I just came across something truly heartwarming on Facebook which I think deserves noting. I’m a member of several disability and cp-related Facebook groups. A few days ago on one of them, I saw a post by a young man explaining that he had broken the wheel of his rolator walking frame and couldn’t afford to have it repaired. As such the Man United supporter was stuck at home. I couldn’t do much to help other than suggest he contacted his social worker.

Well, this morning a picture appeared on the same facebook group of the young man with a brand new red walking frame. Someone had apparently seen his facebook post and bought it for him. It really is heartwarming to see that social media has the power to do things like that, especially these days when society seems so fractured. Indeed, if social services did it’s job properly in the first place, such acts of online charity, incredible though they are, wouldn’t be necessary.

All I can say in response to this is, ”Where can I get one of those powerchairs?” The land speed record for an electric wheelchair has been broken by a guy with Motor Neurone Disease: ”Jason Liversidge, who has motor neurone disease, reached nearly 67mph (108km/h) at Elvington Airfield, near York. The father of two, from Rise in East Yorkshire, had been aiming for the record for about three years. The world speed record for an electric all-terrain mobility vehicle was previously 62mph.” I’ll tell you now, 8mph feels fast in a powerchair, so seventy would be scary. Mind you, it would make the trip to Tesco and back a bit quicker.

Say that you’re a production executive at a big media company. Due to the pandemic, audiences are thirsty for new, interesting things, but the media landscape is largely stagnating due to the problems associated with filming new things at the moment. People are getting bored of watching repeats, so what do you do? Easy: just recomission a classic satirical show from the eighties which used puppets to make fun of current political events. That way, no actors need to risk their lives, but not only does it satisfy an audience’s need to poke fun at the current political farce, it also appeals to their sense of nostalgia.

To be honest I was never into Spitting Image; I was too young to appreciate political satire when it first aired in the eighties. My only real contact with it was when my brother Mark played The Chicken Song on his ghetto blaster, but even then I didn’t realise where it came from. Yet it’s return to screens, albeit online ones, this Autumn seems very timely: when you think about it, it’s the perfect show for these crazy times, with politics more farcical and suited for satire than ever, but with no actual actors involved. Of course, it remains to be seen how well the new series goes down – there have been attempts to revive it before – but personally I have high hopes.

Truth be told, I’m not completely sure what to make of this news that the producers of the Simpsons have elected to recast the voice of Homer’s friend Carl so that he’s voiced by a black man. On the one hand, I can certainly see where they’re coming from: of course black characters ought to be portrayed by black actors, just as disabled characters should be played by disabled people. It applies to any minority, and lends a degree of authenticity to a role. On the other hand, does it matter as much when dealing with cartoons? Audiences don’t actually see actors, just hear their voices, so does the same principal apply? In animation, just about anything can be anthropomorphised and given a voice, from mice to trains to toys: it’s up to an actor to step into a role. Given Carl has been voiced by Hank Azaria for thirty-odd years, moreover, won’t audiences notice the change? It’s a toughie.

With a second Scottish independence referendum now looking more and more likely, and support for a united Ireland growing, both due to Brexit, today we begin to wonder how long it will be before Kent declares itself independent from the UK. Quite unbelievably, the Outists are now saying that there will now need to be a border around Kent in order to control customs to and from the EU. Can things get any sillier? If that happens, I reckon it won’t be long before Kent starts it’s own independence movement. After all, in the so-called dark ages, Kent was it’s own kingdom; things are now so insane that, if this border is established, it won’t take much for some kind of Kentish independence movement to start to appear. If Brexit goes as catastrophically as any sensible person thinks it will, it could well motivate Kent even further to leave the UK and rejoin the EU on it’s own, benefitting from the trade through it’s ports as well as the Channel Tunnel. How amusing would that be? And the crazy thing is, it might not be that far fetched.

Yesterday NASA announced plans to send people back to the moon for the first time since the seventies. Ordinarily, I’d be bouncing up and down with excitement at such news: I’m all for anything that advances humanity’s exploration of space. These days though, I can’t help suspecting that this is less about science and more about geopolitics. With China having announced it’s own plans to send people to the lunar surface, America seems desperate to retain – or reclaim – what it seems to feel as it’s inherent position as the world’s leading spacefaring nation. The position the US once had, or thought it had, as the most advanced nation on earth is slipping. It assumed the cosmos was theirs alone for the taking – we can see that in it’s plans to mine the moon, as if it automatically belonged to America. The fact that other nations are catching up and possibly overtaking America is why it now seems desperate to repeat it’s great triumphs of fifty years ago. Thus while I’m all for the exploration of the final frontier, I can’t help feeling this has more to do with a once great nation trying to restore its prominence.

Saint Aigur Blue Cheese and Jam (preferably my mum’s home made strawberry jam) spread in equal measure on toast may sound a bit weird, but as I learned this morning, it’s absolutely delicious. I’ve seen serkan making it for himself a couple of times, and today curiosity got the better of me. He says it’s his own invention. What at first glance might seem like a very strange combination actually goes together really well, the sweetness of the jam offsetting the musky bitterness of the cheese. I dare you to try it.

Compared with London, Congleton is a small, dull place; so why am I craving once again strolling around it in my powerchair? I have now lived in the capitol for over ten years, and I still love it for it’s energy and vibrancy. I love the feeling of being in a world city, one of humanity’s major cultural hubs. Yet recently I’ve been thinking about the small Cheshire town where I grew up. I’ve been back there a few times since I moved to london, of course, visiting my parents; yet I didn’t take my powerchair with me, so I couldn’t wander around the town as I once did.

I think that’s what I’m missing. It’s not that there’s much to see, especially compared to the metropolis: there’s just something about following the roads, lanes and paths I have known since infancy which I find myself craving. I used to go out for hours in my powerchair, to the town centre or through the park, where I still remember being pushed on the swings as a child. Either that or up the lanes between the fields towards Swettenham, trundling along listening to the birds. These days I can go to Eltham or Woolwich or Greenwich, or anywhere in this vast urban expanse; yet there’s something about trundling about that quiet northern town surrounded by countryside which I’m starting to crave. Something about those streets which I once knew so well, which I have so many memories of, but which I last went down a lifetime ago.

I’m obviously just feeling nostalgic. Many people are, these days: this year has been so relentlessly depressing that we all want to return to happier times. All the same, I hope that, soon enough, perhaps next spring, I’ll find myself heading in my chair down Rood Hill or through Congleton Town Centre, trying to spot anything or anyone I recognise. I will probably be feeling rather snooty and superior about now being a Londoner, but beneath that there will be a great deal of affection. I may have changed a great deal over the last decade as I have grown used to the cut and thrust, the speed and noise of life in a great metropolis; but I will always be from that small town up in Cheshire, surrounded by fields.

The details are fairly complex so I better not try to summarise them here, but I want to flag this quite important Disability News Service article up. As I touched upon a few days ago, the new Coronavirus Act looks like it is going to have a lot of worrying consequences for people with disabilities. While as the article says, it is up to individual county councils whether to trigger the particular ‘easements’ which would threaten peoples’ right to social care, people are now nonetheless very, very worried about now suddenly having their support taken away.

To be honest I hadn’t heard of Ruth Bader Ginsburg before this morning, but her sad death has made me aware of the loss of a very important figure in American politics. From what I’m now hearing, this news should concern us all. Ginsburg was a liberal, a champion of women’s and minority rights; one of the few remaining figures tethering American politics to any form of sanity. If she is now replaced, as now seems likely, with a far more right wing Supreme Court Judge, it would only accelerate America’s drift towards the right. Under Trump, it is already frighteningly conservative as it is, with some even calling his perverse plans for the teaching of a one sided view of American history fascist. If Bader Ginsburg is replaced with someone as reactionary, intolerant and stupid as trump, one who is likely to side with him over any election dispute, the world’s foremost economy would effectively have become a fascist state. My, what truly frightening times we live in.

I don’t know about anyone else, but I’ve been watching The Joy of Painting quite a bit recently. The classic series from 1985 is being repeated every evening on BBC Four. There’s something enormously therapeutic and relaxing in watching a weird, but obviously very talented, American guy create a painting from scratch. Of course, the program was designed to teach people various techniques of landscape painting, but given I can barely hold a paintbrush let alone replicate anything the great Bob Ross shows us, I think there is something else in this television show which fascinates me. There is something about watching an image being created from a blank screen over half an hour which is both relaxing and compelling. The pictures Ross creates are usually quite beautiful and evocative. Who knows whether a program like that could be commissioned these days, but in repeating them I suspect BBC Four is trying to tell us all to chill out a bit.

This just about sums up the utter stupidity of Brexit.

At PMQs earlier today, the new Lib Dem leader Ed Davey told Bojo (and the country) how new Coronavirus legislation is unfairly impacting people with disabilities. Unfortunately the exchange, as well as Johnson’s reply, was fairly vague, so it isn’t clear what impact Davey thinks the new Coronavirus Act will have, but he seemed to imply that people’s ability to get their care needs assessed will be affected. Getting such an assessment is hard enough these days as it is, so this could mean a lot of trouble for a lot of people. From what I’ve read, though, it will also remove local social services’s duty of care for disabled people, effectively undoing whatever progress we have made towards independence and equality over the last forty years. Councils will no longer be legally required to provide support for people like me to live independently. Typically, of course, the snivelling little p’tahk we currently call the Prime Minister just waved the question airily away, saying he’ll write to the Lib Dem leader, obviously indicating he doesn’t fully understand the implications of his own legislation.

I think this may well be worth a watch. BBC America is going to screen a series of monologues by and about disabled people. Fronted by Mat Frasier, Crip Tales will apparently be a series of fifteen minute shorts in which a person with a disability talks about life from their perspective. That certainly sounds interesting, although I suspect they’ll have to be very careful not to let it cross the line into either self pity or self parody.

At least today we have some incredible news to take our minds off all the other awful stuff happening on planet earth: scientists have detected phosphene in the atmosphere of Venus. They say it may be evidence of life there. On earth, the gas is associated with biological processes. I find that very exciting indeed. A few weeks ago, I heard similar speculations about Pluto, so it’s starting to look like life, in all kinds of forms, may be fairly abundant in our solar system. If that is true, think of the implications for the galaxy, and indeed the universe: could it be that the cosmos is, in fact, teaming with life?

What should you do when one of your old special school friends starts to write nonsense on their Facebook page about how we should end social distancing, stop testing for coronavirus, and about how more people will die from suicide than covid this winter if things don’t go back to normal? Do you try to convince them that they’re wrong, potentially upsetting them? Or do you just leave them be? They have obviously been hooked by one of the many lies and conspiracy theories now spreading rampantly across the web. The problem is, after over six months of social distancing etc, you can see how tosh like this might start to appeal to people, especially if they aren’t so familiar with the actual facts. But to let rubbish like this go unchecked and unchallenged surely risks it spreading, which in turn will obviously lead to the virus spreading more too.

I just got in from my daily stroll. It’s quite a nice day, so I thought I’d take myself to woolwich to look at the river. The riverside there is developing quickly, and apparently hopes to one day compete with The South Bank as an arts/cultural centre. On my way there, though, I passed through General Gordon Square, and was astonished to find a carnival in full swing. There were stalls, rides, samba bands – the lot. I was flabergasted I must say – had nobody there been told about the pandemic? Very few people there were wearing masks. I don’t want to sound like a spoil sport, but given that we had to cancel the local film festival, it seemed rather unfair.

I didn’t stay long before rolling on, trying not to get within two metres of anyone there. It makes you worry, though: with the R rate rising again, and events like that cropping up more and more, could a second lockdown now be necessary?

I just came across something very interesting indeed on my friend Mark Rowland’s facebook page. Mark was an old friend of Lyn’s from long before I met her. He’s a musician who participated in the Drake Music Project, which twenty one years ago appeared on the Jools Holland show as part of the Edinburgh Festival. As you can see, the video is a quite fascinating insight into disability music at that time; Adele Drake’s project was quite groundbreaking in finding ways for musicians with disabilities to make music. This short film, in a way, shows the very beginnings of a revolution which would eventually lead to things like the British Paraorchestra.

On Facebook Mark writes, ”I think that this concert showed true diversity of true musicianship with disabilities and able-bodied playing on a stage. I have not seen that since really. I think that is sad…” It is certainly true that concerts like this gave the wider audiences their first glimpses of what guys like Mark and Lyn are capable of; yet, rather than being a one-off, this concert was the beginning of something incredible. It may have been the first time musicians with disabilities were showcased on national TV, vintage computers and all, but things like this open doors to bigger, grander things (check this out for one). Thus I think this is a pretty awesome glimpse into the history of disability music.

What sad news to hear that Dame Diana Rigg has passed away today. On Her Majesty’s Secret Service is still one of my favourite Bond films, and Rigg’s portrayal of Tracey – loyal to Bond, yet very  much his equal – helped make that film the masterpiece it is. Yet that was just one performance of a great many which secured Rigg’s place among cinema’s greatest actors. Alas, film has lost yet another great from it’s Golden Age.

While I don’t think I can expand much upon it since I haven’t seen the films it references, I think this Guardian piece is definitely worth a read. Science fiction, it argues, is getting ‘serious’. That is, there is a wave of new films about time travel which go to some effort to engage with the philosophical ideas underpinning the notion. We therefore see things such as characters trying to get to grips with the grandfather paradox, and referencing thinkers like Nietzsche. As the article itself says, that sort of stuff can get rather heavy and off-putting pretty quickly, but I think it’s great to see the return of this kind of cerebral sci-fi, unafraid to play with difficult ideas and stretch audiences a bit. These days, there’s so much action-based, comic-book–derived dross saturating the genre, I think something a bit heavier would be quite welcome.

Sorry my blogging has been a bit patchy lately. I take quite a bit of pride in the fact that I keep my blog updated. I blog every day if I can. Recently, though, the situation with my health has meant that my blog has taken a back seat: it’s rather hard to find a subject and write a blog entry about it when it feels like there is a great big hole in your tongue. I’m pleased to report, though, that I’m on the mend: while my last full night’s sleep was about two weeks ago. I can feel my mouth returning to normal. Perhaps soon I’ll be able to concentrate on other, more interesting, things, rather than moping around feeling sorry for myself.

My parents came to visit yesterday. It was the first time we had physically seen eachother for over six months, so it was great to at last have their company. We just spent three or four hours having coffee before going up to Eltham Palace for a walk. Mum and dad couldn’t stay too long before needing to get back to north London – they were concerned about the tube, and how few people were wearing masks. Nonetheless it felt great to see them: I’m still quite close to my parents, and being able to catch up with them physically felt good. It felt odd not to be able to cuddle them – it seems this pandemic has ruled out even simple, natural things such as hugging one’s parents – but let’s hope that that situation changes soon.

=I certainly agree that our new trade envoy to Australia should not be a climate-change denying homophobe. We already have too many bigoted crackpots running the country, and according to this, I am not alone. My all-time favourite wizard, Sir Ian McKellen, has joined the campaign to oppose Tony Abbott becoming UK trade envoy. ”Campaigners including Sir Ian McKellen today sent an open letter to the Government claiming that former Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott is unfit to be a UK trade envoy…The letter, which has also been signed by former Doctor Who boss Russell T Davies and activist Lord Cashman, says: “This is a man who described himself as ‘threatened by homosexuality’, and vigorously campaigned against the ultimately successful referendum in Australia to allow same-sex couples to marry.” Surely the last thing the country needs right now is a bigot like that becoming involved in it’s international affairs. Mind you, one must also point out that the only reason we need to appoint a new trade envoy to Australia in the first place is because we’re leaving the EU. Now we need to make our own trade arrangements, guided by the Tories there is room for stuff like this to come into the picture. Another oh so glorious consequence of Brexit.

I suppose I’m feeling pretty  sorry for myself at the moment. I have quite painful mouth ulcers, so I have not been sleeping well at all. The damn things make my whole body tense up in periods of intense tongue pain where my body becomes momentarily useless. The sooner my mouth has  healed, the better. Another consequence of the ulcers is that it make it nigh-on impossible to suck through a straw, so drinking anything  has become rather excruciating. I have been becoming more and more frustrated, until a few moments ago. Just now, getting rather pissed off that I couldn’t enjoy my morning coffee, I had an idea: years ago,  when I was growing  up, my mum used   to help me to drink by holding a teatowel under my chin and putting the cup up to my mouth. I drank like that throughout my childhood, but the method became redundant once I started to use straws. Obviously straws meant I could be more independent. Today,  however, straws getting nowhere, I thought it might be time to revive it.

The results, needless to say, were mixed: I managed to at last get a good quantity of coffee drunk; but Serkan quickly realised that it would be wise for him to put a pair of rubber  gloves on, and let’s just say that  it’s probably a good thing that I was about to have a shower.

Apparently, the right-wingers are now complaining that BBC comedy has got too much of a left wing bias. Too many jokes are  being told about things like Brexit and recent government cock-ups. ”Tim Davie, the new director-general of the BBC, is reportedly planning to tackle perceived “left-wing bias” in the corporation’s comedy sector. Mr Davie’s first speech in his new position on Thursday will reveal plans to restore “trust and confidence” in the BBC, according to The Daily Telegraph. There could be an expectation of BBC programme-makers to find a more “balanced” list of satirical targets for comedians, as opposed to jokes that consistently take aim at the Conservatives.”

Is it me, or does that sound like they’re feeling awkward about having the piss taken out of them:  The Tories know everything’s  going catastrophically wrong, and they know it’s their own fault;  but like a toff  who has just poured white paint all over his best suit in front of a packed pub, desperate to salvage a bit of self respect, all they can do is shout ”Stop laughing!” The fact that they’re clearly feeling so got at is simply  a sign of just how badly things are going.

I’m not really going to say much about this because it’s quite miserable, but last  night I had the crappest night’s sleep ever. I barely got a wink. I went to bed about ten thirty, needing a pee, but after that my body simply wouldn’t  stay still – I just couldn’t relax. The way I kept moving  caused me to panic, just making matters worse. That lead to hours of tossing and turning, getting up to use my computer  and going back to bed. It was horrible. In the end I asked Serkan to call 111, mostly out of desperation, but that did n’t help much. In the end I got a couple of hours at about four, before the doctor from 111 arrived and woke us both up again. Needless to say I’m currently knackered, and really worried the same thing will happen tonight. I’m curious, though: has anyone else with Athetoid Cerebral Palsy had this problem?

You don’t have to be Roland barthes or Ferdinand de Sasseur to decode this:

Yesterday was a bit of a tough day. I caught something, probably on Wednesday, possibly in the pub. I got diarrhoea almost instantly, and struggled to sleep that night. Things got worse and  worse, so that yesterday I could hardly  do  anything. I’m bloody fortunate Serkan is currently living with me to help me sort stuff out. I was so knackered from not sleeping  that  I could barely move, and controlling my body seemed more  difficult.

Today, though, with the help of a no-fat diet and some pills from the chemist, I feel much better. It was probably just one of those short term, 48 or 72-hour bugs which the body fights of quite quickly. Nonetheless, it was quite an unpleasant experience which I suppose teaches me to be a bit more cautious when going to the pub.

I think I ought to just flag this blog entry by my old Onevoice colleague Beth Moulam up. In it, she writes in some detail about how she organises her personal care. She and her mum run it rather like a company, appointing Team leaders who schedule who does what when. I must say my approach to care is rather  less formal and more relaxed: I just email or message my PAs to see who can do what when. I find it works, although I can see a day coming when  I need to adopt  a stricter approach.

Needless to say, I was rather disappointed in the outcome of the cricket yesterday: after reaching that huge total on Saturday and then making India follow on, England  should have won easily. Unfortunately the weather had other ideas. We should now all be enjoying warm August sun, but instead we had a torrential storm. When you recall that just three or four weeks ago, we were all complaining about how unusually hot it was, it’s hard not to get the impression that something very, very strange is happening with our weather.

It’s becoming clearer and clearer that global warming is now a reality, the effects of which go far beyond test matches. We are now seeing exactly the kind of extreme weather the scientists predicted.  More carbon in the atmosphere means more energy  in the weather system, resulting in everything up there becoming more extreme (something like that, anyway). But instead of trying to do something about it, the present leader of the world’s biggest economy refuses to admit it is even happening. As Noam Chomsky explains here,  the way in which Trump  and others carry  on polluting the atmosphere, prioritising their  own money making over the need  to repair the environment, make them the most dangerous people ever. The Greenland ice sheet is shrinking, but Trump authorises oil drilling in nature reserves.

Something must be done, surely. Donald Trump isn’t just a danger to America  but the whole world; he embarrasses all humanity with  his greed and arrogance.   We should all be very concerned indeed about what happens there in November; the world cannot afford four more years of this self serving piece of shit in the  White House. Yet with Trump openly admitting that he won’t accept any result other than his victory, this just isn’t cricket.

Amazing fact  of the day: after about four months of living with me,  Serkan knows two words of Klingon – Qa’pla and P’tahk – and now uses them daily, yet has never seen an episode of Star Trek in his life, and wouldn’t know a bat’leth from a bar of gold pressed latinum. He probably just picked the words up after hearing me use  them.  Maybe next I’ll try to teach him some Elvish.

I had quite a weird but interesting thought earlier. For some reason, I was thinking about American wrestling, and it’s strange, real-yet-fake relationship to reality. It’s clearly a type of performance, but claims to be real; it’s obviously pantomimic, but seems to  take itself  deadly seriously. The people who watch and follow it, especially in America, seem to see it as valid as any other sport, and insist that  what they are viewing isn’t a pre-planned, convoluted live action punch and Judy show but real. That implies a cultural suspension of disbelief, where an entire group of people actively chooses not to believe  what is in front of them in favour of an obvious fiction. I wonder: can we see the same culture in supporters of Donald Trump? There too we see the same absolute refusal to believe in what everyone else is  obvious, and the same ultra-masculine, violent, angry approach to reality which seems to prise bravado over substance.  I wonder if the  type of culture which underpins American wrestling can be seen  in support for Trump. Could one somehow explain the other? After all, Trump himself appeared in an episode of wrestling, and  behaves almost like a wrestler, projecting an image of himself onto the world full of  bluster and boastfulness, yet which is ultimately a fiction. I must say I find it very strange indeed, and the way it seems to prise violence and confrontation over respectful, nonviolent approaches to life quite worrying.

I dreamt about Lyn’s house last night, empty and deserted. In the dream I remember wanting Lyn to come back but knowing she couldn’t. I woke up  and almost burst into tears.

I just came back from a nice long stroll along the Thames and up through Greenwich. I now love this city, it’s culture, and how it feels different  from place to place. Yet it hurts to know the person who introduced me to this wonderful metropolis is no longer here. I keep thinking about that bungalow  in Charlton where  I lived for almost ten years with the most wonderful person I’ll ever meet, now empty and waiting for it’s next tenant. I’m not pretending we hadn’t spit up, but part  of me  feels that Lyn should still be there, still getting up late, still making music and DJing her radio station. I thought I’d be popping over to visit her for years. The knowledge  that she isn’t there any more feels utterly wrong; it feels like an era has ended permanently and with a devastating, heartbreaking finality. No more music, no more slurping coffee through straws; no more watching Dom, Mitch or Paulo  slowly feed Lyn her dinner, before she expertly pilots her wheelchair backwards with one foot into her studio. No more marvelling as Lyn controls her Ipad with her nose better than most people can with their fingers. No more watching the most patient, incredible, remarkable person I’ll ever know live her life on her own terms, overcoming barriers many  others would have thought impenetrable.

A new person will soon move in, and in a way that bungalow will become somewhere different, as if all the memories of the countless wonderful  things which happened there  will somehow be erased. Or that’s how it feels to me, and that hurts. That feeling frankly hurts more – far, far more – than anything I have ever felt before. That’s what I dreamt of last night: the thought of that empty house utterly haunts me, and I think it will for a very,  very long time.

I found another cool pub yesterday, or rather the day before. On thursday I decided to do a little research into the racist moron on the tube train, and found out he was called Sammy Steele and that he lived in Mottingham. Checking the map, I found that  isn’t far from Eltham, so I decided a roll was in order. It is a nice, leafy suburb of well maintained houses: to get there I needed to go down Court Road, which is lined with very expensive looking houses indeed. There, I just had a little look around,  before popping into a pub for a coffee and heading home.

The Prince of Wales, Mottingham was nice and spacious with friendly barstaff. I got chatting to  the barlady, and saw they were showing the cricket. Being Thursday, it must have been a  repeat, so yesterday afternoon I headed back there to see if I could watch any of this week’s test. It had been a bit of a busy lunchtime being interviewed over Zoom by the guys at GAD – more on that soon – so a bit of chill time was in order. I got there at about half three, got out of my chair, and spent the rest of the day sipping beer watching some outstanding cricket.

The place was a bit more full than the day before, and I must say that over the course of the afternoon I overheard some of the other men in there spouting the type of moronic, racist bollocks we hear from the guy on the train. I got  so uncomfortable at one point that I almost left. A bald man was sitting with them, who turned  out to be one of the bar staff, possibly the owner. I spoke to him about it shortly after, explaining my views, and he assured me it was just banter. Yet we hear that type of highly provocative banter all over the place these days, spewn by cocky, working class men. They see theirselves as the ones being discriminated against while all the members of minorities get all the privileges. It is too easy to dismiss such ideas as absurd. What  concerns me is the growing social tensions underlying them.  Perhaps it is in such alcohol-fuelled gatherings, with poorly educated, working class men bouncing increasingly xenophobic ideas off eachother in pubs, that we see the origins of the  type of cocky dickhead we see getting knocked out on that tube train.

Today might be a good day to put something right which has been hanging over me for the past twenty years. It’s kind of a confession concerning my GCSE maths. I may have mentioned on my blog a while ago that I had to  resit my maths GCSE because I didn’t get a C on my first attempt. That was because I was put in the lower tier, where the maximum you could get was a D. That, I want to now admit, was my fault. Mr. Oliver, my maths teacher  at Hebden Green, was initially going to put me in the upper tier (I forget the correct terminology, but you know what  I mean) which would mean I could get the standard five C’s. But lazy idiot that I was, I asked him to put me in the lower category.  At the time,  I was also doing A-level English, so I didn’t want to study maths as hard as I should have. That stupid decision, which I haven’t told anyone about, meant my parents hired a private tutor, Mr. Phillips, to make sure I got a C the next year.

The thing I feel most guilty  about was that this reflected badly on Mr. Oliver. He was  a good  teacher, and the fact I didn’t get the right grade  the first time around was my fault, not his. I was young (eighteen  or so) and stupid. That and the fact that I then started, a few years later, mouthing my head off on the web and in the press a few years later about how special schools failed students probably explains why Mr. Oliver seemed so furious with me when I once visited school  about three years after leaving, and hasn’t spoken to me ever since. I feel  bad because he was a  good man and great teacher, and I’d like to get back into contact with him, if only to apologise and put things right.

Unfortunately I got wind today that the Charlton and Woolwich Free Film Festival has had to be pretty much cancelled this year, obviously due to the pandemic. For the last few weeks  I had been meeting with the guys who usually organise it over Zoom to see what we could do. Needless to say, it was rather different to the  previous years’ meetings, held on the  second floor of Charlton House: while I wouldn’t say people lacked enthusiasm, I think we were all at a loss over how to solve the problems facing putting the  festival on this year. Over the last  few weeks it became clear that the only way anything was going to happen this year was if it was online. If you ask me, that misses the  point. The whole idea of a local film festival is that it’s local to a specific geographic area, organised and enjoyed by the people who live there. A film screened over  the web can be watched anywhere by anyone – it completely ruins the community aspect of the festival.

It’s  a shame. I’m now rather gutted that I didn’t make my usual effort to contribute last year due to going through my break up; my heart wasn’t in it. If I had known what was going to happen this year, perhaps I would have made more of an effort, even if it was just to suggest a film to screen. That’s why I was determined to contribute this time by getting Crip Camp screened. I’m now kicking myself for not putting the effort in  last year –  I feel like I  let the side down a  bit. But then, who could have known we would all now be facing a huge, devastating pandemic? And I suppose there’s always next year.

I just got back from a walk with Alistair up to Severndroog Castle. With Serkan still staying at my place, it’s good to keep in touch with my other PAs. Although I’ve now lived in Greenwich for over ten years, I had never been up there before. It’s a eighteenth century folly surrounded by ancient woodland. It was restored in 2014 and now houses  a coffee shop, unfortunately currently closed due to the virus. It’s a place full of history: what particularly caught my eye was the woods used to be a hideout for highwaymen, waiting to loot carriages going along nearby Shooters Hill. It’s now a quiet, peaceful place though, and it was great to just sit there for a while, in the peace of the trees overlooking the city, and talk.

I think we should be very concerned indeed about what we see in this video. I came across it late last night. In it, a racist halfwit is shown shouting his empty head off on a tube train. He obviously thinks highly  of himself, acting like cock of the walk. His fellow passengers tell him to shut up, but that only encourages him to spout more racist bile.  Things get so bad that a black  guy ends up punching the twit’s lights out.

While I admit that part of me thinks the racist p’tahk got what he deserved, we of course have to remember that  there is no place for  physical violence in society. The arrogant fool may have been asking it, acting like a big man simply because he was white, demanding that his racist views are now gaining validity and support; but being hit like that simply means he can now claim victimhood.  No doubt the scumbag will now sue TFL and claim to have been assaulted.

Moreover, what I find worrying is the clear yet growing social division underlying this video, with one group pitted against another: in a way, the other passengers on the train reflect as much hostility back onto the dickhead as he himself projected. Among some less well educated sectors of society, views like this are becoming popular, encouraged and given a type of credence by the right wing press and politicians: they allow the disenfranchised to feel powerful and superior. They lack the wealth and education of others, so fall back on their ethnicity as a source of pride. The problem is. when more educated, liberal people try to push back  against this trend, it only  opens the social divisions even further, and uneducated fools like this start claiming to be being oppressed by ‘elites’. That in turn ingrains their racist views even further.

The referendum in 2016 lifted the lid on this problem. Many people like this guy saw the Leave ‘win’ as giving  a green light to their views: as  they see it, the fact that they won means they were right all along, and others must now listen to their intolerent bile. That’s why we see them becoming more cocky, arrogant and self-assured. The problem is, this is more likely to enrage others, making incidents like the one in this video more likely.

To be quite honest, these days I wouldn’t be at all surprised if I came across a sign like this.

I was out and about yesterday afternoon, crossing the southern edge of Blackheath, when I got caught in an absolutely torrential downpour. Too late to  turn back, I decided to carry on up the hill towards Lee to try to find some shelter. There, I came across The Old Tigers head. Something about it instantly caught my eye: it seemed old and new at the same time. No doubt it’s name was a leftover from the british raj, and  the architecture looked victorian or even earlier;  yet, from the lights and music coming from within, I sensed it also had a modern, trendy feel to  it.

I decided to go in. Unfortunately both main  entrances had big steps up to them, but I caught the eye of the woman behind the bar, who let me in the back door. I was instantly taken by it: there were pool tables, a stage for bands, and two tv screens, one of which was showing the Cricket. More to the point, as soon as I was seated and had a beer on the way, The Chariot by The Cat Empire began to play on the  speakers, the first time I had heard  Cat Emp playing in such a place. I asked the barlady if she knew the song, and she did. This was obviously my type of pub.

Lee isn’t far away,  easily reachable in my powerchair, and with a short, direct bus back if need be. I   can certainly see myself going there  again, if just to investigate a bit more of the place’s history.