The 007 fan in me naturally kicked in just now, when I glimpsed the headline to this article about this year’s Proms. The James Bond themes are going to feature heavily in this summer’s festival, including greatest hits from Skyfall and The Spy Who Loved Me, among others. That in itself would be something for me to start looking forward to personally, but the article goes on to explain that this year’s proms are also going to feature The British Paraorchestra. Frankly, that is a very interesting prospect indeed. I haven’t personally heard anything from the Paraorchestra in years, for various obvious reasons, so it will be great to see them again. The fact that they’re playing on such a stage is frankly incredible, and it’s wonderful to see musicians with disabilities being given such an outlet. To have come into contact with those guys through Lyn was awesome, I’ll always take pride in having a connection to such an amazing orchestra.

I am not a military person. In fact I deplore all forms of military conflict and think that all international turmoil can and should be resolved through diplomacy. Yet I can’t be the only person who feels like gagging whenever we are treated to images of Donald Trump saluting. This is a guy who famously dodged the draft to avoid being sent to Vietnam, but now he is shown saluting like some great military leader whenever he walks past an actual soldier. We were treated to such images again this morning. What gets to me is the vitriol with which he salutes, as if the action is an innate part of his identity and natural to him, even though he thought himself above serving with his fellow countrymen. Again, I am by no means a military person, but I think I have a sense of integrity, so if I was I would find such a display actively insulting. The man is obviously putting on a perverse, cynical act, pretending to be something he isn’t, claiming the reverence awarded to those he once deserted and trying to play us all for fools.

I think I’m going to note something which I’ve been wanting to explain for a while. It might not be of any interest or relevance to anyone else, but is just one of those little details of my life which I like to articulate here. To be honest I’m slightly concerned that drivers around the borough of Greenwich think that I go about waving my cloth at them. That is to say, when they stop to let me cross the local roads, for some reason I twirl the cloth I use to keep my chin dry above my head. Thinking about it, it must look very weird: a guy in a powerchair, who they’ve just stopped to allow across the road, frantically waving what looks like a small face cloth in his hand at them. The truth is that I’m trying to thank them. Of course I would like to wave my hand in thanks like anyone else, but I don’t really have time to let go of my cloth without potentially losing it first; it’s easier just to wave at the kind drivers with my cloth still in my hand. The result is the probably very strange sight of a guy in a powerchair twirling a cloth around like a madman. Hardly important really, but one of those small details and potential misunderstandings of my life which I like to iron out.

I just came across this oddity on Facebook, and can honestly say I have no idea where I belong on it.

Such spectrums/images seem so reductive – where’s the dude with the powerchair and communication aid? On the other hand, it’s good to see that people are trying to make others more aware of the complexities around Cerebral Palsy.

I just got in from a trundle around the Olympic Park. I still head up there quite a bit as Stratford still strikes me as one of those interesting, vibrant, dynamic corners of the metropolis worth keeping an eye on. However, I just feel I need to vent an issue which I think is rather sad. When the Olympic Park was first created, you’ll probably remember there being plenty of green space: large areas of grass surrounded the Olympic Stadium. It looked quite picturesque. Over the past fourteen years however, these areas have been built upon and used for housing: the fields are now blocks of flats. This seems like a great shame to me. I know that housing is at a premium in London, but do they have to sacrifice every patch of green space? That land was apparently always going to be developed and built upon, but even so, spaces which had given that lovely new park a peaceful, open and almost rural feel, now seem far more enclosed.

The idea of banning social media for kids under sixteen once again cropped up in the news this morning. As I wrote here a few weeks ago, I’m still very much on the fence when it comes to the issue: there are obviously huge advantages and disadvantages to preventing kids using sites like Facebook. However, one issue I need to raise about this morning’s coverage is that it included an item about Prince Harry voicing his opinions on the issue down in Australia. I know most people won’t be very concerned by this, but does that not strike anyone else as weird? Here we have a figure, who nobody voted for or elected, speaking about quite a current, resonant, controversial political issue in a foreign country, and getting it covered on national breakfast television. What gave this guy the right to intervene in politics in this way, give public speeches on such issues, or indeed to use the topic to essentially increase his cultural/political footprint? I know most people won’t be that bothered by this story, but I feel I need to point out how odd, even mildly troubling, I find it.

Pretty much on a whim I was just looking through my entry archive, and as coincidence would have it, it is pretty much twenty years to the day since I wrote this entry about Iran. Back then, of course, George Dubya Bush was still president of America, and I wrote that I was worried that they were trying to make a nuke. I don’t think I had thought about the issue for ages before the current crisis; but the alarming thing is, the recent turn of events brought about by Trump has made the issue far more pressing and dangerous than it was when I wrote that entry. As Alastair Campbell and Rory Stewart go into at some length here, Trump is clearly not mentally stable, and has ripped up what progress had been made towards resolving the complex issue more or less to suit his own vanity and arrogance. When dealing with a despotic theocracy, surely that’s the last thing we need.

A few days ago, exploring North London, I was struck by a question concerning a minority/subculture, whose members I kept passing. At first I was rather nervous about writing anything about it on here, for fear of offending or upsetting anyone, but having just come across this documentary about the group of people I was wondering about, I think I’ll go ahead and ask it: Why would a group of people, which historically has been one of the most persecuted communities of all, insist on continuing to wear the same clothes and hair styles, effectively setting themselves apart from non-members? However, as the documentary explains rather well, there is a long, complex and rather fascinating history behind their culture. I had been naively concerned that their setting theirselves apart so fervently would just ferment mistrust and suspicion; but we must always bear in mind that such ‘concerns’ have historically lead to humanity’s darkest chapters. If we start trying to regulate how people dress and imposing rules to ease such suspicions, we risk stamping out the very diversity which makes humanity so beautiful. They dress as they do in order to keep their culture alive, and surely that must be celebrated.

I was trundling through the park earlier, when I happened to pass two guys on a bench speaking French. I had no reason to interrupt them of course, but I reflected to myself that, while it is wonderful to live in such a multilingual city, I could probably assume that they spoke English perfectly well. I’m afraid to say that I then caught myself observing that most French people can these days, even if they still live in France. It was just a casual observation to myself, but something about it struck me.

I suspect my French friends and relatives would be quite disgruntled at this speculation, but is there any actual leverage in it? Has the English language become so dominant that we can reasonably assume that most of our neighbours use it? Obviously, this will have a lot to do with the ubiquity of American culture; but knowing how proud French people are of their language and culture, this trend really must vex them. I have written before about how English now seems to now be the default tongue.

Has English really become that ubiquitous, or am I just being an arrogant, ignorant Londoner? The question is obviously moot as I’ll never know what languages those guys knew, but I was struck to find myself making the assumption I did. After all, if you bumped into two guys speaking English in a Paris park, they wouldn’t necessarily know a word of French. I was just struck by the reflection I found myself making, although to be honest I really suspect there is a lot of truth to it.

If you ever want an experience of something awesome and terrifying at the same time, try out the London Cable Car when it’s windy. Winter seemed to have made a sudden re-entry this morning, so I thought I’d just go and see what if anything was happening at the Excel. It was quite a mundane trip, but to get back to the south side of the Thames I thought I would hop on to the cable car. By then it was getting really windy though: as the car started moving I could feel it swaying in the storm. To be honest part of me was petrified, but at the same time the child in me absolutely loved it. It reminded me of riding a rollercoaster. I would probably recommend it, but not on a full stomach.

Out and about today, I again caught myself doing something which I knew instantly had to stop. I’ve noted before how I’m noticing quite a few more people using wheelchairs and powerchairs these days, at least around London. There also seem to be a lot more people walking around with crutches, while not appearing to put any weight on them. The problem is, I seem to now feel a deep sense of suspicion or even rivalry whenever I see a fellow wheelchair user. I find myself trying to figure out whether they actually have a disability. These feelings were obviously brought about by my reflections on what I call cultural intrusion. Sometimes it’s quite clear that they have a disability just as I do; but other times it’s harder to tell.

This obviously has to stop. I have no right to have such doubts or to make such assumptions. Who am I to question anyone’s disability? The thing is, I’m becoming more and more certain that my suspicions are valid: increasing numbers of people are identifying as disabled when they previously might not have. The definition of what constitutes a disability is becoming wider and wider, and the issue is thus becoming more and more politicised. More and more people are appearing online purporting to be disabled, making money by vlogging about issues that they have no actual experience of.

The online and offline worlds are, however, very different spaces, and what might be true on one might not be true on the other. My online suspicions, however certain I am that they are valid, do not give me the right to make judgments and assumptions about people I pass in the street. Even so, it frightens me to realise how acrimonious this issue is becoming for me. Judging people and begrudging them their mobility aids, albeit silently , because of a few twits on the internet, is not healthy.

It’s a weird, shroedinger-esque moment, lying in bed about to get up, not knowing whether the fury and tension which had been building the evening before had boiled over or simmered down. Not knowing whether events had exploded into a cataclysmic armageddon, or danger had once again been averted. Until you get up, turn on your computer and check the news, you don’t know: things could have gone either way. While you suspected good sense would have prevailed, there was a chance this morning that the whole world could have been ablaze and thousands could have been dying. Cities could have been nuked, pictures of mushroom clouds appearing on websites. Thus, like Shoedinger’s famous cat, things could have gone either way: it could be alive, dead, or both at the same time, just as you don’t know what happened until you lift your duvet off and check the headlines.

As it turns out, I’m glad to see that good sense once again won out and catastrophe was averted; extreme concern and dread turned instantly to relief upon reaching the news website. The only question is will this hiatus last, and at what cost?

Should the civil service of a given country, being the only body in a position to possibly do so, have the ability to unilaterally remove a head of state from office if that head of state presents a clear, unambiguous, incontestable danger to that country? That is the question which has been on my mind all afternoon: it is now clear that Donald trump intends to order the US military to commit war crimes; the path he has put his country on puts the entire world in more and more danger. Surely any country, nation or community would have no choice but to intervene before it is too late. While awarding a civil service such authority would raise all kinds of questions about democracy, I think the current situation makes it clear that democracy sometimes has its limits.

The security guys at Canary Wharf might have been slightly puzzled earlier today. They may well have noticed a man using a powerchair wearing a red cap seemingly wandering around the mall for hours. He apparently didn’t buy anything, but just wander around the mall, a look of awe tinged with revulsion constantly on his face. Unlike the thousands of other customers there, going about their usual Sunday morning business, the man appeared to be exploring the mall as if it were new and totally alien to him.

What the security guards wouldn’t have realised was that the man in the red cap was attempting to comprehend the magnitude of the landscape about him: He had in fact been to Canary Wharf several times before, yet each time had found himself awestruck at the fact that such a cathedral of capitalistic opulence could have risen out of a handful of decaying docks in just forty years. He was both amazed and disgusted at the collection of chic boutiques connected by a maze of arcades, all lying beneath a growing forest of glittering metallic skyscrapers. That such a transformation could have happened was at once utterly remarkable, but also slightly perverse.

Only here in London could such revivals take place and areas receive such investment. Thus I find myself wondering through those shopping arcades and around those docks, trying to imagine what that area must have been like fifty or a hundred years ago. The sheer opulence of the place makes my eyes grow wide: it is at once awesome and perverse, welcoming and intimidating, an awesome asset of a great world city and a sickening testament to the preferential treatment London gets over the rest of the country.

I think the most apposite thing I can do today is flag up this Brendan Miller video, outlining just how close the USA is to becoming a dictatorship. What he has to say is as convincing as it is chilling. I desperately want to dismiss such online essays as hyperbole, speculation and fear-mongering created by those who just hate Trump; the fact I know I can’t, and that such analysis is an accurate reflection of what is happening, sends shivers down my spine. We’ve reached the point when the world has to step in to prevent America becoming a fascist dictatorship.

I was watching the breakfast news once again, and there was a contrast in the lead stories this morning so stark that I’m certain that I couldn’t be the only viewer to have noticed it. In fact I found it rather chilling. The lead story was of course the Artemis mission, and humanity (Americans) once again heading to the moon. However, this was followed by the news of Trump and his increasingly ghastly pronouncements on Iran. This created a kind of juxtaposition which only a complete fool could ignore: America’s triumphant rocket launch, heralded as a magnificent human achievement; abutted against the increasingly dark, deranged and even fascistic behaviour of that country’s president, igniting a global catastrophe which has already killed tens of thousands, and expecting everyone else to clear up his mess. America’s behaviour recently means it deserves only our utter contempt, yet as a nation it seems to think it still seems to think itself the leader of the world, at the forefront of the exploration of space. It is behaving like everything is normal and it is still worthy of our respect, while digging an ever deeper, darker hole and dragging the rest of us in with it. The way that the one story was followed directly by the other this morning was in fact quite jarring, like two huge trucks crashing head on into one another, and I’m sure mine wasn’t the only spine to feel a shudder.