I had my first proper cupaccino in months this afternoon, possibly my first since the halcyon days as a regular at Charlton Park Cafe. I was just out for my usual trundle: today I chose to stay a bit closer to home and explore a part of the local area I hadn’t really seen, over by Shooters Hill Road. That area is quite hilly and dense with forrest, so I had avoided it until now, but today I thought I’d give it an explore. Eltham Park was split into two in the 1920s by the building of Rochester way: I had seen Eltham Park South before, but had never explored it’s northern counterpart.

The truth is I was beginning to head back to Eltham along Rochester Way, when to my right and above me, I caught sight of a bright building in the park. Naturally this automatically pricked my interest, so I changed course to investigate. The paths were fairly steep and not as well maintained as they might be, but soon enough I was approaching an interesting looking building at the top of a tall hill, set in a park. It instantly reminded me of the cafe in Charlton Park, only, due to its altitude, you must have been able to see for at least fifteen kilometres across south London and beyond.

Automatically taken with the place, and fancying a coffee anyway, I decided to go in. While there were tables and chairs outside, from what I glimpsed through the door, the inside of the place looked interesting. Mind you, the problem was the front entrance to the place had a large step up to it and the side entrance was too narrow for my powerchair, so I had to stand up and walk in. It was worth it though, as on the walls of the place were all sorts of posters about the park’s history: it had been an airfield during World War Two, and is a monthly meeting place for bikers. My kind of place, then.

I only stayed for one cuppaccino before starting to head home. I resolved to go back there before long though. Access issues aside, I was quite taken with it. It isn’t that far away, and the view it enjoys really is incredible. While it might not become my regular haunt like the Cafe in Charlton Park once was, I can certainly see myself going there quite frequently.

Just for the record, I’ve never watched GB News, nor do I ever intend to. I may be ever so slightly curious about it, but being curious about the taste of shit is no reason to put it in your mouth. I want nothing to do with a channel which gives the scumbag Farage a platform. I was, however, pretty amused to read that it is already collapsing. “Andrew Neil has resigned as chairman and lead presenter of GB News, just three months after helping to launch the channel. Neil, 72, was on air for less than two weeks before announcing he was taking a break.” After so much fanfare and hype, this self-proclaimed champion of right-wing speech and challenger to the liberal mainstream has already lost it’s main anchor. Well, that didn’t last long, did it? As Owen Jones points out here, it’s hard not to feel a certain amount of schadenfreude, but frankly, given how much channels like this stand to pollute our political discourse, I say good riddance to Neil, and let’s hope the whole channel goes down with him.

For quite some time I have worn a baseball cap on a daily basis. Putting it on has become a bit of a habit, so my cap is almost as much as my daily costume as my shoes or glasses. A couple of days ago, though, I noticed my cap was getting a bit tatty: it was time to buy a new one.

This morning, then, I looked in Eltham, but couldn’t find anything. I didn’t just want any old cap, but preferably something fun and ironic which I could clip my anti-Brexit badges onto. This afternoon I set upon the idea of getting the bus to lewisham and looking in the fairly large shopping centre there. At first I didn’t have much luck, but then, in TK Max, I found what I needed. Among their adequate range of hats and caps, I noticed a blue one: it had a distorted yellow emoticon on the front, ink appearing to dribble down; under that there were a pair of crossed bones, and under that the words ‘Don’t Even Trip’. It instantly struck me as very appropriate for wobbly old me to wear as I roll around town in my powerchair.

I had intended to write a sequel to this entry yesterday. On the tenth anniversary of 9/11, back in Charlton, I wrote a pretty long entry about how that tragic date had become a marker in time for me, and about how dramatically my life had changed since then. I thought it would be a good idea to do the same yesterday, summarising the last decade. The problem was, though, when I began to think about it, I couldn’t even decide where to begin. If anything, the last decade was even more awesome than the one before it: a decade which saw me do so many incredible things after moving to London it blows my mind. The bigger problem, though, was how to sum up my relationship with Lyn. I spent most of the decade living with her, so I wouldn’t have been able to avoid reopening wounds which still feel quite fresh.

In the end, then, I obviously dropped the idea. It was still an incredible decade filled with so much joy yet now tinged with so much sorrow; begun after a moment in time, now two decades ago, embedded with so much horror.

I’m thrilled to report that last night’s screening was a great, great success. Ever since I first watched it last year, I knew I had to have Crip Camp screened at the Charlton and Woolwich Free Film Festival. It is the type of important film everyone should watch, as it traces the history of the Disability Rights Movement in America. While it is freely available to watch on Netflix though, I felt it important to get it screened properly in front of a live audience in a darkened room: political films like this should be social, communal events. Watching it with other people, discussing it both before and afterwards adds something to the event.

With that said, I’m happy to say that we got an audience of fifteen to twenty people last night, which was pretty sizeable given the venue and circumstances. I had prepared a short introduction to give before the screening started just to contextualise it and give a bit of background. It was in five paragraphs on my Ipad, which we plugged into the room’s speakers. I was quite nervous that I’d hit the wrong button at the wrong time and screw up the order of my speech, but thankfully it went well and seemed to be well received.

The screening itself went well too: at almost two hours long, Crip Camp isn’t a short film, but it’s the kind of film which draws you in. You become fascinated by the history and the people involved; by the fact that an entire civil rights movement could have started at a small summer camp for disabled people in upstate New York. You want to keep watching to see what will happen. This, after all, is the story of the largest, arguably most oppressed minority in America fighting for their rights. And, as I said in my introduction last night, there are lessons we can learn from this film, things we can take from it and apply them to our own time.

I’ll be introducing a screening of Crip Camp this evening. Come and watch if you can.

I think I need to flag this shocking news up today. “The deaths of three adults with learning disabilities at a failed hospital should prompt a review to prevent further “lethal outcomes” at similar facilities, a report said. There were significant failures in the care of the patients at Jeesal Cawston Park, Norfolk, it found.” The details of the stories are horrific enough, but the fact that this sort of thing is still going on makes it even worse. One hears nightmarish stories about disabled people being abused in institutions from the sixties, seventies and eighties, but you would hope that that sort of thing would have been stamped out long ago. It just goes to show that, when it comes to disabled people who can’t speak out for themselves, the people supposedly caring for them think they can do what they want and get away with it. And the most sickening thing is, more often than not, they do.

Having just seen the news that the SNP have restarted their independence campaign and now plan to hold a second Scottish independence referendum next year, I automatically decided that that would be the subject of todays entry. Before starting to write, though, I thought I’d check what I’ve written previously about it. To be honest, I don’t think I can do better than to direct everyone to this entry, written last year. My views haven’t changed since then: I still think that, were Scotland to break away from the union, it would be an act of utter selfishness and betrayal. The scots would be selling the rest of the uk out for their own petty self-interest: They might be ok, but they would have completely abandoned us, especially at a time when we need to work together to solve problems such as Brexit.

It has been a long, glorious day north of the river, exploring the old docklands. That area is becoming so gentrified, with multi-million pound blocks of flats being built all over the place, it’s crazy. Part of a project called the Royal Docks, dozens of new ten-storey-tall buildings are going up, equipped with trendy cafes and gyms, and set between stunning new parks. It makes me wonder again whether the same thing is happening in the rest of the country, or is it being left behind while London gets all the investment. Mind you, I was out so long I totally forgot a test match was being played, but having just checked the score, I see that I was right to do so.

I watched the Tokyo Paralympic Closing Ceremony earlier, but again there is not that much I think I can say about it. I am, of course, quite blown away by Team GB’s performance this year: to have come second in the medal table, besting everyone but China, is pretty phenomenal when you think about it. Yet, as with the other three ceremonies this year, the paralympic closing ceremony struck me as rather paired down and subdued, with nothing to get me excited. The fact this was the first such ceremony since Lyn’s death also cast a bit of a shadow over things for me, I must admit. Having said that, one image really caught my eye, not from Tokyo but Paris.

If this is an example of how our Parisian friends intend to proceed, I think we’re in for something rather interesting in 2024.

To be honest the very last thing I expected to come across today was a field with sheep in it, but that, remarkably, was exactly what I found. Taking a cue from my entry a couple of days ago, today I decided to go and explore Canary Wharf. I had only been there a couple of times before, and had never really looked around the area. Yet it looked so modern and snazzy in the photos I had seen, today I decided to put that right, first trundling down to Greenwich and then getting the DLR under the river.

Getting off just a stop later, I was instantly surprised. Where I had been expecting to be surrounded by skyscrapers, the area around Island Gardens felt fairly low rise and mundane. Having said that, the shiny towers of the Wharf looming over the area, there was definitely a sense of wealth and power in that area which I don’t feel south of the river.

Using the skyscrapers as compass points, I headed through Millwall Park and into Mudchute Farm and Park. It was there that I found my biggest surprise of the day: a couple of fields, albeit rather small ones, with sheep in. They were obviously a tourist attraction, but there, in one of London’s most developed areas, it was the last thing I expected to find.

I trundled on through the parks in the south of the Isle Of Dogs, my surroundings becoming more and more built up as I went. It felt like Manhattan, skyscrapers rising from both sides of busy streets, DLR trains whizzing around on overhead tracks. It seemed so modern and sleek I couldn’t help being quite taken by it: there was clearly a shedload of money in that area, I could see evidence of it almost everywhere I looked. The way the gleaming buildings were reflected in the docks between them made it seem like I had been suddenly transported to a distant city of vast wealth. At the same time, the docks themselves felt like reminders of a distant past: this was, after all, once London’s gateway to the British Empire; a place where countless thousands had sailed from and to, bringing riches from all over the world. Yet the area has now become one of the world’s foremost commercial centres, the docks now mostly inhabited by luxury yachts and crossed by stylish foot bridges.

I didn’t stay long at Canary Wharf, just exploring one or two of it’s small yet emaculate parks and it’s mall which rather cooly links directly into the tube station, before getting the Jubilee line to North Greenwich. It amazes me how every part of this city has a different feel to it: today I had a look around one of it’s richest areas, and got a sense of just how exuberant London can be. To be honest I found it astonishing, partly because of the wealth, but mostly because of the sheep.

Just to follow up on this entry a couple of weeks ago, about my concerns for disabled people living in Afghanistan, I think I ought to flag this very, very concerning article up. It reports that the Taliban are now targeting disability rights activists because of their links with america. It says that the religious nutters, who have used people with disabilities as suicide bombers in the past, are now coming to their homes and attacking them. The situation it describes is appalling, and indeed extremely frightening. I can’t begin to imagine what it would be like to live under such circumstances, but surely anyone with more than an ounce of compassion would agree that we can’t leave these people to suffer like that.

I was just browsing Facebook, looking for something amusing to pop on here, and I suddenly noticed the plethora of pictures of young schoolchildren: many of my friends from university are now married with kids, and they all keep posting pictures of their children in their new school uniforms. I suddenly feel very, very old. It doesn’t seem that long ago since I was dancing the night away with those guys at Brandies, and now they are all packing their children off to school. Time really does fly.

To be honest, The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air was one of those programs which I’d watch if it was on, but which I never payed any serious attention to. However, the project detailed here may change that. It seems someone took the premise of the show, about a young black man from Philadelphia who gets into trouble and has to move in with his wealthy Californian relatives, and reread it to give it a much more serious tone. He made a spoof trailer for it (a very well made one in fact – he obviously wasn’t just a casual fan) and put it on Youtube. That apparently caught the eye of Will Smith himself, and, according to the report, the reboot has now been commissioned for two seasons. From the look of it, I think the new program might be worth watching: it has a far grittier feel to it than the original comedy, and will deal with issues like class. Obviously only time will tell whether the new version is any good or not, but I like the idea of someone taking a lighthearted sitcom and refashioning it so it becomes a comment on contemporary society.

It occurred to me recently that I still don’t really know London. Of course, having been trundling around the Borough of Greenwich for over a decade, I now know it quite well; I also go up to Stratford fairly often, so I know that area too. Yet as for London proper – the centre of this dense, sprawling microcosm – that is still as unfamiliar to me as some distant, far away land. Looking at the map though, it seems so enticing: names like Paddington, Marble Arch and Baker Street seem to evoke a place which I feel I should know by now. I am, after all, a Londoner, so in a way I want to know my way around it as well as other Londoners do.

The problem is, it’s just so vast, where can I even begin to explore it? It’s not as simple as hopping on the Tube, heading up into the centre of town and having a look around: how would I get home, for one? And what if I got lost, or ran out of powerchair battery? The city is so big, there will always be more of it to explore, so I can never know it entirely anyway.

Even so, London is still a place which fascinates me. I have fallen in love with it, and it entices me to follow all of it’s streets and paths to see what I might find. If London is indeed a microcosm – a cosmos made small, a world brought into one spot – then who could ever resist going and exploring it?

I think I broadly agree with what this guy has to say about John Cleese’s upcoming documentary series on so-called cancel culture. Those who are now so critical of what until recently was called political correctness do so out of a reluctance to accept change and difference: they’re not defending everyone’s right to free speech as much as their personal right to be intolerant. Mind you, I think it would be a good idea to watch Cleese’s programs first, before casting too much judgement.

Far be it for me to make fun of someone’s death, but if you want a new definition of irony, just read this. ”A prominent anti-mask leader in Texas has died from complications caused by Covid-19….Mr Wallace had created the San Angelo Freedom Defenders, a group who sought to end what it labelled “Covid-19 tyranny,” according to a YouTube video.” I defy anyone not to at least chuckle, or raise an ironic eyebrow, at that.

I hate Sky. BskyB strikes me as a disgustingly cynical, manipulative broadcaster, charging it’s customers an extortionate amount for every moment of it’s second or third-rate airtime while still forcing adverts upon them every quarter of an hour. The irony is, when I was nine or ten, I practically begged my parents to get a subscription so I could watch American Wrestling, but these days I think I’d rather get a lobotomy.

The fact remains, though, that the only way you can watch the cricket is via Sky. The third England vs. India test match was really getting interesting yesterday, so yesterday afternoon I decided to see if I could go out and catch a bit of it. First I tried the big screen in Woolwich’s General Gordon Square, with no luck – there was another event happening there. Then I tried in two or three of the pubs around Woolwich to see whether any of them were screening it, again with no luck. I eventually had to go all the way to Charlton to find the test being shown at the Royal Oak – a nice little place I used to visit quite frequently, seven or eight years ago. I stayed there for an hour or so, becoming increasingly frustrated at the lack of wickets, before getting the bus home.

Today, however, I had a much better idea: blackheath cricket club has a wonderful ground on Charlton Road with a nice, well equipped pavilion. I’ve been there a few times. Reasoning that there would be a good chance they’d be screening the test match, I trundled over there this morning after breakfast. I was greeted with quite a splendid sight: there was a live match being played on the 130-year-old pitch. Heading into the pavilion though, I finally found what I was looking for; and, more to the point, England had started to take the wickets they should have taken yesterday afternoon.

It didn’t take long for the match to end. I was barely there an hour, watching England get the last four wickets they needed to beat India by an innings. It was a great morning, but I felt guilty about watching blackheath cricket club’s televisions without paying them anything – I’d already had plenty of coffee, and it was much too early for anything harder. Yet the fact remains international sport like this test should be on terrestrial tv where everyone can watch it; I shouldn’t need to go on such hunts. We shouldn’t have to put up with Sky exploiting it’s viewers, making them pay ridiculous amounts for what struck me earlier as a mediocre service interrupted by adverts every few minutes.

I was just watching the evening news, and the BBC is now admitting that shops across the country are now facing significant food shortages, caused at least in part by Brexit. While I haven’t noticed any lack of food in my local shops here in London, I’ve been coming across such reports online for a while. Now the UK has left the EU, we are facing a huge shortage of lorry drivers: goods simply aren’t getting where they need to go. What concerns me is, as the consequences of leaving the EU become clearer and clearer, this will just be the tip of the iceberg.

I think I better clarify, as it has now been brought up a couple of times, that I don’t think anybody should be allowed to drown. To be honest I thought up the title of yesterday’s blog entry on the spur of the moment: I was struggling to decide what to call it, and thought it sounded suitably rock and roll and Nirvana-esque to call it what I did. Obviously letting babies actually drown is unthinkable, but so is refusing to put out roofs which have caught fire.

Apparently, some wanker in America is now trying to exploit the fact that the image of him as an unclothed baby was used on the cover of one of the most iconic albums in music history to make a quick fortune. The beeb reports, “Spencer Elden, the man who was photographed as a baby on the album cover for Nirvana’s Nevermind, is suing the band alleging sexual exploitation.” Sorry, but this kind of thing irritates me: it strikes me as opportunistic and cynical. Elden has obviously realised that Nevermind was one of the most successful albums in history and is trying to claim some of the monetary credit for himself, despite having made no real contribution to it. He claims to have somehow been exploited sexually, and that he “has suffered and will continue to suffer lifelong damages”, but I find that absurd. For one, how can any thirty year old man be recognised from a photo of themselves as a baby, and an underwater one at that? Moreover, given this tosser has previously repeatedly referenced this image for his own art, attempting to recreate it as an older man (but obviously not having received the attention he wanted) it was clearly not that hurtful. It was only through a stroke of pure luck that that image was used, so if anything Elden should be grateful to have been a part of such a major piece of cultural history, not trying to exploit it by suing all the remaining Nirvana band members for $150,000 each. Sorry, but it irritates me when opportunistic wankers like this try to make such a fuss about things they have no right to.

To be honest I’m at a bit of a loss about what to say about the Tokyo Paralympic Opening Ceremony. While there were one or two details which caught my eye and which I now want to find out more about, such as the Japanese Para-Ensemble (I’ve forgotten their actual title, but it was basically a Japanese paraorchestra) there wasn’t that much to get my teeth into. As with Tokyo’s olympic opening ceremony, it was very paired down and low key. To be honest I didn’t really get all that stuff about the aeroplane with one wing: I found it childish, saccharine and predictable. The inclusion of so many actors and musicians with disabilities, some obviously fairly profound, was probably the most noteworthy, praiseworthy aspect, but apart from that, there isn’t that much I feel I want to say about it. Mind you, I’m more enthusiastic to see how Beth Moulam, a young woman who I know from 1Voice, does in the Boccia tournament. Let’s wish her luck.

Absolutely nothing happened yesterday, I don’t have anything to report. I did not go for a nice, long exploratory walk up to Stratford; I did not start to explore the narrow back streets north of the olympic park. I didn’t begin to hear some very loud dance music, and following my ears, happen upon a street party of about twenty young people. I did not watch for a while before giving in to temptation and introducing myself. I did not then decide to go buy a few beers at a nearby off license, before spending the rest of the afternoon dancing and making friends (while being careful with my wallet etc.) I did not then get a taxi back at around six, my new mates having kindly payed the fare, very tired yet thrilled at having spent a wonderful afternoon letting my hair down.

No, no, no, that didn’t happen at all. These days it would have been silly if it did. Perish the thought! No need for my parents or anyone else to worry…

I realise this is hardly blogworthy, but today I heard that the next Bond film, No Time To Die, will at last premiere on 28th September. I’ve been waiting so long to watch this film that I had almost given up on it, but hopefully now I’ll be able to see it sometime this autumn. Mind you, I still expect it to suck: as Daniel Craig’s final film in the role, there simply isn’t the motivation to do a good job that there was with films like Casino Royale and Skyfall. Rather, the producers will already be looking ahead to casting a new actor and giving the franchise a fresh start. There is, of course, already a huge amount of speculation online about who will play 007 next. That aside, I’m still really looking forward to watching No Time To Die – good or bad, I think we could all do with a bit of James Bond escapism right now.

Three or four times over the last few months, I’ve had some trouble from some local school kids: two or three boys, who can’t be more than fifteen, see me coming along the road and think it’s funny to try to wind me up. They call me names and mock me, which inevitably gets me going. I know I should try to ignore it, and that responding in any way will only encourage them, but it pisses me off that these snot-nosed kids think they have a right to make fun of me after all I have achieved. As I once wrote here, I feel very proud of myself and my disabled friends, and don’t see why I should be the object of some child’s mockery. What frustrates me even more, though, is that when I start to turn on my communication aid to try to talk to the boys civilly, they refuse to listen.

As I said, this has happened a few times from the same set of kids; the last time was a couple of weeks ago. Today, however, I was just heading up to Eltham when I saw a set of boys coming the other way, and I noticed myself automatically tense up and prepare for trouble. I wasn’t sure they were the same boys I got the flack from, but it was as if some switch inside me had been flipped: I felt my adrenalin start to flow and I started to feel angry.

In the end, of course, the boys just passed me without a word – they obviously weren’t the ones who had given me trouble. Thinking about it afterwards, though, it struck me as odd: why should just the sight of these young men have caused such a reaction in me? Why do I let it get to me like that, or why should I have reached a point where the sight of three boys caused such a reaction? Why did I assume I’d have trouble from a set of lads who, in the end, proved harmless?

For the first time in quite a while, I have a ‘what I did last night’ entry to write. Yesterday evening saw the first physical Charlton and Woolwich Free Film Festival meeting in well over two years. During the pandemic, we had been meeting over zoom of course, but last night was the first time the organisation comittee had actually got together in ages. The festival was cancelled last year, of course, so it felt great to meet up with those guys again. We met in the Bugle Horn in Charlton at about half seven, so I caught the bus there after dinner. Until now, plans for this year’s festival had taken place over email or zoom, so last night was just about finalising the arrangements for the screenings in September. My contribution this year will be a showing of Crip Camp, and I’m pleased to report that preparations for it seem to be going nicely. I’m pleased to report too that, despite the meeting taking place in a pub, I managed to stay off the booze, and was able to have a nice stroll home in my chair, getting in just after ten, having had a much overdue taste of normality.

This morning I went for a walk. It was just one of my usual little trundles over to Charlton, where I was hoping to speak to a couple of people about organisations for the film festival. It was just a typical morning for me in this vast, vibrant city. Yet I can’t help wondering, what if I wasn’t in London but Kabul today? I presume that there are just as many disabled people in Afghanistan as there are anywhere else. Here I am, living independently in one of the world’s great cities, receiving all the support I need and free to trundle in my powerchair. But what would life be like for me in Afghanistan, under a regime as oppressive as the Taliban? Would I be getting the support I need to live? What about the equipment?

Since the Taliban were deposed, living standards in Afghanistan had started to be brought into line with other modern states, and I presume that included rights and support for those of us with disabilities. With the religious nutters back in power, I fear that any such progress now stands to be stripped away. We know that the Taliban persecute disabled people, viewing us as useless and using us for suicide bombings. Whatever the rights and wrongs were of going into Afghanistan in the first place, having spent twenty years helping it develop, hopefully into a modern, functioning democracy, surely we can’t now just abandon it.

I know this sort of entry is slightly lazy blogging, but I really couldn’t put it better:

I know that war must always be avoided, and that violence is nothing to be relished, but I really think the US and UK must now go back into Afghanistan. I’m no military analyst, of course, but looking at the pictures we’re receiving, and knowing what we know about the Taliban, surely we can’t abandon the country to that bunch of religious nutcases. We can debate whether America and it’s allies were right to pull out of Afghanistan in the first place all we want (and I note that Trump is now trying to pin the blame for the current situation on Biden, when it was he who initiated the withdrawal to begin with), but the fact remains, surely we can’t let the country be dragged back to how it was. Surely we can’t let these men re-impose their medieval views, robbing women and girls of their rights, beheading anybody who questions them. I’m not saying I know the answer – another full-scale invasion would obviously be absurd. Yet surely we bear some responsibility for what happens there, having invaded twenty years ago. Afghanistan has a right to flourish and prosper like every other country, not get dragged back into a religious dark age.

I’ve written on here before about how I view religion as a negative, oppressive force which ought to be done away with. In the case of christianity, pastors and preachers use a set of bronze age myths, combined with a promise of a pleasant afterlife, to endow theirselves with a form of unearned political and social authority: “Listen to me and you’ll go to heaven.” Last night we had news of the most horrific mass shooting in years. This morning, however, I saw various religious figures inviting people to find solace over the atrocity in religion: they were insisting that we “pray for the victims” and that we must all “have faith”. To be honest, I found reading that nothing less than sickening. They ask us to find comfort in a god which, if he existed, would presumably have the power to stop such horror. Leaving such irrefutable logic aside, however, these religious figures were effectively trying to use last night’s tragedy to reinforce their social authority. I must say I find that very perverse indeed. If nobody believed the fairy tales they tell us, these bishops etc would be of no higher status than anyone else, much less get invited onto breakfast news or sit in the House of Lords. They therefore have a vested interest in insisting that we all believe in a god which cannot possibly exist, and in using horrific events like yesterday’s as a means to reinforce our social indoctrination. Note how quickly these religious figures jumped at the opportunity to use this shooting to their own ends? Does anyone else find that disturbing?

I’m still a big fan of The Cat Empire. If you want to listen to one of their newest tracks, uploaded to Youtube just a few hours ago, check this out. I don’t know why, but something about their music always puts me in the mood for a party.

I have just come across something very interesting indeed, to me at least. I still have an odd interest in the Olympics, and the ceremonies in particular. It fascinates me how each city in turn uses such ceremonies to show itself off to the world. This probably stems, in part, from my love of travelling and exploring different places and cultures, as well as from my interest in Walter Benjamin from a cultural studies perspective. I like how in a way these ceremonies can be read as artistic texts, like plays, books or films, but on a far greater, international scale, with cities, countries and governments spending fortunes on finding their own way to present their selfs to the rest of the world.

This morning I began to wonder how Paris was doing in it’s preparations for it’s opening ceremony in three years’ time, so naturally I googled it, and came across this. Fascinatingly, our Parisian friends have decided to adopt a completely new format for the show, not just confined to one stadium as previous opening and closing ceremonies have been, but performed throughout the city. I think that’s a very interesting development indeed, and there is a lot you can read into it.

The french, being french, obviously take a lot of pride in their capital; they are bouncing at the opportunity to show it off to the world. It is indeed an extremely beautiful city. By taking the ceremony out of the stadium, they are making the city itself the focus of the event. Of course, London 2012’s opening ceremony had two or three films which cut away from the stadium, most notably my favourite; yet most of the action centred around the stadium up in Stratford. I get the impression that what paris is planning is on a far greater scale. The focus of the event will not just be one place, one stadium, but encompass the city so that Paris itself becomes the stage. I get the impression that what is being planned there is a complete departure from anything we have seen before, designed to put an entire city on display as far as possible. The event will take place across the city, so that the audience get a taste for it’s culture, architecture and history. I must say that the prospect of that, done over a city as aesthetically gorgeous as Paris, intrigues me, (although they’ll really have to pull the stops out to beat 007 meeting the Queen).

Needless to say, this was provoked by my experiences today, but has been brewing in my mind for some time.

Today I would just like to reiterate what I wrote on this day last year here. It’s my brother Mark’s birthday again. He has asked me not to tell everyone how old he is, so today I’ll just wish him a great day, and say that I’m thinking of him, Kat, my nephew and niece. It has been far too long since I saw Mark and his family (or Luke and Yan, for that matter) in person, and I really hope that, once this covid nightmare is over, we can all get together for a great big family get together. Frankly, I think we could all do with one.

I decided to do a bit of an experiment yesterday, just to see what would happen. I’m still relishing having my blog archive restored, so on facebook I asked my friends to choose random dates over the last decade. I would then see if I could find the blog entry I posted on that date, and pop the link under my friend’s reply on facebook.

I was thrilled to see that it went rather well: I got seven or eight responses, and in all but two I was able to find a corresponding entry. For those I didn’t – well, I have to have some days off – I posted the link to the entry I’d written the day before or after the requested date. I think that’s quite an achievement. After all, there can’t be many other personal blogs which have been updated so regularly for so long (I know other people have more important things to do, such as jobs, but let’s leave that aside for now). Also, in the entries I found, I made the effort to restore any links and pictures which were missing, so it was a way to help with my ongoing archive restoration project.

I take a lot of pride in my blog and keeping it up; I see it as my primary output as a writer. The fact that my experiment went so well thrills me, as it demonstrates that I can keep something up if I put my mind to it. But I’d like to keep it going, just as a way of going back and restoring missing links etc. So, dates please?

I’ve never had much of a liking for golf. If you ask me, it ruins a perfectly good landscape by drilling holes into it and letting men with nothing better to do walk around trying to hit balls into them. Golf balls, on the other hand, can have far better uses. Back at school, my classmates who used powerchairs used to replace the nub of their controllers with a golf ball with a hole drilled into it. This used to make them easier and more comfortable to control. I think Alan, the guy who looked after the chairs at my special school, did the drilling.

Since I started to regularly use powerchairs to get around, of course, I’ve done the same. It certainly feels better on your hand when you’re getting around. The only problem is, the golf ball doesn’t always stay stuck to the bar attaching it to the chair. Mine have a nasty tendency to come loose and fly off. Yesterday, for instance, I was trundling down a nearby hill when my golf ball did just that, and I didn’t see where the bloody thing rolled. I was left to wheel home with a naked control bar – not very comfortable.

Now, the issue is not getting another golf ball – I already have a box full, bought from a local sports store. The problem I now have is finding someone with the right drill to make the right sized hole.

Everyone is probably expecting me a say what I thought of the closing ceremony in Tokyo today, given my fixation with such events. To be honest though, I don’t have much to say about it. It was pretty dul, with no stand out moments or anything to get my juices going. I was so underwhelmed by it that I decided to go for a walk after it, to see whether I could think of something to write about it. I went on one of my favourite routes, into Greenwich Park. There, though, I happened upon something rather cool: a band was playing on the old bandstand, and a rock band at that. They were bashing out the kind of classic rock themes which I sort of have a soft spot for, so I changed course to take a look.

I got there to find about five fairly aged men playing to a small yet growing audience. They weren’t that bad. The only problem was, it was about to chuck it down. After I had heard one song, it began to rain so heavily that I was forced to find shelter. Luckily the event organisers tent was nearby, and they kindly invited me to take cover with them. There, I was able to listen to the band play: while I can’t say they were perfect, it was still a pretty cool thing to find. In a way they reminded me of Lyn, and the kind of music she sometimes used to play. I found myself wondering what she would have said, had she been there. It was the kind of spontaneous musical happening which seemed to happen fairly regularly with L; I couldn’t help imagining her dancing in her powerchair alongside me.

Once the torrent had stopped, I went back out to the front so I could listen to and watch the group properly. I soon found myself in for a bit of a treat: they were skilfully playing the kind of rock classics i love, including Sweet Home Alabama about midway through their set – a song which never fails to get me dancing.

I stayed till the end of the show, the rain luckily not returning, before getting the bus back, classic rock anthems by the likes of Deep Purple thumping through my head. London had done it again: Tokyo may have been slightly underwhelming, but I was still glad to see London still has it’s surprises.

I have fallen into the habit of wearing my Charlton Athletic Football shirt every Saturday. I bought it a few years ago when my cricketing friend James and I were going to a match, and I suppose it helps me blend in to the local community. The thing is, I often forget I’m wearing it, and it has a tendency to cause some reactions – both positive and negative – from people I pass in the street. Today, for instance, I was over in Charlton to buy a couple of things from the chemist there, and random people kept cheering and whooping me. Despite the shirt, I don’t pay much attention to football, so I couldn’t tell you who Charlton are playing, how they are doing or whatever; yet people seem to assume I know, as if I’m a member of a club. Once or twice in the past I’ve been shouted at just for wearing the shirt, and it has taken me a few moments to work out why I’m receiving random abuse: Charlton must have beaten whatever team they supported. On the whole, though, the shirt helps me feel like a real south Londoner, although I have to be careful when I go close to Millwall fans.

I have not seen a South Park episode in ages, but used to be into it when it first hit the air. It seemed to push the boundaries of what is acceptable on tv more than any other program. I had assumed it had run it’s course. However, I just came across this on the beeb’s website. It would seem that Kenny, Cartman et al are making quite a comeback. “The creators of the South Park cartoons have signed a $900m (£646m) deal with US media giant ViacomCBS. The agreement will see Trey Parker and Matt Stone make new South Park episodes for the Comedy Central network.” It remains to be seen, of course, whether the new episodes are worth watching, especially since it just became pointlessly crass towards the end of it’s original run. But with six new seasons and fourteen films in the works, this must be something to look forward to, particularly given the amount of money going into it. Besides, I think we could all do with some juvenile obscenity these days.