America was the entire world. After all, while the whole satirical point of the film may be that it is the American desire to make money which ultimately causes the end of the world, that assumes viewers forgot that there are other cultures in the world, less focussed on capitalism and more focussed on securing our future.

If I can just put my James Bond fan hat on, I just came across this treat on Youtube. It’s a 45 minute retrospective of Daniel Craig’s tenure as 007, going through his five films. As it explains, the impact Craig has had on the franchise has been massive. He brought so much humanity and pathos to the character, while still being the cold, violent spy Ian Fleming created. Like many fans, I think Craig is my favourite actor to play the role. The Ironic thing is, when he was first cast in the role, he was lampooned in the press for being blonde, and everyone expected him to be a failure. To think that Craig then went on to be such a fantastic success is what makes this story so great.

The question now is, where does the franchise go from here? As the program details, over the past five films and fifteen years, Craig’s Bond has become a cultural icon: by and large, his films have been huge critical hits, and who can forget that this was the 007 who escorted the queen to the olympics – a cultural moment which must surely rank as one of the greatest in history. How can that possibly be followed? How can any actor follow Craig? Whoever the producer choose, I would hate to be in their shoes.

But then, they said that after Brosnan. I’m now very interested indeed in how Barbara Broccoli and Michael Wilson deal with this issue. Whoever they cast, it’s sure to come under a lot of scrutiny; but my hunch is, they’ll take a totally new tack. Craig played Bond so straight, so brutally, that the only way forward is to completely change the tone. As others are saying too, they’ll cast a lighter, more comic Bond – anything else will risk comparisons with hiss predecessor. Of course, the danger with that is, go too far down that route and it risks not being James Bond any more; stray too far and their choice will certainly be panned. Thus, largely thanks to the success of Daniel Craig, Bond’s producers are in quite a predicament: I can’t wait to see how they get out of it.

I kind of fancied another explore today, so earlier I had a look at the map to decide where to go. I go up to Stratford quite often, and I’ve been exploring the area around Canary Wharf a bit recently, but today I wanted a change. I looked at what I might find if I headed south rather than north, and noticed a shopping centre called the Glades in Bromley. I thought it might be interesting to look around, but it was clearly too far away to try to reach in just my powerchair. Luckily though, I soon found it was a single bus ride from Eltham, so with that I set off.

The bus ride was quite a convoluted one, and it took longer to get there than I thought. When I did though, I was pleasantly surprised: being South London, I was kind of expecting to find something rather run down and shabby, but The Glades is a nice, well-kept shopping centre, with trendy sushi bars and a well-stocked Waterstones. It might be nowhere near as big as Westfield in Stratford, or as upmarket as Canary Wharf, but what I found wasn’t anything to turn your nose up at. The thing is, such places aren’t that uncommon in London; you find them all over the capital. Yet, thinking about it earlier, I reflected that you would never find a shopping centre like that in Congleton. The Glades might be on the small side for London, but you’d be lucky to find such a place in my hometown or similar small towns; there, such a centre would seem huge, opulent and perhaps even misplaced. It’s another instance of the glaring disparity between London and the rest of the country.

I just got in from a very cool trip. Yesterday I learned from a Facebook meme that Sir Ian McKellen now owns a pub called The Grapes. Being a big Lord Of The Rings fan, I naturally tapped the name into google, only to find it was in Limehouse, just the other side of Canary Wharf. That instantly got me excited, so after breakfast this morning I set off to see if I could find it, catching the DLR over the river and trundling west. I knew it was very unlikely that I would actually meet Sir Ian, but I was curious to see what a pub owned by a wizard was like.

The Grapes wasn’t very hard to find: it’s in a well to do area by the Thames. The only problem was, being about three centuries old, it’s door was rather narrow and hard to get my powerchair through. Once inside though, I was intoxicated: you could almost smell the history; the decor was very rustic and wooden. People must have been drinking there for eons with very little change. The best thing of all, however, was catching sight of Gandalf’s staff behind the bar: I could feel the presence of Mithrandir!

After some deliberation, I decided to stay for a solitary pint before heading on my way. It was still early, and I had more exploring to do. Yet it was already a very cool trip, if just to find that fascinating old pub, owned by one of my favourite actors.

I’m suddenly very, very excited. If you want to see a sneak peak of the second season of Picard, scheduled to hit the airwaves in a couple of months, check this out. This trailer was released less than an hour ago, and looks fantastic. Guinan, one of my all-time favourite Star Trek characters, is back! [Squeal!]

This morning we heard the sad news of the death of Meatloaf. I don’t think I’ve mentioned liking him on here before, but when I heard the news my mind automatically went back to 1993 or ’94, when I was ten or eleven. At school during breaks, the lads in my class used to play music. I remember we all used to dance our young heads off to Meatloaf’s I’d Do Anything For Love. We may have barely understood the lyrics, but we knew it was a cool song.

Meatloaf was one of the greats, whose quintessentially American style of rock meant so much to so many. He will be missed.

Note to self: no matter how bright and sunny it may look outside, some days it is just too cold to go trundling. Far better to stay home in the warm, than get to Kidbrooke to find you feel like you’ve walked into a freezer. Urban exploration is definitely a spring and summer activity.

I just had one of those moments when, idling away a quiet, fairly miserable afternoon, I come across something incredible. And by that I mean truly, truly incredible. If you want to see robots dance the Mash Potato, watch this. It’s a video by an American robotics company called Boston Dynamics, which specialises in top-of-the-range robots. Obviously in this video they’re just showing off, albeit quite wonderfully, but some of the things they have created robots to do,, including gymnastics and parkour, is mind-blowing. I defy anyone vaguely interested in technology not to watch their videos and be blown away.

Watching PMQs earlier, I was enraged as I was last week by the stream of absolute bullshit produced by Boris Johnson. I get so enraged that I probably shouldn’t watch it. Johnson spouted lie after lie, obfuscation after obfuscation; blatantly refusing to answer any question directly while claiming credit for the phenomenal work of the NHS, an organisation he and the Tories would destroy if they had the chance. The hypocrisy, the pomposity, the arrogance we are subject to every Wednesday, from a snobbish toff who thinks authority was his birthright but who should be sweeping the streets, twice fired for lying, boils my blood. We deserve better than the blatant misrule of a group of entitled, privileged toffs who only care about their own wealth and power, and who would lie their heads off to cling on to it.

‘Vandal’ is putting it mildly.

You can probably all predict what I’m going to write about on here today. The stupid Tory bitch currently calling herself our culture secretary Nadine Dorries has announced the end of the BBC license fee. She has said the next announcement about it’s renewal will be the last. I am, of course, a huge fan of the Beeb: alongside the NHS, it is one of the few institutions which make the UK worth living in. You only have to watch programs like The Green Planet to realise how wonderful it is, and as this Guardian article explains, it does so much more. We would loose an institution of unparalleled, inestimable cultural value if we let the Tory p’tahks continue to play politics with it, using the beeb to distract us from the mess they have created.

To be fair, Dorries is not calling for an end of the BBC (I doubt any politician, apart from utter shits like Peter Bone, would do that), but alternative ways to fund it. Yet as the Guardian piece points out, the bbc is only as great as it is because of the independent way it is funded. ” The principle that matters is that everyone pays in, so it costs far less for a panoply of programming right across the taste spectrum than could ever be funded by subscriptions from a few.” We thus all have equal access to an incredible range of cultural, scientific and current affairs content: we must not allow the tories to threaten that so that only their rich mates can access the best content.

Is anyone else getting irritated with videos on Youtube suddenly becoming adverts? I’m sure I’m not the only one getting pissed off with this phenomenon. Youtube is one of the websites I use the most: like anyone else, I watch all sorts on it, from clips of my favourite films to vlogs about subjects I’m interested in. In the last few months though, I’ve noticed more and more vids being broken up by adverts. I don’t mean the ordinary adverts which you can choose to skip after a few seconds, which are irritating enough. I mean adverts where the person narrating the video – be it a film review say, or a piece about history – suddenly breaks the flow of the film to advertise some random, totally irrelevant product. The manufacturers of the product obviously pay them to do so, but to have a video which you may be enjoying suddenly broken up by an advert which you cannot skip, presented as part of the video itself, really pisses me off. It would be like me suddenly interrupting the flow of my blog entries to tell readers to buy a random, unrelated product. It strikes me as a complete sell out and I instantly loose all respect for whoever is delivering the film.

A few days ago, for example, I was watching a video by Calvin Dyson, a James Bond reviewer who I used to have a lot of respect for: the video was quite an interesting one about a 1987 James Bond TV special with Roger Moore, but about nine minutes in, Dyson suddenly started trying to flog a random brand of wallet. He too had obviously sold out to those trying to make money out of people’s interests. The problem is, it’s happening more and more on youtube as big corporations try to cash in on the growing popularity of it’s users, but in doing so they wash away the independence and integrity which made the site so great. Part of what made people like Dyson so interesting was their fresh, raw sense of independence; the fact they have no attachments to big, mainstream media. They are just creating videos for the love of the subject. As soon as they start getting paid to advertise things as part of the videos they make, however, they loose that independence, and with it my respect.

I was watching the BBC lunchtime news earlier, and I couldn’t help noticing a bit of a theme running through at least the first two stories: First there was a report about yet more parties in Downing Street during lockdown. Apparently civil servants there were breaking social distancing rules willy-nilly, having boozy parties whenever they wished. This coming on the back of the revelation that Boris Johnson had attended such a party just weeks before. These tory toffs clearly don’t think the rules don’t apply to them, and that they have a right to do whatever they like, no matter who it hurts or insults.

We then had the news of the arrogant prick Novak Djokovic, still trying to get into Australia to play in the open despite refusing to get vaccinated. He and those supporting him are now arguing that he’s being treated unfairly somehow, and that the Australian government should waive the rules and just let him in because of who he is. Just how arrogant can you get? I’m glad to see the Aussies are sticking to their guns and insisting no one enters without a vaccination.

Both stories obviously relate to the pandemic, but both are also about wealthy people attempting to use their privilege to escape the rules which apply to the rest of us. In both stories we see rich, white, able bodied people trying to escape the restrictions which we all must obey, just because of who they are. In both we find the same kind of arrogance and contempt for others; the same kind of entitled disregard for the wellbeing of those they see as below their inherent social rank. The only way to get passed this pandemic is if we all work together and obey the rules; but if that is so, it is people like this who are the problem.

I have described what I call my ‘rages’ on here before: how, due to my cp, I tend to express anger very viscerally and physically. I tend to lose control, and start shouting, shaking and throwing things. Well, today watching PMQs, they were worse than ever. I don’t think I’ve ever felt more furious with anyone than how I now feel with Boris Johnson. That he had the sheer, barefaced arrogance to stand in the House of Commons and attempt to justify throwing a party while the rest of the nation was sheltering from a deadly virus, is beyond contemptible. How dare he? How dare he carry on as if the rules don’t apply to him, offering lame excuse after lame excuse; patronising us with the gut-wrenching ‘I know best’ tone of a man who thinks political power is his birthright, and that nobody else has the authority to take it from him? It was more than I could stomach, and by the end I was shaking with rage. Between that and the sight of his Tory sycophants trying to cover the arse of their dear leader, I had to go for a walk afterwards to try to calm down. Why should we put up with these charlatans? As far as I am concerned the Conservatives are not a political party but a group of selfish, arrogant power-hungry disgraces to humanity unfit for government. They don’t care who else suffers or how unfair things are as long as they are on top. The party should be forced from office and disbanded immediately.

Some days I struggle to find something to write about on here, but today it’s obvious. The only problem is, I don’t know what to say about it. Of course, I was as furious as anyone to hear that Boris Johnson and his cronies thought it was perfectly ok to have a garden party at Downing Street in May 2020, and even more pissed off that his Tory chums were trying to justify and excuse it this morning. What do you expect when your country is being governed by a bunch of spoiled, arrogant scumbags who think they are above the law? The thing is, what can I say about it which will contribute anything meaningful? Naturally, part of me wants to launch into one of my rage-filled tirades, full of insults and swear words, about how the Tories are utterly unfit to be in government. While the rest of us were feeling the effects of isolation, they were behaving like they were too superior to have to obey the rules. Yet apart from potentially damaging my keyboard, that wouldn’t achieve anything: I’d hope anyone reading it would agree with me, so I wouldn’t be changing anyone’s mind. The thing is, I’m tired of getting furious; I’m tired at being frustrated that the country is currently being run by a bunch of arrogant, entitled scumbags, but knowing that, at the end of the day, I can’t do anything about it. So please take my fury as read while I try to find something more constructive to write about.

I suspect this will be the most amusing thing I’ll be able to blog about today (it’s either this or a post about arrogant Serbian tennis players who think they don’t need to be vaccinated, just because they’re champions). The wankmuffin Gove was trapped in a lift at the BBC for half an hour. “Cabinet minister Michael Gove missed an interview slot on BBC Radio 4’s Today programme earlier after getting stuck in a lift. The levelling up secretary missed his slot on Monday’s show, after an elevator in the BBC’s Broadcasting House stopped working.” Naturally I don’t believe in karma, but if I did, this would be the perfect demonstration. Gove has inflicted untold suffering of thousands of disabled people over the years, so perhaps he gets what he deserves. The arrogant, entitled tosser should have been using the stairs anyway. The only downside is, the p’tahk was eventually let out.

Not that I want to sound too much like an ad for the BBC, but probably the biggest thing I can blog about today is the fact that Sir David Attenborough’s new documentary series, The Green Planet, starts tonight at seven on BBC One. As I wrote here a few weeks ago, I still find the fact that Sir David is still making wonderful natural history programs after all these years staggering: when you remember that he started presenting these programs in 1952, before either of my parents were born, it really blows your mind. Not only that, but his programs are pretty much the best thing on TV, and have been for the last seventy years; beating any talent competition or reality show hands down.

Perhaps the phrase ‘National Treasure’ is all too easily these days, but when it comes to Sir David Attenborough, I can think of no one who has made a greater contribution to this country’s cultural wealth. The fact that he is still going so strongly, and is no doubt about to amaze and fascinate the nation yet again, is surely cause for celebration.

Yesterday I went all the way over to Charlton to buy a new bottle of vitamin pills. This might sound silly, but I have always bought the same brand of vitamins from the same pharmacy in Charlton village. The staff there know me and what I buy. When I moved to Eltham two years ago though, I tried to change brands and buy my vitamins from a pharmacy nearby. The things is, when I did so, all of a sudden I began to feel very, very ill: I remember feeling more rotten than ever before. I instantly decided to change my vitamin brand back again. Luckily it only lasted a few days, but nonetheless it was far more potent than a simple cold – bad enough to be memorable even now. That was March 2020 though, so looking back I now wonder whether my awful feeling had anything to do with the change in vitamin pills at all, or whether I had in fact caught COVID-19. After all, March 2020 was when the pandemic was just beginning to get nasty, so the timing would fit. If my suspicion is correct though, then I have already caught coronavirus and recovered without realising, all because of my preference in vitamin pills. Thinking about it, changing my vitamin pill brand couldn’t have had such a drastic effect, so it was probably just a coincidence that I swapped vitamin pill brands at the same time. Even so, I felt poorly enough not to risk changing brands ever since.

I’m not sure I’ve mentioned this on here before, but when I was young I used to love watching my dad do woodwork. I used to like to follow him into our garage, probably getting in the way, and watch him hammer, saw or do whatever he had to do. I found it quite spellbinding: as with the Joy Of Painting, watching someone skilfully create something can be utterly captivating. In that spirit, today I’d just like to flag up this youtube channel. I just came across Woodboy quite randomly a few minutes ago, having been watching similar craftwork channels for a while, but I was instantly captivated by the things being made and the skill being put on display. Naturally, there are bound to be many more similar channels on Youtube, but if you just want to chill out watching someone skilfully create all kinds of things from wood, you can’t go wrong with this.

I don’t want to say too much about it for fear of causing offence, but I just came across this rather perplexing story. Dame Maureen Lipman has questioned the casting of Dame Hellen Mirren as Israeli PM Golda Meir in an upcoming film about her life. Lipman says that, while Mirren is an excellent actor, she thinks only Jewish actors should be cast to play jewish roles, and that not casting a jewish actor would be the equivalent of a white actor putting on blackface to play a black character.

This strikes me as a very thorny issue indeed. I feel compelled to say something about it, but I’m not sure what I ought to say. Of course, as the article points out, there is an argument that to retain a sense of authenticity in a role, characters representing minorities should be portrayed by actors from those minorities: thus trans people should be played by trans actors, gay people by gay actors and disabled people by disabled actors. This I have no problem with, and agree wholeheartedly. The thing is, in the case of physically disabled people especially, we have attributes which set us apart from ‘the norm’; we look different, so a nondisabled actor playing a disabled character simply wouldn’t look authentic. (that reminds me, I really must watch My Left Foot again…) There’s also an argument saying that only someone with the right life experiences can play a character with any degree of authenticity, so you can only play a persecuted person if you have yourself experienced a similar degree of persecution. The counterargument, of course, is that part of the very nature of acting is to portray people you are not, and that any actor should be able to take on any role they are deemed suitable for. (After all, Sir Ian Mckellen might not be a wizard, but he made a really good Gandalf.)

Thus, given that Jewish people don’t differ physically from other people, I would argue that a nonjewish actor would play a jewish role at least more convincingly than a nondisabled person could play a character with, say, cerebral palsy. There would not be as many physical barriers to overcome. Unlike a white actor playing a black character, there would be no need to alter their appearance, so the intrusion wouldn’t be as overt or gratuitous. The question is, then, why would people like Maureen Lipman object so strongly? Why should certain roles be kept for certain people? why is this so culturally sensitive, especially in cases such as this?

A couple of days ago on one of the news channels I heard a priest or vicar trying to argue that churches should be allowed to remain open and that, despite the pandemic and the omicron variant, services should be able to continue as normal. He was arguing that faith gave people so much comfort and strength, it would be wrong to suspend church services because of the pandemic. Of course, this rather got on my wick: how arrogant or self-important do you have to be to think that your ability to preach to people should take priority over people’s health? As I’ve said on here before, I hold religion to be nothing but a collection of myths and stories which people use to give themselves authority; they then tell others how to think and act, claiming to speak for an omnipresent deity. Of course, they dress it up as a force for good – love thy neighbour, feed the poor etc – but religion is nothing but a form of (often highly conservative) social control, and a scam.

Now, of course, the pandemic is hindering that authority: if people cannot go to church, the priests have nobody to preach to, and so they lose their influence and cultural position. They can’t allow that to happen: they can’t allow threats to people’s health threaten their centuries-old, totally undemocratic means of influencing society. The clergy will thus do whatever they can to argue that churches should remain open, irrespective of how many people might get ill, because the moment they close, the preachers have no way to influence society. Allowing churches to remain open perpetuates the fiction that religion is as fundamental an aspect of society as a state-run service, rather than a paternalistic, anachronistic form of social control which we could easily live without.

It really gets to me how other people don’t seem to see this: priests etc are treated with authority and reverence, when they ought to be treated as conmen or charlatans. When you think about it, they obviously just feed those who listen to them a bunch of myths and stories about an omnipresent creator being in order to award themselves the authority of that being, the better to control others. This is perhaps illustrated most dramatically by American televangelists, spouting all sorts of ludicrous bullshit while swindling millions of dollars from the people they dupe. Those who listen may feel comforted, but they don’t realise they are being controlled.

If the churches shut due to coronavirus, priests and vicars would have no-one to preach to, however, and that authority would evaporate. They thus have a vested interest in maintaining the fiction that normal rules should not apply to religion, and they should be able to preach no matter what, even if it means putting people’s lives at risk. If religion is seen as special, they are special and treated with reverence, when in fact these preachers are just normal people trying to control and dominate others by taking authority from a set of ancient myths.

Just as an update on Saturday’s entry, I must say I had a lovely weekend. My mum and dad came down to the old family house in Harlesden a few days ago, and I joined them on Friday for a long overdue family weekend. To be honest we didn’t do much: for various reasons, I’d been pushed there in my manual chair by Serkan, so I couldn’t really go anywhere, but that wasn’t the point. I think we all just wanted a good old-fashioned family weekend together; and to that end, being joined by Luke and Yan on Saturday for the traditional new year gammon made it even more special. It really was great to see them all, and talk together like we used to (the only thing missing was my other brother Mark and his family, but I suppose they will have to wait a bit longer). I’m pleased to report that everyone seems to be doing really well. You know, for all my swanning around South-East London, and as much as I relish my independence, you just can’t beat a meal with your family, cooked to perfection by your Mum, in a house you have known since childhood.

Possibly the best thing I can do here today is direct everyone back to this entry of a year ago. My summary of 2021 is more or less identical to that of 2020: pretty much nothing has changed. I didn’t go anywhere, or do anything particularly cool or special; the bloody pandemic is still with us; things are just as much of a travesty politically. And of course, Lyn’s death still gets to me. Rereading that entry just now before beginning to type this entry, it says everything I was going to say on here today. Of course there are certainly differences, such as Serkan moving out, but it’s odd to note how little things have changed and how similar the two yearly summaries would be. Oh well, I suppose it’s the state we all find ourselves in. Here’s hoping that 2022 will be a little different.

I’m currently sat in the back room of a house I have known since I was very, very small. Indeed, in near enough the spot I’m sitting, I remember my greek grandfather sitting me on his lap, swaying me back and forth singing an old greek melody to my infant self. That was over thirty years ago though, and much has changed since then, but this old place remains the same. My grandparents are, sadly, no longer with us; yet their legacy, the vibrant, budding family they gave rise to, remains a strong presence in this old north London house.

I’m currently here with my parents, down from Cheshire. It’s the first time I’ve physically seen them in months, and the first time I’ve been here for even longer. I got here yesterday, and my brother Luke and his wife Yan will be joining us later for lunch. It’s the first proper family get together for months: the last two years have been so chaotic that, like so many families, we just have not been able to hook up. It thus seems rather apt, then, to be reuniting in this old family place, so full of memories stretching back decades. We will, of course, be celebrating the dawn of a new year, probably all hoping for the opportunity for many more such family get togethers.