Needless to say I completely agree with this Tweet. It sums up my feelings quite well, only it’s not just Braverman who needs to go: the entire Tory party is all over the place. It’s totally chaotic, yet is clinging to power with the typical Tory ‘We know best and are above the law’ mentality. The only way out of this hole is a change of government.

Yesterday I found a new way to shut street preachers up: I just have to start talking to them. If I engage them in conversation, it stops them spouting their religious bullshit to the general public. Yesterday morning, for example, I was in Woolwich and I came across a guy talking nonsense about how the world was about to end. I wasn’t in any hurry so I decided to try to talk some sense into him. The thing is, using my iPad I don’t talk very quickly, so conversations are often long and slow. I got the guy’s attention and asked him to stop trying to brainwash people. What followed was a fairly lengthy conversation: to be honest I was rather agitated to begin with, but I gradually calmed down. The discussion didn’t get very far – the man kept spouting biblical gibberish along with the odd cherry picked scientific anomaly that he obviously didn’t understand and calling it evidence – but it lasted about half an hour, during which time at least I stopped him trying to brainwash people. Perhaps I was wasting my time and being too optimistic in trying to get him to think rationally, but the way in which these people try to impose their beliefs onto the public as if they outweigh all other views and opinions, simply because they come from an ancient, thoroughly debunked book, really annoys me.

To be honest I think we should be getting really worried about the weather. When I was out and about today, I didn’t just feel warm but hot. Of course I know next to nothing about climate science so I better not try to say much about this, but it is now the end of October and it feels like June: people are walking around quite comfortably in shorts and T shirts. I felt hot in a jumper and light jacket. Alongside the sudden downpours I was complaining about a couple of entries ago, something is clearly seriously amiss with the climate.

Who fancies a bit of political costume semiotics?

Not that it’s hard to decode anyway. It’s blindingly obvious that Sunak, like Johnson before him, is absolutely desperate to appear to be a man of the people, or rather anything other than what he is: a spoiled, privileged arsehole who only got to where he is because he was born into a wealthy family, and has made it his life’s work to make sure that that privilege stays in the hands of the elite few. No amount of sleeve-rolling can disguise that.

Rain is starting to feel much more ominous, to the extent that I might be developing a real phobia of it. Over the last two or three weeks, rain has got into my powerchair controller twice, and it has had to go to be repaired.  I headed out when it was dry and bright, but all of a sudden it has started to piss it down, and I haven’t been able to find cover in time to save my chair. I hadn’t realised rain could cause so much damage, but now even the smallest hint of grey cloud is enough to make me contemplate staying at home. I feel a genuine, stomach churning concern that the skies might suddenly open, my chair will cut out and I will be stranded in some quiet, forgotten corner of the metropolis with no idea how to get home. Having now used them to get around for so long I really like my powerchairs, but I just wish they were slightly more durable and waterproof.

Yesterday evening saw the beginning of something which could turn out to be very interesting indeed. A couple of weeks ago, I received an email from someone at Tramshed Theatre, a theatre company in Woolwich, inviting me to a steering group meeting. A couple of my friends in GAD, the Greenwich Association of Disabled people, had apparently suggested that I became a member for a new theatre project involving disabled people. I thought it was an intriguing idea: it may well be the very thing I need right now to get me out of my flat and get my creative juices flowing.

Until it’s new venue opens in a couple of weeks, Tramshed is based in Woolwich Works, in the historic old buildings of the Woolwich Arsenal. Until a few years ago, that area was extremely run-down and dilapidated: after it ceased to be used as a munitions factory, it was totally abandoned. Yet you should see it now. The old, eighteenth-century factory buildings are still there, but have been renovated and spruced up almost beyond belief: plush, modern glass and metal beams abut two-hundred year old brickwork in a fascinating way. The room we met in last night felt like the performance spaces I remember from university, yet you could tell something far darker and more brutal had been there before. To be honest I found it fascinating.

The meeting itself went well. There were about ten people there, including my friends from GAD. There were, of course, the usual introductions, followed by a couple of ice-breaking games. It was only an initial meeting, so we didn’t really get into much detail about what shape the project could take. Yet I was struck by a sense of potential: by the end of the meeting, there were all sorts of ideas floating around. I could tell there was a vast amount of creativity in the room. It reminded me of ten years or so ago, when Lyn first started going to paraorchestra meetings, and how that eventually became their performance at the paralympic closing ceremony.

The greatest things are often born of the meekest beginnings. I think this project gives me the opportunity to participate in something potentially remarkable. I now want to get to know the guys at Tramshed behind it; I want to show them my writing, films, and what I’m capable of. Perhaps I could then write something for them, or at least help to put something together. Who knows what this project will turn into, or when it will be finished, but I can’t wait to watch it take shape. I have a feeling this could become something incredible.

To a certain extent, today is quite a momentous day. In a way, it’s a day of progress which we should all be pleased to see. Today sees the UK’s first non-white, British-Asian Prime Minister ever enter Downing Street. There’s no denying that that is a huge step forward. Yet there’s also no denying that Rishi Sunak is a Tory and a Brexiteer; an avowed, committed member of the very party which got the country into so much trouble. The Tories, including Sunak, can try to deny it all they want – they can try to pin it on Putin and the Russian invasion of Ukraine – but the UK is up shit creek due to Brexit. The Tories will never admit that because it would utterly destroy their party, so we won’t be able to even contemplate getting the country back on the road until we have a proper government willing to address the catastrophe of Brexit. (As an intelligent man, Starmer clearly knows this, but won’t admit it for fear of loosing Outist votes). Above all, what we need is a general election; we need a decent, properly elected government with a sensible leader willing to admit reality, as opposed to someone handed power by a bunch of spoiled brats determined to cling to office for as long as possible. As pleasing as today might be, it isn’t really a step forward. That will only come when the Tories are kicked out of office.

Now that the Elizabeth line is open, getting to London is easier for me than it ever has been. By London, I mean central London: the area of the metropolis which usually comes to mind when you hear the name. When I first moved here, it struck me as odd when I heard Londoners talk of London when referring to the city centre, as if it was a separate, different place from where we were. Yet now, I know what they mean and have started to think in the same way. The metropolis is so vast that London feels like a different place, or rather it used to. The Elizabeth Line has made it far easier and quicker for me to get up into the centre of the city; I have found I can just go up there on a whim, whenever I fancy a trundle around the royal parks.

This morning, for instance, I got wind that the extended Bond Street station is now open, so I thought I would go take a look. Of course, Bond Street is on the Jubilee Line too, but the station did not have step-free access so I could never get off there until 2017, and when it did I never particularly needed to. The Jubilee Line is also quite a bit slower and less direct than the Elisabeth line, so places like Bond Street always felt quite far away, even if they were still in London.

Thanks to it’s £300m upgrade Bond Street Station is now fully accessible though, so today I was curious to go and see what the fuss was about. Thus I simply got a bus to Woolwich and hopped onto the Lizzy Line. Twenty minutes or so later, I was in London, looking forward to a pleasant stroll through the historic parks, and remarking to myself how a place which once seemed so vast and alien now seems so compact and homely. Thanks to the opening of the Elizabeth Line London – central London – now seems within touching distance. It feels like I can really start to get to know it, like I once knew Congleton, the town where I grew up. I find myself in one of the world’s greatest cities, a global cultural, political and economic hub. Vast areas, until recently quite hard for me to get to, have suddenly been brought within my reach, and the prospect of really getting to know this city in all its fascinating diversity fills me with excitement. People around here might refer to London likes it’s a different, separate place, but that place has suddenly come much closer.

Projects like the Elisabeth Line, eye-wateringly expensive though they may be, are slowly opening up the metropolis for people like me. While it still has a very long way to go, wheelchair users like myself can get around this city like never before. That’s what makes it so welcoming, so exciting; I can’t wait to see what it does next.

Yesterday was quite an awesome day for the campaign to rejoin the EU. Not that you’ll hear anything about it in the news, but yesterday saw a huge march and rally up in Westminster. Truth be told, I didn’t know – or, rather, hadn’t remembered – it was happening until I saw a poster on Facebook at breakfast time, but I can get to central London fairly easily so I set off quite promptly after I got wind of it. It’s becoming clearer and clearer that Brexit is an utter catastrophe: it’s wrecking the economy, destroying the Tories, turning the UK into a laughing stock. It must be reversed, and if I can take part in the campaign to make that happen, then I must.

According to what I saw on the website, the march would begin outside the Dorchester Hotel at one. I simply had to take the Jubilee Line to Green Park, then probably ask for directions. Fortunately as soon as I got out of the tube station, I saw people carrying EU flags, so I just followed them: at that moment I could tell this was going to be big.

And it was. When I got to the Dorchester, there was already a huge gathering of people outside, all carrying either EU flags or placards with things like ‘Bollocks to Brexit’ written on them. It was very reassuring to see so many people who, like me, believe that rejoining the European Union is essential for the country’s future. Brexit robbed us of our rights as Europeans; the people I marched with yesterday want them back. There must have been forty to fifty thousand people there yesterday, all as furious as I am about the debacle of 2016. Most, it must be said, appeared to be middle aged and white; but there were people from all over the country there, carrying Welsh, Scottish and Cornish flags – they had obviously put far more effort into this than I had.

The march was peaceful, friendly and rather short, going from Park Lane, through Mayfair, down Whitehall and into Parliament Square. It just took a couple of hours or so. Then, in the Square, the rally began, with speeches by Guy Verhofstadt, Phill Moorhouse and Steve Bray among others. From where I was sat I couldn’t see much of the stage, but fortunately a large screen had been put up to make the speeches visible to everyone. They spoke about the damage Brexit is doing, politically and socially, as well as the possible routes we might take to rejoin the union.

I didn’t stay until the very end, but it was very reassuring to see the beginnings of a Rejoin Movement, which will, hopefully before long, see us take back our rightful place among our neighbours in the EU. I can’t help wondering what I might bring to it: I know I’m not much of a disability rights activist, but perhaps there are things from the disability rights movement which could be transferred to the rejoin movement. Both require direct action; both need us to demonstrate to others how we no longer have rights others do, and how things could be so much better if we convinced certain people to do certain things. Above all, both are about reclaiming rights we no longer have, which is why events like the one I went to yesterday are so important.

Given what is currently happening in British politics, I think my entry here needs to be updated. Now that there is serious talk of Boris Johnson becoming PM again, I can’t see how things could get more absurd.