Something about wandering this city fascinates me

Exploring, surrounded by people, alone with my thoughts

Hearing all the tounges and dialects of the world.

Endlessly curious in this endless three-dimensional labyrinth.

Slightly guilty about leaving Lyn home alone as I roam,

But she has her own wanderings, through music and sound

While I listen to the glorious cacophony of the metropolis:

The music of the voices of the world, the great harmony of humanity.

So out I go into the maelstrom

Unto the chaos of the city

Ever changing, full of life

Utterly fascinating

I just tapped ‘London’ into the search engine of startrek.com, hoping for news of another convention here, and found news of something even better – something astounding. Paramount Studios is now planning to build a theme park to the east of London: ”Paramount London, a proposed entertainment resort, will include a Star Trek-themed area when it opens on the Swanscombe Peninsula, east of London, in 2020. Spread across 800 acres, Paramount London will be the first of its kind in the UK and is expected to attract up to 15 million visitors a year”. I can’t believe my luck: although Lyn made a ‘oh god no!’ moan when I told her about this over the dinner table, and although it’ll pack the area with tourists and opportunists, trekkie that I am, I can’t wait! Here’s the project’s website.

I just read that ‘legendary’ comedy show spitting Image is due to return to British tv under a new name. Now called Newzoids, it will basically be the same satire-through-puppetry program. While I have heard a lot about it, and while I’ve seen clips, I don’t think I have ever sat through an entire episode of Spitting Image. I’ll be interested to see how this tuns out then, and I’m certainly keen to see how they handle people like Farage and CaMoron. Mind you, I do know something about Spitting Image: THIS!!

One is a cartoonish halfwit, whose simplistic, childish views make him a target of derision mocked by all;

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The other is Homer Simpson

Happy first birthday to my nephew Oliver. It barely seem a full year since I wrote this entry, but indeed it has – and what a year it was too! I just spoke to his grandparents, and he’s doing well; beginning to talk, and apparently taking to his toy xylophone with great enthusiasm. I hope he and his parents have a really fun day.

I remember writing on here once that I didn’t think london had an equivalent of the Louvre in Paris; no truly stylish, classy buildings. Today I found I was wrong. Today I visited the British museum for the first time, and my jaw dropped as soon as I saw that high, round, glass ceiling and those columns. Okay, it’s not a great glass pyramid, but it seemed jus as awesome to me.

More importantly, I was there with the Rix centre. They were having an event there to trial the use of sensory objects. These are intended to make museum exhibitions more accessible to people with learning disabilities by incorporating more of the senses. For example, a display concerning the spice trade may incorporate the smell of spices, This way, those who learn differenty to how others might are included. It’s a fascinating idea. Not only is it great on a practical level, but there are also theoretical questions which it raises, which I am now getting my teeth into.

It has been a great day: a day of exploration in more ways than one. I went to a great building, and my mind is now abuzz with ideas and questions. Night is drawing in, and as I roll home to the person I love like so many other Londoners, I couldn’t be more content.

I was shouting at the tv again earlier, forcing Lyn to retreat into her studio and turn the volume up. I was watching CaMoron’s speech, once again lying to the country that things are now all hunkey-dorey, that we are now thriving, and acting like his policies have some kind of intelligence behind them rather than boiling down to greed. I get really angry when I see him like that, pretending he is being rational and thoughtful; assuming he deserves the authority he stole in 2010. People are going hungry because of benefit cuts, yet he expects applause for cutting tax.

People like him have the audacity to say that those on the left have a politics of envy. Our politics is not about envy but about fairness, about evening out preexisting inequalities. Their politics is about greed, maintaining inequality and making sure the lucky few can continue their privileged lives lording it over the rest of us. I find it sickening to see CaMoron try to portray it as a valid worldview, when I can see the suffering such selfishness has caused so vividly. We deserve better than this rat, standing behind a podium, trying to tell us greed is good, that capitalist fat-cats should be treated as heroes and that the state – the only mechanism through which the people those fat-cats would otherwise rule over can get any power or justice – is a bad thing and should be diminished. How can people be fooled by such arrogant, selfish folly?

The oddest thing just happened. Lyn and I were just out for a walk. It is a bright, crisp, early spring day here, and we were out enjoying the sun. L was being pushed by dom, and they were leading the way through the small wooded park very near our house. I must have gone through that park at least five hundred times by now; it’s the last fragment of an ancient forrest which, I’m told, used to cover the entire area. Today, though, at a turning we I’d ordinarily go right, Lyn lead us straight on, down a path where I had assumed there were steps.

I suddenly had the most uncanny feeling. After five years living in Charlton, I feel I have come to know the area rather well. And yet, all of a sudden, within just a few metres of home, I had no idea where I was. It was quiet and serene, and felt as if we’d entered one of the secret places of the world. The sound of traffic faded as we followed the path past the animal enclosures and out of the park onto a road I had never seen before.

I was astounded. I felt lost, yet I knew we were still in Charlton, not far at all from home. How could I have missed this place, which felt more like a back street in a cheshire town than part of a sprawling metropolis? I told myself that I needed to explore more thoroughly.

On we went. And suddenly we were back on the main road to Woolwich, a road I know well; and I knew where I was. Yet I still felt amazed at what had just happened, as if we had stumbled briefly into another world and back again, so near to home yet so unknown, new and foreign.

Someone really should do something similar to this in response to Farage’s band of thugs. In the german town of Wunsiedel, residents decided to cunningly hijack a march by a group of neo-nazis by sponsoring it and donating the proceeds to anti-fascist charities. In effect, every step these neanderthals took collected money against them, and they didn’t even realise. I think the word in internet parlance is ”pwned”. While it is scary to see people with such hard-line xenophobic views still exist, and indeed might be in resurgence, I’m relieved others are standing up to them, and that their stupidity can be demonstrated so comically.

I think I’ll flag this Guardian piece up today, in which Stephen Hawking rallies to the defence of the NHS. He rightly points out that it is a national treasure which must be preserved from commercial interests at all costs. Although I heard recently that a report had found that Labour had exaggerated the degree to which the Condems had opened it up to privatisation, it is nevertheless true that they have increased the market pressures exposed to the NHS, undermining it’s very ethos. It is therefore good to see a man currently so high in the public agenda sticking up for the greatest of British institutions.

The article also recalls the hilarious episode when some clueless american journalist assumed that Hawking was american and wrote that he would have died if he lived in Britain with our ‘commie’ NHS. EPIC FAIL! Mind you, it did bring about an opportunity for Hawking to pay tribute to our health service, so it backfired on the journalist really sweetly.

I have started to write again. While I have never stopped writing regularly for my blog, I have got back to the sort of playing around with ideas that I used to do when I first started my masters. Now, of course, my musings are in relation to my work with UEL. It feels so good to have got back to that type of playful curiosity again. And, as I wrote the other day, I think I could be onto something phenomenal. Just as my musings with my masters eventually lead to probably the greatest thing I have yet written, I have a feeling that these musings could lead to something even greater. For now it’s just play; but through that play I sense something fascinating emerging.

Lyn has been beavering away in her studio again – her productivity puts me to shame. Taking it’s name from our trip on tuesday I suspect, her mesmerising latest track, Spirit at the Roundhouse, can be heard here

I have no idea how it crept under my radar (a seemingly appropriate phrase for a program about a spy franchise), but I’m now quite giddy after finding this excellent documentary on James Bond. I found a reference to it here, and looked it up. At ninety minutes, it is quite long, but I found it very thorough and engaging, full of pieces of trivia which daw you in further. Everything Or Nothing goes through the history of the phenomenon, from it’s origins to present. I’m fascinated by it: the success of the franchise, the character, the history. No other character – not even, say, Luke Skywalker, or any comic-book hero – holds such a dominant cultural position; while it is not mentioned in this program, what other fictional person could escort a monarch or world leader to an Olympic opening, and indeed reuse/reference one of the franchise’s most iconic moments in doing so? As I wrote here, I find it truly intriguing, and watching programs like this only intensify that fascination.

Anyone who loves books and literature will no doubt be rejoicing at this incredible news. An unpublished novel by Harper Lee is to finally get published in July, 60 years after the US author put it aside to write To Kill a Mockingbird. When I saw this story last thing yesterday, I was astounded. I’ve loved To Kill a Mockingbird since studying it at school; I truly think it is a masterpiece. How Lee will possibly follow it up I do not know – it’s apparently set some twenty years after the events of the original – but Scout is such a great character I just can’t wait to hear her voice again.

Until yesterday I think I still preferred Paris over London. As much as I love London, I thought the french capital had a special magic to it the british one lacked: something in the city’s layout, it’s sleek, snazzy boulevards which gave it a nose ahead. But yesterday we went to Camden, and I was so instantly taken by it that it made me swap preferences. While Camden is not that sleek, it has an idiosyncratic snazziness of its own. We were there to see a concert by the Waterboys in the Roundhouse, an amazing place in itself, but before the show we had a chance to explore the local area. It is such a cool place: the labyrinthine market there made me drop my jaw, and want to look around for hours; I fell in love with it and indeed london.

The concert itself was just as awesome. Truth be told I didn’t know much about the Waterboys, but lyn is a big fan. They played one or two tracks I knew, but most of it was new to me. Nevertheless we had a great time, and I think they have a new fan this morning.

London, then, is a great, great city. I love how varied it is. The beauty of paris, of course, comes from the fact that it was re-laid out after world war two, giving it a symmetry and elegance. London, though, is more organic, more natural; it has quirky little areas like Camden. I love how varied it, and how it can surprise you like Camden surprised me last night. It does indeed have a magic to it. Aye, after such a great evening and all the ones before it, I now genuinely think London is the greatest city on earth.

It might be slightly premature to start heralding the demise of Bond, as I suspect 007 has a fair few adventures to go yet, but yesterday I took myself to see Kingsmen and was deeply impressed. I’d been wanting to go for days: I wanted to see how it squared up to the Bond phenomenon, having been quite intrigued by the trailers. To be honest I was half expecting it to suck, but what I found myself watching yesterday afternoon was a witty, self-referential, self-knowing film. It knew the characteristics of it’s own genre and pointed them out to us. There are lines, for instance, where the baddie points out what he would usually be expected to say, but that he is not going to say it. It borrows Fleming’s/Bond’s connoisseurship for fine drink, and plays with it, for instance supplying us with an alternative martini recipe (‘gin, not vodka, of course’). It was absurd, but that absurdity is pointed out when the characters say they prefer the older Bonds, before he got serious. However, unlike Austin Powers, this had fairly serious thought-provoking themes: for one, I feel it has quite a bit to say about class, male-ness etc. I found it worthy of consideration rather than just a silly, action-packed romp. It’s self-knowledge and serious edge gave it a depth Powers lacks.

We have, it seems, a new hero, and a new service more secret than MI5 or the CIA, beholden to no government. I’d be interested to see what they do with it: personally, unlikely though it is, I’m now itching to see a Kingsmen-007 crossover.

Having been using London transport for five or six years now, I’d like to flag up this charmingly enthusiastic piece about the London red bus. The writer thinks it’s great how visiting London from Liverpool, all our busses in this city are now accessible, and that he can roll on and off busses with ease. He is right, of course. I suppose I now take it for granted, and don’t give much thought to it – after all, remember the trouble I had getting on the number twenty from Alsager to Crewe. At he same time, I have become rather jaded: bus drivers in london can be pricks! They can refuse to stop; they can pretend the ramp isn”t working; they can say, in that bastardised form of English only bus drivers seem possessed of, that ”they got a buggy on, mate”’. Things are thus far from perfect; once you’ve been a Londoner a while, the problems with London transport, great though it is, become blindingly obvious.

There are few men left in the world one can call great; few truly amazing people, leading remarkable lives. There are no Churchils or Hemingways – no men who, for all their flaws, captivate, fascinate and inspire. Perhaps their era is simply passed. Yet, there is one left: one man as great as any of history. David Attenborough inspires and fascinates me, as he does most people. It was great to see him back on tv last night. I find it remarkable how, even after sixty years on tv, he still presents the best things on the box. To me, he is a comforting, reassuring constant; a (grand)father figure, who, no matter where I am, I’ll always be able to find. Long may that continue.

Stephen Hawking appears to be getting everywhere these days. First he appears on star trek; then he took centre stage at London’s paralympic opening ceremony. He has been on the Simpsons, the big bang theory, and, my personal favourite, Monty python live. There has very recently been a film released about him, my response to which can be read here; and now I hear he just filmed a sketch alongside David Walliams and Katherine Tate for comic relief. He is currently everywhere you look. I am in two minds about this: while it is great to have such a high profile disabled person out there, it could get too much, go too far and start looking like self-publicity. The professor seems to be currently being wheeled out at every opportunity, like some symbol or totem of human greatness. Yet he is not a symbol but a man, and should be seen as any other human. Besides, what with all these media appearances, it’s a wonder the dude has time to do any physics research.

I would count myself a negligent blogger if I didn’t direct you to this fascinating and wise Guardian article. It defends the right of Katie Price to have services for her severely disabled son paid for by the state. People have apparently been up in arms on social media about it, screaming their tiny little brains out that Price can afford to pay for such things herself. Yet, as the article points out, the point of the welfare system etc is that it is universal, there for all; as soon as we start begrudging it to certain people, we start down a path that ends in it’s complete collapse. Thus, the way in which everyone is now lining up to lambast price is symptomatic of a culture we’ve been lead into: a culture which scapegoats those who rely on benefits as scroungers and shirkers. In other words, Price is being used as a tool with which to make public enemies of those who cannot defend themselves. It’s the old ‘divide and rule’ ploy, and is indeed precisely what the nazis did in scapegoating minorities. Kate Price’s right to state help for her son must therefore be defended. After all, she presumably pays high-rate tax; if she contributes to the economy that way, she has the same right to state help as any other member of society.

In all the current talk of the holocaust, I need to get off my chest that there is one thing that still puzzles me. If the nazis believed that what they were doing was right, why did they go to so much effort to hide it. I am not trying to deny that they are guilty of the crimes they are accused of – only a complete fool would attempt to do so – but it strikes me as odd that they would try to hide their crimes. To them, they were acting justly; they believed they were a master race trying to purify humanity. Why would they care what others thought? To A Nazi, only nazi opinions matter. Yet hiding their actions, not recording their murderous actions, implies they knew others would think what they were doing was wrong, and cared about what they thought. Why would a master race, arrogantly considering itself above all others, feel the need to hide its actions from those it considered inferior? Surely it would want to record what it saw as its glorious actions for posterity.

I did it! For the first time in a long while, I just sat through an entire prime ministers question time without shouting at the TV. It’s not that I didn’t want to – once again we had to endure the sickening sight of CaMoron refusing to answer for his misdeeds – but last week I got so agitated that Lyn told me off. ”Do you mind?” She said ”I’m eating!” This week, then, I made an effort to restrain myself, and apart from a yelp or two I think I succeeded. Yet it nevertheless demonstrates how frustrated I am with politics right now: so what, for instance, if Miliband said he wants to ‘weaponise’ the NHS? It is a major issue, and the Tories need to be held to account for the damage their top-down reorganisation has done to it. Labour has every right to use it as a subject with which to attack the current government.

There are ninety-nine days until we hopefully get rid of the Tories, lowering taxes while people starve; 99 days which can’t pass soon enough.

Today, as we all know, marks seventy years since the liberation of the extermination camp at Aushvits. DPAC had a protest up at westminster o coincide with it, their aim being to draw parallels between what the NAZIs did and what our current government is doing, with it’s rather fascist-sounding ‘back to work scheme’ and so on. I was going to go, but left it too late to leave. Truth be told, though, I was in two minds as much as I hate this tory government, it left a bad taste in my mouth. I can’t help thinking the protesters were using probably the most barbaric event in history for their own ends; almost usurping the suffering of others. Moreover, as vile as they are, the tories don’t deserve to be compared to the Nazis. While people are suffering and indeed dying under the tories, what is happening does not constitute the methodical extermination of an entire people. It was a bad move on our part, and probably made ‘us’ look childish, as much as I sympathise with the sentiment behind it.

As a blogger, political commentator and leftie, part of me knows I shoul write something about the Greek election. Of course I can quite understand why the Greek people voted as they did; truth be told I would probably have voted the same way. The Greeks were desparate, feeling humiliated – of course they elected someone who promised to solve their problems. Yet part of me can’t help thinking they have simply elected a con man claiming to have a magic wand. If Greece were to unilaterally refuse to pay its debts, chaos would ensue: for one it would set a dangerous precedent other endebted nations would be tempted to follow; for another, how would we make up the cash we are owed, having effectively been robbed by Greece. It would probably make matters worse for the rest of us, so, oddly, I find myself siding with those demanding the Greeks continue to pay, even though I know it means they continue to suffer,

Today I received some awesome news. To be more specific, I got an email regarding something which has the potential to become awesome. It is very early days, and might yet come to nothing, so I better not go into detail, save to say that it regards my academic life. A lot of talking must happen before anything becomes concrete.

However, it was an email with an embryonic possibility, which, hopeless optimist that I am, has me very excited indeed. Watch this space. [spastic squeal of glee!]

I still haven’t given my new wheelchair a name, despite having it for over a year. The truth is, I had not warmed to it: compared to my old chairs, it is slow and unwieldy. In my internal monologue, I thought of it as sapoc, or slow-ass piece of crap. Today, though, I went on one of my long walks. Slow as it was, the chair kept its end up, performed admirably, and earned my respect. I resolved that it needs a name. The question is, what to call it? My previous chairs, defiant and bat’leth, had Star Trek related names, but I thus far can’t think of a name for this slow but sturdy vessel. Any ideas?

I am suddenly very angry indeed. I was just at my building society getting money. I wear a bumbag with my wallet in, and invite people to get out and put in money as and when needed. The last couple of times I have noticed that the staff at the bank have taken to putting on plastic gloves when I come in. While I understand the need for hygene, I find it utterly condescending and insulting. It looks like they think I am dirty or contagious. I was so upset that I asked to speak to the manager, but she batted me away with the usual condescending bullshit. Think they were right if you must, but I will not be treated like something dirty.

I am just on my way back from watching A Theory of Everything. I had been in two minds about going to see it, given its controversial use of a non disabled actor playing a disabled man. Yet, having touched upon cosmology in my recent conversations with Lyn, I thought I would go see it. Now that I have, however, the actor has become the least of my concerns.

I have never felt so torn about a film. At the same time it struck me as a delicate portrait of one of my heroes, and a piece of pity porn of such enormity that it made me want to vomit. At times the emphasis on disability and pity became so gratuitous that I almost walked out; the lingering shots of Hawking struggling to get up and down stairs as his condition worsened being a notable example. It was so cloying and cliche that, at points, I despaired the film had ever been made. Things were redeemed, though, when upon receiving his first communication aid, they remarked with disgust at hawking now having an American accent. There were also a few good shots of Cambridge, including a couple of the quad where this piece of Hawking-related awesomeness was probably filmed.

The various controversies surrounding him aside, hawking has long been one of my heroes. Yet this film has me torn in two, and, I must say, extremely perturbed. Part of me is glad it was made, yet another part deeply objects to it’s pitying, wallowing, anti-disability overtones.

I find myself growing uneasy at a number of people I’ve encountered who, like me, seem pretty cynical about the current state of things, but who take that cynicism too far. Take this catchy tune, for example. Much of what they say I agree with; but then they go on about ”the new world order”, ”reptillians” and so on. I see no evidence for any such conspiracy. Also, tellingly, they lump taxation in with their otherwise left-sounding list of grievances. When I heard that I smelled a rat: either they are right wing trying to hijack the concerns of the left, or they are just politically naive, rebelling because they think it’s cool but lacking any true understanding. People like these, influenced by p’tahks like David Ilke, thinking they’re being profound but not actually helping. The higher reality they keep asking the rest of us to wake up to boils down to neoliberal greed, and they don’t even realise they’re the ones being manipulated. I suppose it is symptomatic of much bigger issues: political dissatisfaction, lack of true understanding and engagement, and a type of naivete.

It’s the beeb’s democracy day, commemorating the seven hundredth anniversary of the signing of Magna Carta. They had Douglas Carswell on earlier, and I have never seen a more insulting display of pure hypocrisy. Carswell was purporting to stand up for plurality of opinion, freedom of expression, dissemination of democratic power, and most of the things I usually go for. Yet anyone with a functioning brain could tell he was saying things we wanted to hear. This was coming from a member of a party which, if or when it is elected, will destroy the bridges to Europe, revoke just about all of our human rights, suppress any and all minorities, and more than likely suspend democracy and install Farage as a permanent overlord (‘Fhurer’ would probably sound too germanic). Thus for Carswell to pretend to be a champion of democracy flies in the face of everything he and his party actually stands for. It really got my goat. Just as hypocritical, though, was CaMoron tweeting about today being Martin Luthor-King day, and about being ‘inspired’. What a fucking cheek! Dr. King would be appalled at what the Tories are doing, persecuting the defenceless and cutting tax for the rich while millions starve.

This will again probably sound a bit silly, but recently I’ve been pondering the fact that, given I do not have a photo of me meeting Patrick Stewart, how do I know it really happened? How can I confirm it actually occurred? My memory could be playing tricks on me. Of course, we all know that, if push came to shove, I could look up the member of staff at the Excel centre who helped me, who could confirm my experience; and it is very unlikely that my brain is playing tricks. Why should I be concerned that my brain might be tricking me over this particular event, when there is a long list of other events of which I have memories but no pictures, simply because it is so important to me? Yet, when you think about it, this is an interesting question. Barthes said that the photo has a unique ability to verify the past, to say ”only and for certain what has been” – although I suppose even that is no longer strictly true these days; so, without a photo, how can we be sure something happened? This is what interests me about historiography, which I began to write about the other day: the idea that history is a discourse open to change and debate. I have a vivd memory; I have several other photographs placing me at the event; but how can I be absolutely sure I met Sir Patrick Stewart without direct photographic evidence? The only possible solution, I suppose, is to endeavour to meet him again!

I was suddenly just thrown into one of my funks. Lee Mayer’s family keep his facebook page open, and it reminded me that he’d be 31 today. The fact of his death still gets to me: he, like my other friends lost, deserved a long, full life; I still feel white hot rage at the injustice of it. Yet I also know I can’t let myself get too down about it. The last year, for instance, truly was a great one – hey, I met Patrick stewart ffs! – and have a feeling this coming year could be even better. Plus I just stumbled over quite an amusing article debating what music the beeb should play if and when the apocalypse comes. Their answer? What else but this! Very Mayer! Short of the world ending, then, I have much to be cheerful about, and quit a bit to keep me busy, even if such thoughts will still just hit me, as they hit everyone, from time to time.

Loathe though I am to link to anything in the Daily Mail, I’d just like to flag up this excellent speech to the house of lords by baroness Cambell. She raises many questions about the Assisted Dying Bill. Why I try to stay away from the subject, Cambell makes many points which I definitely agree with. People with disabilities, including those with ‘terminal conditions’, need assistance to live, not die. Having seen my mates with muscular dystrophy fight so hard to enjoy their lives to the last, I know what she is talking about.

This will probably make me sound rather daft, but these days I keep going back to my masters thesis and wondering ‘did I write that’. At 40,000 words, it is the longest thing I have ever written, and I suppose part of me is surprised I was capable of it. Thinking about it, of course, I’m sure I did: when it was being written, nobody saw it but me, Esther, my tutors and my parents, and they would not have added to it. I also recall writing every sentence, every paragraph. I know I’m just being paranoid, doubting my own abilities. I think it also shows how proud I am of it. Mind you, reading it, I come across so many typos I know only I could have written it.

Inspired by yesterday’s event, this morning I jotted the following paragraphs down. It’s early days yet, and at the mo I’m just playing around with ideas, but I have a feeling this could evolve into something quite major. I must admit I’m fascinated…

Let us start by noting that the term ‘history’ is here used to mean not ‘the past’, but the discourse of history: the collection of documents and artefacts through which we can build up an idea of what happened before the present moment. History is therefore not absolute but open to interpretation, depending on how one views or sees the evidence at hand. It also follows that one can only know something happened or existed in the past if it is recorded; great things may have happened before now which we are oblivious to, simply because they were not recorded. Thus we have historiography: the philosophical dimension of history, or the analysis of history as a discourse.

What, then, of those who exist outside of that discourse, who cannot access the means through which one is usually recorded? Many people with disabilities, both learning and physical, cannot express themselves in the Symbolic as easily as others might. Unable to tell their stories, they for the most part exist outside of history, ignored by the mainstream. Often they are shut away in institutions. Their historiography is therefore quite problematic: we know they existed, but how can they reclaim their history?

This time yesterday I was up in London roaming the capital like anyone else. I was absolutely free. Today sees me at a university event about the history of people with learning disabilities; about how to create an archive of the experiences and stories of people which would otherwise be lost to time. There are a range of exhibits on display, one of which tells how the old institution inmates used to create songs as a form of rebellion and escape, rather like the African slave spirituals of old. I was just listening to some, and now feel haunted and angry: they were prisoners serving life without parole, having committed no crime other than to be born different. The contrast with my own life, free to roam, free to come and go, free to blog, free to be subversive, disturbs me. Maybe I shouldn’t, but I sort of feel guilty. My freedom is indeed precious.

I am just on my way home from South Kensington. I thought it might be worth coming up to london’s French district to try to get a copy of Charlie Hebdo and to show my solidarity with our french brothers. Besides I had never been to that part of London before and fancied a bit of exploring. Getting there was easy enough bus, tube, bus – although I made the mistake of not parking in the right tube carriage to get off at Green Park, as not all the platform is raised there. Predictably, of course, nowhere was selling Charlie Hebdo – it comes out here on friday apparently – but I enjoyed the trip, got to see the French part of london, and currently have some nice, fresh croisant for Lyn and myself to enjoy.

I earlier came across the frankly idiotic notion that the people at Charlie Hebdo deserved what they got, and that the attacks were somehow to be expected given their provocation. I know I should just ignore such foolishness, but it gets on my nerves: using that logic, one could justify any act of oppression in history. Did Martin Luther King deserve to be assassinated because he spoke out? Yes, Charlie Hebdo provoked people – that is, after all, what being provocative means – but that is a necessary, healthy part of culture. From time to time, I try to be provocative and edgy; I try to speak out, saying things others might disagree with. Do I deserve attacking? This person, who I will not dignify by naming or linking to, thus seemingly either justified terrorism or advocated censorship. Either position is moronic. We must not allow such idiots to use these atrocities as an excuse for oppression; we must not allow the illiberal right to hijack this situation for their own hateful purposes. The moment that even one thought, one sentence is repressed or withdrawn, we all those something very precious indeed – something that those journalists last week died for.

Continuing to ponder the subject of my entry this morning, after coming across this open letter from IOC chief Tomas Bach to president Hollande and the people of France, I’d now be willing to put good money on Paris winning it’s bid for the 2024 games. While the letter itself does not mention 2024 directly, it’s very appearance leads me to think Paris must now be a favourite. Especially after the grave (for Paris) disappointment of 2005, the likelihood of the IOC snubbing the french capital again now seems very, very remote. As I once wrote here, I’d dearly like to see a Parisienne Olympics.

Yet there are still two years before the decision is made, and such things are very, very political: America is desperate to hold the 2024 games too, and seems to have felt just as snubbed by the decision in 2005. Things are therefore more complex and more interesting. Let’s not forget, too, that the US has also come under terrorist attack. While part of me suspects Paris is now a shoe in, the battle for the 2024 olympics has some way to go. Whoever the IOC go with, given what happened in 2005 a proud nation stands to be rejected for a second time. I know it does not really matter to most people in the UK, but given it’s political dimension, I find it oddly fascinating.

Last night I was thinking about Paris, and I started to think about the London attacks of July 7, 2005, about this entry, written a day or so after, and about how London bounced back. And bounce back it did: London went on to see glories it had never seen before. Having been awarded the games the day before those dreadful attacks, just seven years later, London hosted a truly monumental Olympics which I’m proud to have been here for and to have been part of.

Paris will do the same. Paris will bounce back to glory, just as London did. Of that I have no doubt; for Paris is a fine and beautiful city, easily the equal of London on the world stage. If 2012 was London’s year of glory, surely Paris’s will now come soon; it will no submit to terror, but hold it’s head higher than ever. I can’t wait to see what it will now produce: if London is anything to go by, it will be magnificent.