I realise I said a couple of days ago that I didn’t want to say much about the situation in Ukraine on here, but I think it’s fast becoming something that we should all be very, very concerned about. As others are now saying, things could escalate very quickly indeed: the invasion isn’t going as well as Putin intended, and there’s no knowing to what depths he will stoop if he gets desperate. His threat to use nuclear weapons may have been an attempt at a sabre rattling distraction, but things could become very nasty very quickly, especially if other powers get sucked in. As much as I don’t want to sound melodramatic, this is possibly the biggest crisis the world has faced in many, many years.

All we can do is wait and watch. Good luck to us all.

Today I’d like to wish my brother Luke a very happy birthday. We had our weekly family Skype meeting a day early this morning, just so we could all wish my younger brother the best. I’m pleased to report everyone seems to be doing well, including my young niece and nephew who seem to be thriving. Mind you, such meetings in cyberspace, with my parents and two brothers, only remind me how long it has been since we were last all together physically. Hopefully now the pandemic is subsiding, it won’t be too long until we can all meet up. Skype meetings are all well and good, but you can’t beat a family chat over some of mum’s cooking.

Happy birthday Luke.

Over the years I have felt it my duty as a blogger to pass comment on what is going on in the world. I like to give my opinion on current affairs. Today though, a new dark chapter began: something happened which I don’t feel able to comment on. What is now happening in Ukraine is utterly disturbing: war has returned to Europe for the first time in over seventy years. Yet I know as much about the situation as anyone. I can offer no special comment or analysis. It’s probably best, then, if I just continue my usual ramblings on my blog, and avoid trying to write about the unfolding emergency. If I do, however, please know that it’s not that I don’t care about what is now happening in Eastern Europe; I am simply as aghast as anyone else. After all, what could I possibly write which could have any impact or meaning, in the face of such folly?

Today I would just like to ask a question; it’s something I’ve been pondering for a few days. When you look at it, the James Bond film franchise has quite astounding links to the British state, going back decades: as illustrated here, each new film in the series gets a royal premiere, and over the years there have been many other links between 007 and royalty. As this article outlines, “The Royal Family willingly associates with the James Bond ‘brand’ largely due to the ‘Britishness’ of the James Bond franchise. The character is an iconic figure who transmits many of the purported strengths associated with the United Kingdom”. My question is, are there any other media franchises – film, tv or whatever – with such strong links to a given state? I can’t think of any other franchise anywhere else in the world which gets such treatment, or which is such a large part of a country’s cultural identity. I’d be interested to see if there were any which come close.

Today I just want to wish my aunt Toula a very happy birthday. She and my parents are currently staying at the old family house in Kilburn, so, on the spur of the moment, I thought I’d go up there to see them. It’s quite a straightforward trip (bus tube bus) but because I have to go via Wembley park for step free access, it takes well over two hours either way. The problem was, I hadn’t told them I was coming, so they might not have been in and the entire trip could have been wasted. Luckily though, my aunt and mum were there – dad had to make an emergency trip back north – and the three of us spent a lovely hour or so talking and eating nice, fresh cake. I think my aunt was very pleased for the surprise.

I’m growing ever more confident in getting around this vast city: it’s public transport system is far from perfect, and it needs serious work to make it accessible for guys like me. Yet trips like the one I made today remind me that London is as much my home as anyone else’s, lying out there waiting for me to explore.

I just had a great day with John. A couple of days ago, he suggested going to see Let It Be down at Greenwich Picturehouse, a small independent cinema not far away. I didn’t know much about Let It Be other than that it had something to do with The Beatles, but being a fan of Peter Jackson I was keen to see his latest film. I thus went into the cinema not quite knowing what to expect, but quite intrigued: for one, just how similar to Jackson’s other work, stylistically, would this film be?

The answer to that soon became obvious: Let It Be is about as far from an epic fantasy or classic gorilla remake as you can get. Instead, this was a wonderful documentary which cut together archive footage of the Beatles’ recordings for the video for the album Let it Be. Filmed originally on a rooftop in central London, the new film re-weaves together footage of the legendarry band playing with that of events going on around it: people on the street below looking up in shock upon hearing the music; the police trying to gain access to the building, trying to stop the recording for disturbing the peace. The film incorporates the most advanced use of split-screen I’ve ever seen, so we get a real sense of events happening simultaneously. The technique really draws you in, so that in the end you are mesmerised by this historical, cultural event taking place on a London rooftop over fifty years ago. At only about an hour long, this isn’t a long film; but it is a treat for both music lovers and cinephiles, well worth going to the cinema for. It would seem there’s far more to Peter Jackson than Hobbits.

Say what you like about Alastair Campbell, I totally agree with him on this.

Excuse me, but I really need to get this off my chest. Cinemas are physical places, not television channels. A TV channel which airs films does not have the right to call itself a cinema. If it does, it is being pretentious and understands nothing about either film or cinephilia. Cinemas are buildings; physical places we have to go out and enter into. They are dedicated to screening and consuming films: they have an aura about them (Bazin), a specific feeling you only experience when watching a film in a darkened auditorium. That is very different to watching a film when it’s aired on TV. Channels which title theirselves ‘cinema’ such as Sky Cinema clearly do so to try to claim some of the prestige of cinemas, or to fool the dopes who watch them that they’re having the same experience; when in fact paying Rupert Murdoch through the nose to watch films on your TV you could have seen months ago, doesn’t even come close to experiencing a film in a cinema.

Sport is a weird phenomenon, when you think about it. On the face of it, it pits two or more people or groups of people against one another; it encourages competition and rivalry. Yet at the same time it is about bringing people together, either to compete or spectate. Whether it’s football, cricket, or any other sport, people come together to enjoy it. This is probably especially so for international competitions: events such as the Olympics or Football world cup encourage people to converge in one place to enjoy sport together, irrespective of international rivalries or supposed differences. Take, for example, the oldest, biggest sporting rivalry I know of: the Ashes. For well over a century now, every two years the english and Australian cricket teams have come together to battle it out. On the face of it, there is no love lost between the two sides, and competition is fierce. Yet at the end of the day, England and Australia remain firm allies, with huge cultural exchanges between the two nations.

Take the Olympics too, in both it’s summer and winter forms: every couple of years, the world comes together to focus our attention onto one city. On the face of it, we all support our respective teams, hoping they win plenty of medals. Yet on a much deeper level, events like the olympics are about global unity. Every two years, we all get to experience a different city, which has the privilege of showing itself off to the world. Whether physically or through the media, we get to visit places we otherwise never might, and watch our teams as they compete in sports which we otherwise would have little knowledge of. To this end, I was just watching the Curling from Beijing: I didn’t know much about curling, but could feel myself thoroughly getting into it as the match wore on.

For me, such events aren’t so much about who wins what, as much as the act of coming together to compete. Each country forms it’s team to send across the world to meet others and play against them. An event which on the face of it is about rivalry is actually about unity: we all come together to enjoy eachother’s company, relishing the rivalries and different approaches to each game, while knowing that at the end of the day, we leave each court, track or playing field as friends. That is why I see the olympic games as an incredibly progressive force, especially if you factor in what the paralympics does for the representation of disability. Thus while they may come under some flack from some quarters, as I once wrote here, I actually think we need more events like the olympics: global, mass media events which draw the worlds attention, and which bring us all together as one global community. What form such events may take I’m not sure: they might focus on sport, but they could equally be celebrations of art and culture. Above all, they should bring people together, just as the Olympic Games do.

A storm is coming and it looks nasty. I just heard on the news that the Met office has issued it’s most severe weather warning for the north of Britain: storm Eunice could bring gusts of over 100mph. I should be okay here: I plan to hunker down and stay inside; and the capital should be spared the worst of it anyway. But to all my northern friends and family reading this, I say: stay safe guys – this storm looks nasty.

Perhaps I’m overreacting or being melodramatic, but I’m currently checking the news headlines every few minutes or so. In the last two or three days at least, it would seem that Eastern Europe has edged closer to a war than it has been for a long time, and I must admit I’m quite worried about it. Of course, you could point out that Russia now says it’s pulling back it’s troops from the Ukrainian border, or that this entire affair might just be one of Putin’s ploys to get everyone dancing to his tune; yet surely the last three days or so has brought us closer to a cataclysm than it has been for a long time. The ramifications of such a war could be catastrophic. I have no idea what Putin may be playing at or the forces at work here, so while the whole debacle will hopefully blow over as quickly as it arose, you’ll understand why I currently keep checking the news.

He can try to dress it up as an issue of bodily autonomy all he wants, if you ask me, Novak Djokovic is an anti-vaxxer prick who should be immediately stripped of all his trophies, banned from playing tennis for life and put to work collecting rubbish. This is a man who thinks he has a right to put other people in danger simply because he does not want to take a jab most other people have now had. Too precious about what goes into his body, he would knowingly risk spreading a deadly virus rather than get vaccinated. As I wrote here a few weeks ago, selfish idiots like him infuriate me. Surely we need wiser, more altruistic rolemodels than this arrogant idiot in the media and on our sports pitches. Not only should he be prevented from playing in upcoming competitions; he should be stripped of his previous titles and banned from professional tennis. At least that would send a clear message that such selfish, arrogant behaviour is not acceptable.

Would it be fair to say that American Football is a slower sport than test cricket? I realise that may be a bit of a random question coming from me, but this morning, out of pure curiosity I thought I would watch last night’s superbowl. I had never seen an American Football match in full before, and wanted to see what it was about. Long ago, back at uni, Ricardio used to have his drama group play American Football as part of their warm up, from where I knew the basics: it is a rather chess-like game, with a strong tactical element. It’s also much more start/stop than football (soccer) with play continuing in spurts rather than flowing continuously. The way it was comprised of planned out plays made me wonder whether it could be reminiscent of test cricket, made up of balls and overs.

With that in mind, I started watching the Superbowl on Iplayer earlier this morning. At first, I began to get into it; but then, three minutes into the match or even less, the play was halted and the Beeb cut back to the studio (presumably in America this is where adverts would be). It soon became clear that this would continue for the whole event: we would only see snippets of action before it was interrupted, and four fifteen minute quarters would be stretched over three hours. I know people call cricket slow-paced and boring, but this struck me as ridiculous: in tests, you get a ball every minute or two, but in American football there was far more studio time than actual sport.

It’s strange: I have the patience to watch and appreciate a four or five day long cricket match, but an hour long American football match struck me as tedious. I don’t think it was the sport itself, which still strikes me as quite tactical, as much as the way in which play was interrupted every few seconds for overlong breaks. In fact, I got as far as the third quarter before I lost patience: about 35 to 40 minutes into the match and I’d had enough. Mind you, whereas in a soccer match that would be just before half time, I had already watched over two hours of the program to reach that point. I really can’t see how so many people can be so enthralled by American football when so much of the time dedicated to it is wasted.

I just watched the latest episode of the Green Planet, on deserts, and I really must say how utterly amazed it has left me. I have written about my admiration for Sir David Attenborough on here before: here we have a man who has surely done far more than anyone else to open our eyes to and increase our knowledge of the natural world. Not only that, the filmmaking in these programmes is incredible. Watching just now, my jaw dropped at the complexity and beauty of some – indeed most – of the shots. As someone who is interested in filmmaking as an art form, I was spellbound. There was one shot in particular, in about the middle of the programme, where Attenborough is filmed standing by a large bush in a desert. He visited the same plant for another show forty years before, so they were able to film him from the same angle, with the plant in exactly the same place, and seamlessly merge the two shots. The great man ages four decades, but the plant barely changes. I find that sort of filmmaking astonishing, but you can only do such things with people with careers as long and brilliant as Sir David Attenborough’s. This is television at it’s best; even after seventy years, he is still the greatest thing on television.

As doom-laden as it is, I think the best thing I can flag up on here today is this Guardian article. In it, Johnathan Freedland begins to spell out precisely what a mess Brexit is making and the damage it is doing to the UK economy. Of course, you could point out that it was all predicted by the Remain campaign years ago, but now, almost day by day, it becomes clearer and clearer what a catastrophic mistake Brexit was: the referendum result was reached based on proven lies, and we have seen none of the fanciful benefits the Outists promised us. Now that the Brexshit is starting to hit the fan, I think the most prudent thing to do would be to get the campaign to rejoin going as soon as possible.

To be honest I’m a bit baffled by Cressida Dick’s resignation from the met. Why did she need to go? There’s not much I feel I can write about it, but I think this sums the farce up nicely.

Ages ago, when I started blogging, I used to occasionally write entries on the Evolution/creationism debate. It was a subject which really got me worked up and I wanted to have my say in it. I stopped writing about it on here when my brother Luke pointed out that there were far more knowledgable people writing on the subject, and perhaps I should concentrate my ramblings on things which affected me personally, or which I had personal knowledge of. Luke was right, of course, but it is an issue which has never stopped fascinating me: the evidence for evolution is utterly overwhelming, so how can so many people refuse to acknowledge it, and insist that everyone is taught the myths in a two-thousand year old book instead? I find it baffling. I would be content to ignore these nutcases, of course, but what concerns me most is that they appear to be gaining power, particularly in America. Yesterday evening I came across this fascinating Youtube channel run by an American biology teacher. He takes creationist Youtube videos and goes through them, point by point, explaining why the original vids make no sense. He clearly knows what he’s talking about, but I thought it worth flagging up on here because it shows how worryingly distorted certain aspects of american society have become: It seems like they will stop at nothing to ensure their religion dominates over all other views, and that they are becoming more and more aggressive and extreme. I think we should find this very concerning, particularly given how reactionary and conservative they are too. At least certain Americans, like Forrest Valkai, are trying to hold them in check.

I’m now slightly curious about something which I keep seeing, which I wonder whether anyone could enlighten me on. A few times now, I’ve spotted pairs of shoes which have been tied together by their laces and thrown over overhead telephone cables. There’s an instance by the small park at the bottom of my road. At first I assumed it was just a kid pratting about, but I’ve seen the same thing two or three times now: footwear, tied together, hanging from overhead cables. Does anyone know what that might be about? Has anyone else seen this?

It may have been one of the very first things I came across on Facebook this morning, but I think this certainly warrants a blog entry. The RSC has at last cast a disabled actor as Richard III. After years of campaigning, we are finally going to see a disabled actor portray a famously disabled character. “Now, for the first time, the Royal Shakespeare Company has cast a disabled actor in the title role of Richard III in a new production opening later this year. For Arthur Hughes, it is a “dream come true” although his first reaction to being cast as the 15th-century king of England was disbelief.” Hughes goes on to say how complex the character is, and how his own disability will help him portray the role.

In many ways this is quite a step forward. Disability activists have long campaigned for disabled characters to be played by disabled actors: there is something about the lived experience of having a disability – social exclusion, the feeling of being outcast or different etc. – that only we can bring to a role. More to the point, just as you wouldn’t cast a white actor in a black role, I think having able-bodied actors play disabled characters is a tad patronising: it sort of steals our voice from us, as if able-bodied people presume they can speak for disabled people. Believe me, we can speak for ourselves, given half a chance.

The article also touches upon When Barbara Met Alan, the upcoming BBC drama about DAN. I really can’t wait to see it. Arthur Hughes is in both. I’ll be intrigued to see what they do. Mind you, perhaps it’s worth pointing out that, without the activism of groups such as DAN, we wouldn’t now be seeing disabled actors in the RSC.

I was just watching the evening news, which carried the remarkable story of a man with a severed spine being helped to walk again through the use of an electronic implant. This is, of course, incredible, and I don’t begrudge the guy his treatment in the slightest. Yet I just feel I want to point something out: the treatment cost £100,000; wouldn’t it be a better idea to use such staggering amounts of money to make society more accessible? Rather than pouring so much money and effort into making disabled people fit into environments they aren’t suited to, why not change the environment to suit them? Instead of helping this guy walk again, why not simply ensure he has a great quality of life as a wheelchair user? At least that way, far more people are helped, rather than a select few individuals with specific, treatable conditions. Why is it so important that people like this are ‘fixed’ or ‘repaired’, when they can have great lives just as they are, if only society changed slightly to meet their needs.

I think I made something of a mistake this afternoon. Yesterday I came across Mark Kermode’s review of Moonfall. The good doctor was so damning, and found the film so awful, that in a strange way I became intrigued. No film could possibly be that bad, I reasoned; maybe it was some kind of spoof or joke film. Maybe the direness was some kind of intentional gimmick.

Wanting to see for myself i therefore took myself to the cinema this afternoon. It had been a while since I last went to the flicks anyway, so I think it was in order. But I now know how utterly wrong I was not to just trust Kermode. I seriously doubt I have ever seen anything as mind-numbingly crap as the film I watched earlier: I am staggered that it was ever made. It had the scientific literacy of a gerbil, and the shit I did this morning was probably more intelligent than the script. It was so nauseatingly stupid it was insulting. The concerning thing is, it seemed to take itself and want to be taken seriously; it didn’t seem to realise it was so moronic and thought of itself as a standard blockbuster. More to the point, the way it pressed certain ideas onto us, such as the validity of conspiracy theories, gave the film the aspect of having quite a concerning agenda. There was nothing ironic or self-knowing about it – the film was just dire, but dire with a nutjob agenda. Frankly, I left the cinema flabbergasted that any producer or director could have read such a screenplay and decided to turn it into a film, rather than throw it straight into the bin where it clearly belonged.

Just to clear up the ‘happy news’ I was talking about here a few days ago, it is my joy to announce my friend Charlotte has given birth to a baby girl. Olive Robyn was born last week, and both she and her mum are doing well. C asked me not to broadcast it immediately, but has now given me permission to write this entry. I now can’t wait to go up and visit them, Alex and the rest of the Joneses. Mr. and Mrs J must be overjoyed! I daresay a Jones garden party is long overdue.

I haven’t watched it from start to finish, but I just had a quick whizz through of the Beijing Winter Olympic Opening Ceremony. Truth be told, I didn’t see much to get my analytical or critical juices flowing, although I’d just like to point one thing out: does it not strike anyone as odd that, apart from Chinese, the main language being used is English? Why is English now so prominent? They may have used a smattering of French (I suspect due to IOC rules) but all the speeches were delivered using English, the signs were english etc. As I was saying here a couple of entries ago, English seems to be becoming ubiquitous, so that it dominates international events like the Olympics, even in places as far flung as China. While that might work to my advantage given English is the only language I understand, to see one tongue becoming so dominant to the exclusion of all others is surely a bit of a shame.

It has reached the point where seemingly random people are starting to recognise me. I was out trundling near the Royal Standard this afternoon, when all of a sudden a man walking the other way says “Hi Matt.” I had no idea who he was, but apparently he knew me from when I drank in the King’s Arms in Charlton about eight years ago. That sort of thing seems to happen wherever I go: I bump into people who claim to know me, but whom I can’t remember ever meeting. It used to happen when I was living in Congleton  or Alsager, but  they were relatively small, compact places, so I find it amazing that I am now being recognised by random people here in the metropolis.

Say that a guy catches his girlfriend cheating on him. She screws their relationship up so badly that he’s on the verge of dumping her. What does she do but give him the most almighty blowjob she can, in the desperate hope that he’ll forget the entire incident. She hopes that the ultimately superficial, meaningless gesture will distract him so well that the whole thing will blow over.

Now say that the head of a government is caught lying to the people he governs: he is caught blatantly breaking the rules his government itself put in place to ensure everyone’s safety, and then lying about it. People are so angry about it that most want him removed from office. What does he do but announce a glitzy new policy costing millions, purporting to address the needs of those who he says have been neglected? Called, say, ”Levelling Up”, it sounds wonderful, noble and fair: it’s sneakily designed to appeal to those who feel disenfranchised while drawing attention away from the current scandal, while in reality merely partially undoing the cuts to the state his own party had put in place over the last decade. In both cases we see vapid, meaningless gestures designed to feel good and distract people, while failing to undo the damage which has been done.

Johnson and the Tories are just trying to suck our cultural cocks – don’t let them.

In May 2020, Lyn’s death was still fresh and raw in my mind. She had passed away just the month before, and I knew that she was the type of person who could never be replaced. Before she died, I’d gone to visit her in hospital: I will never forget the sight of her unconscious in a hospital bed, hooked up to a respirator. She had a tumour which had been growing for months. Of course, I didn’t stay there long: this was the height of the first wave of the pandemic, and I didn’t want to put anyone at risk, least of all my friend. I assumed I would be going back to see her again before long, or perhaps when she returned home, but Lyn died a few days later.

We now know that that was when Johnson and his friends were having parties in the garden at Downing Street. Just when I and so many others were going through the most horrific of times, they were behaving as if the pandemic was something which happened to others; sipping wine and laughing while the rest of us mourned lost friends. Perhaps I shouldn’t make such matters personal, but I can’t help noticing the coincidence: my best friend was dying and I didn’t dare visit her, but they were partying on patios, as if it was their birthright and that they were above the suffering everyone else had to go through.

Knowing what we know now makes my blood boil with rage. Those were the darkest of times for so many, and the Tories didn’t give a fuck. And now, watching them all try to defend their leader, spouting lie after lie, insisting that it is perfectly ok for him to make a mockery of the rest of our suffering, pain and grief, is an insult I can and will never forgive.