There is a detail about the awesome events of Thursday which I didn’t include in yesterday’s entry because I didn’t think it would fit in with the enthusiasm I was trying to convey, and because I think it warrants it’s own entry. When my mum first bought the tickets for the show, she was told that the wheelchair spaces had all sold out, meaning when we got to the stadium I would have to park my powerchair somewhere and walk to an ordinary seat. That initially sounded fine, as I can walk short distances (although I may have needed help going up or down steps). However, when we reached our designated seats, we saw that everyone was standing up, so I wouldn’t have been able to see anything. When we realised that, John hurried back to the ticket office, me in tow. I don’t know how we managed it, but, jammy bastard that I am, we were then given the tickets for the very last wheelchair space in the entire stadium! I wouldn’t have to get out of my powerchair after all. And, because it was round a bit further, we had an even better view than the people in the other (full) wheelchair viewing area. My luck really is uncanny sometimes.

I’m not going to say much now for fear of jinxing things or giving anything away, but once in a blue moon I’m lucky enough to have experiences which are so phenomenal, so awesome, that it goes beyond words. All being well, tonight should see another of those incredible experiences. It is something I’ve been looking forward to for months and I’m hugely excited about. Of course, I’ll fill you all in tomorrow, but for now think huge American rock bands at huge stadiums the other side of London.

TONIGHT! IS! GOING! TO! RULE!!!!!!

I made this before yesterday’s appalling news broke, but mean it now more than ever.

The US is now dangerous and can no longer be allowed or trusted to dominate global affairs.

You know that, if the first words you utter when you turn on your computer and read the headlines in the morning are ‘oh shit!’, things aren’t as they should be. Like any other sane, thinking person, I am appalled by what is currently happening in the Middle East: what the US started today will have major, major repercussions. I went for a trundle this afternoon to try to collect my thoughts on the matter, stopping for an orange juice in Charlton Park. I thought going back to that little cafe where I have so many wonderful memories might help me think, without much luck. At the end of the day, there is not much anyone can say about the fact that one sovereign country has unilaterally attacked another entirely without provocation, and in doing so has ripped the international rule book to shreds. There is nothing any of us can do now but watch and see how things unfold, as if it was all some sort of strange, perverse film directed in equal parts by Alfred Hitchcock, Francis Ford Capella and Monty Python.

Like everyone else, I’m waking up to the increasingly concerning news from the Middle East. It’s looking more and more likely that the US will become involved in the current conflict between Iran and Israel; and if that happens, there’s no telling what will happen. Without being hyperbolic, Russia could get involved, leading to a potential third world war. What makes me angry, though, is the fact that Iran had signed a deal on it’s nuclear capabilities and was being contained, until Donald Trump ripped it up solely because his predecessor Barack Obama got the credit for it. This crisis wouldn’t be happening were it not for Trump and his sickening ego.

I’m sorry to say this, but I think the case could be made that America/the US is the problem. Had it not been for their president, Iran would still be contained, Israel would not have felt it had the right to act so aggressively, and perhaps the United Nations could have calmed everything down. But because this group of self-important fuckwits across the Atlantic is currently the world’s preeminent superpower, we’re now hurtling towards armageddon! If you ask me – not that anyone is – it’s time for the era of American dominance to end, just as the era of British dominance did. With the election of Trump they have destabilised the world; the US can no longer be trusted to act logically or do the right things. America is the problem, and needs to be taken off it’s throne before the idiot leading it makes matters even worse.

I’m not sure how much everyone else has heard about it, but I want to say something about the big military parade Trump apparently held for himself at the weekend. The thing is, I don’t have anything to base it on. There was absolutely nothing about it on the Beeb, so all I have to go on comes from Youtube. These days, I trust Youtube channels, especially American ones, less and less: they all seem to be biased this way or that. Things seem to have become especially questionable since the advent of CGI and AI – we can’t even trust things purporting to be photographs. Thus while one channel might show a huge glittering parade lined with adoring spectators, others might show long rows of empty seats. It’s extremely difficult to know who to go by, so I think I better just stay out of it.

Oh, what a mess we’ve got ourselves into.

I’m sorry to have to say this, but Becky Cheetham is still a nauseating, patronising bitch. I just came across this Youtube short from them, and instantly felt I needed to say something. In it, it seems that Becky’s disabled sister, Hannah, is celebrating her thirty-fifth birthday; but from the way her sister was treating her and talking to her you would think that she was only about five. As I explain at some length here this is a Youtube channel I have had major issues with for some time: at the end of the day, Hannah is being used essentially as a puppet to attract attention while her sister foregrounds herself to take all the credit. You don’t need to be an expert in film analysis to see how it’s shot like a human exhibiting her pet or a mother showing off her newborn baby. Quite frankly I find it sickening.

You can probably tell that I like blogging: I see it as my way of conveying my opinions to the world, and over the years I have blogged about all kinds of things. I relish the freedom and ability to do so. Yet it seems to me that Hannah Cheetham is being overtly denied such freedom, and instead is being used as a puppet, cued only to say things at her sister’s command. Perhaps she doesn’t feel entitled to speak out against her sister; perhaps she has been told that things have to be this way; perhaps this is some fucked up kind of Stockholm Syndrome. If so, then perhaps it is up to those of us with the ability to speak out against such things to do so. We have to say what we see, and what I see is a woman with just as much ability, potential and intelligence as I or anyone else has being used, patronised and silenced by her sister. I would love to hear what Hannah Cheetham thinks about things, but until her sickeningly condescending sister gets the fuck out of the way, I fear that won’t be possible.

I don’t really have much to report here today. Yesterday was a lovely day: I went to Cambridge with John, and then came back. He had some business to do at the university, and invited me to go with him, just so I could explore the city. It was a short, hour-long train trip from Liverpool Street, before I spent an afternoon in a beautiful little city. I enjoyed looking at all the book shops and cafes, but that’s about it. highlights included glimpsing the tree Newton apparently was sitting under when he came up with gravity, and (best of all) walking around the park where this was filmed.

I was thinking about making this yesterday afternoon, before the stupidity on the bus.

I had a lovely long trundle yesterday. When I go out in my powerchair, I usually head up towards central London to check out the vibrant cultural hubs of Greenwich, Canary Wharf or Stratford. Getting into the metropolis proper is now easier than ever thanks to the Elisabeth Line. Yesterday, though, I headed in the opposite direction, south across Eltham towards Sidcup and Bexley. I seldom head that way, but yesterday I fancied a change. It wasn’t long until I noticed the traffic beginning to get quieter and the birdsong more noticeable; the landscape was also getting greener. An hour or so after setting out, I was fairly astonished to see I had found myself among fields! When I was young, I used to adore fields and the countryside of Cheshire: it seemed so pretty and wholesome. Now that I live in London, I have grown used to the vast urban labyrinth of tarmac and concrete. London’s parks are awesome, of course, but they are no replacement for the quiet, melancholic lanes of my childhood.

Yesterday, however, I had a taste of them once again. In fact I even passed a sign saying I had reached Kent! Of course I was still well within the M25, but at that point I decided that I would head that way a bit more. London feels smaller and smaller these days: no longer the vast urban expanse I once took it to be, but an easily navigated, walkable city. If the countryside is not in fact that far away, perhaps I’ll head that way again. Perhaps it’s time for me to get out of the city a bit more, daring to cross it’s orbital motorway which often feels so much like an impenetrable boundary.

Not that I go in to pubs much now that I have stopped drinking altogether, but I certainly think this Youtube documentary about the cultural impact of Wetherspoons is worth a watch. At an hour and a half it is a tad long, but I think it’s a shining example of just how advanced and sophisticated online video journalism is becoming. The guy who made it, Tom Nicolas, presents it as a travelogue from Cornwall to Scotland, visiting various Wetherspoons pubs on his way. But he intercuts this with information about the history of the franchise, it’s position in British culture, and his interview with it’s owner, Tim Martin. This gives rise to an extremely insightful film about an aspect of social life which on one level we might be fairly dismissive of (a pub is a pub, after all), but which is actually pretty revealing about UK culture and politics.

We hear how many people view Wetherspoons pubs as the pub equivalent of Macdonalds or Walmart, and to be honest I agree. Martin is revealed in this film to be a shallow, vapid, Outist piece of shit, who thought nothing of using the magazine associated with his pub chain to fool the larger-swilling morons who drink there into voting to Leave the EU. My need to avoid alcohol aside, having just watched this film my determination to avoid Wetherspoons pubs is now even stronger. Pubs should be welcoming, social, friendly places; hubs of social life. By taking them over one by one, however, Martin has reduced them to cesspits of right-wing politics no person of any class, style or education would be seen dead in.

You know, it’s weird: the more I explore London, the more captivating I find it, the more fascinated I am by it and the more deeply I fall in love with it as a city. That has been the case for the last fifteen years. These days, though, this fascination seems to give automatic rise to an even more intense curiosity about what lies beyond London. If London is this cool, what might other cities be like? Surely there must be even more awesome cities out there, just waiting for me to explore them. I suppose such an evolution of feeling was inevitable: the paths I regularly take in my powerchair, once so intriguing, are beginning to get tiresome. It just goes to show that even the most vibrant, captivating metropolises can start to feel dull after a while. Yet, it isn’t that I have started to dislike London; more like my fascination with it has spawned a growing desire to know what might lie beyond it, in the world’s other great cities.

When you think about the United States of America, by and large three of the most prominent things which probably pop into your mind are film, spaceflight and the internet. These are the three things the USA is most famous for; the three things Americans like to brag about inventing or leading the world on. The thing is, when you look at it, America doesn’t deserve the credit for any of them. Film, and especially filmic grammar, is essentially a french invention of the first half of the twentieth century. NASA would never have got into space without the progress made by German scientists among others. And we have a Brit, Sir Tim Berners-Lee, to thank for the World Wide Web. Thus, for all their bravado and bragging, I think it’s time we recognised that America and Americans aren’t as special as they claim, especially as their country edges closer and closer towards fascism. If we are ever going to break the USA off it’s current, dangerous path, surely we must let our American friends know that what they are doing is unacceptable, and that their country is nowhere near as exceptional or special as they think. They can’t take the credit for everything they like to claim the credit for, and the wider world would get on perfectly well without them.

Of course I take no pleasure in expressing this much animosity toward an entire nation, but the way the US is now behaving through it’s current president means it does not deserve the respect it had until recently. We must collectively show Americans our displeasure at the path that they have chosen. That means recognising that their healthcare system is abhorrent and their education system woeful, among many other things. America is not great and frankly never was, and it’s time the rest of us made that clear to them.

I have noted here before quite a few times that I use an Ipad as my communication aid. On the whole I must say I think it’s pretty cool: it’s just as good as any standard, bespoke VOCA, and when I’m not using it to talk to people I can also use it for things like blogging or checking my email. However, the Ipad has one major, nagging issue which I’m not at all happy about. For some reason, the word prediction on it has some kind of religious, christian bias. That is to say, the words it suggests, no matter which app I’m using, seem to nearly always be religious. For example, if I use a capital C it will suggest ‘Christ’, or if I type ‘I’m going to’ it will suggest ‘Church’. As an atheist this is very annoying, even infuriating. Apple is a respectable, international company of course, so I wouldn’t expect this from them. I wonder whether anyone else has come across this stupid bias, and what is behind it.

I just came across this video about Donald Trump on the Occupy Democrats Youtube channel. I think it’s a reputable source, so we can probably trust it. It picks up on a theme which I’ve come across quite a bit recently: Trump’s mental health. It’s becoming clearer and clearer that the guy has significant psychological problems. I don’t just mean his intelligence, which is obviously lacking, but his very grip on reality. Apparently, rather than through normal daily briefings, the only way White House staff can supply Trump with the information that he needs is through Fox-style news bulletins. He seems to have the attention span if not the entire demeanour of a four year old.

As much as I like to champion human diversity, and as much as I know that it is wrong for countries to interfere in the democratic affairs of others, it’s becoming clearer and clearer that the wider world cannot sit back and watch as it’s foremost superpower descends into a form of fascistic chaos. Putting aside the fact that I think the era of US primacy should now be ending, it is still the worlds biggest economy and most powerful military: if we sit back and watch this mentally ill man drive it over a cliff, the chances are it will drag the rest of the world down with it. There is no telling what chaos will then unfold, but I daresay we’re just seeing the start of it. Surely we must take some kind of action as soon as we can to avert the US and the wider world from it’s present horrifying course.

Trump is obviously unfit for office: if US civil structures prohibit them from relieving him of power on medical grounds, at the end of the day the wider world has no choice but to act. The consequences of not doing so – of sitting back and watching as our foremost superpower drops into a deranged kind of fascism – are simply too hideous to contemplate.