I was just down at Charlton Train station trying to get tickets for a trip John and I are taking to Oxford and Liverpool. It’s a small station with a single counter. I’m there  quite often these days, so the staff know me. It was going quite  routinely at first: the guy had come out to read what I wanted from my Ipad; he had just gone back behind the counter when something happened. I couldn’t  see what because he was behind the serving window, but through that  I saw his colleague come over and say his name. I was slightly confused – I thought he was  still processing my request. I waited a few moments, but then the colleague pulled down the window blind and I heard him calling an ambulance – the guy had had some kind of seizure.

I waited in the station for a while, unsure what to do, worried about the guy. The station was empty but for me. I thought about making suggestions, like to put the guy into the recovery position. The ambulance came and the medics went into the  staff area. Shortly after that I was asked to leave and go back tomorrow. I did and I will, but  it was rather scary.  I really hope the man is ok.

I think I should have stayed in Charlton yesterday; it probably wasn’t good for my heart. I had heard there was going to be a pro-Brexit protest in Westminster, along with a counter-demonstration, and the temptation  to go join the latter proved too strong. I  know everyone has a right to their views, but what is  now happening in this country must surely  be stopped, and those who would see Brexit pushed through in the name of nationalism must surely be countered.

I set off  up there after my weekly Skype with my parents, and took the Jubilee Line to Westminster. When I got there, there was no sign of any protest, so I  waited around a while. I first browsed the statues in Parliament Square, then went into  Whitehall. There I saw barricades erected and police gathering:  something was about to happen. I then  began to notice people carrying signs supporting  brexit,  and it soon  became clear that I had arrived at the wrong end of Whitehall. The Anti-Brexit march, I was told, was then in Trafalgar square.

I decided to stay where I was – perhaps I would learn something. That proved a bit of a mistake as pretty soon I was surrounded by people – bald thuggish men, mostly – carrying UKIP and Brexit signs. My heart began to race and I  began to get upset. I tried to talk to a few of them but that proved futile. In the end I swung round along the river to join the other protest.

This seemed quieter and more peaceful to me. There were also more nonwhite people there. On the other side of the barrier was a different kind of protest, made up of people who, like me, were appalled by what is going on. There was music followed by speeches, but then it disbanded – I had only caught the tail  end. It was then that I  had the stupid idea of going back  to the other protest, rather than  head home.

I don’t know why I did it. I wanted to talk to them, tell them why they are wrong, but I knew that I would only end up getting more pissed off.  I was,  however, able to establish a few things by watching that demo. I’m afraid to say that it only confirmed my opinion that brexit is  driven by nationalism, and that the people trying to push it through have no real understanding of what they’re advocating. I spoke to a few  of them, and their knowledge was very limited. It now seems to me that, rather than being a stereotype or assumption, the educational difference between Brexiteers and Remainers is very real and very stark. People there were deeply misguided and ill-informed. They did not seem to realise what they thought was an expression of national identity and pride was actually a scheme intended to transform the uk into an ultra-capitalist tax haven where human and consumer rights will be slowly whittled away.

It also reinforced my opinion that Outism is a far-right position. Most if not all of  the morons there were outright xenophobes, and the speeches I heard being given only confirmed that. One was an  utterly baseless diatribe about how climate change isn’t real, with nothing to do with  brexit. Hearing such rubbish spouted from that stage in order to brainwash those people even  further into fascism made  my blood boil.

What also struck me was  how pointless it was  too. These fools were demonstrating against May’s plan, which they saw as too light a brexit. Don’t they realise that it’s either that plan or no brexit. They were marching in aid of a nationalistic delusion. When you think  about it, the brexit they want isn’t going  to happen, so all that hate and anger was for nothing. It was totally unclear what they wanted or why, but they  were  clearly angry and frustrated.

And that is the dangerous thing. Yesterday in  Whitehall I saw two or three thousand people all feeling ignored and persecuted, all clearly  unable to properly understand what was going on. They feel disenfranchised and left behind by the contemporary multicultural world; a world which  has outgrown the simplistic  certainties of nation  and race – certainties they derive  a sense of belonging  from. Such people are therefore getting angrier and  angrier, not only in the UK but all over the world. Nationalism is on the rise again. I saw it firsthand yesterday in Whitehall, and it chilled my heart.

A while ago I wrote on here that I wanted to take  up psychology again. I think that is still the case. These days, I’m becoming more and more interested in mental  health. It is an area I know very little about, but as a writer and filmmaker I want to now start to articulate stories about  all kinds of disability,  including less obvious ones. Of course, I can go on telling the world what life is like for a guy  with cerebral palsy, but now I want to start exploring what life is like for people with types of disability which are less obvious. I’ve been conveying my thoughts,  feelings and experiences on my blog for the past fifteen years. I’ve also written a few scripts and made a few films. Yet it seems to me my type of disability is straightforward in that the problems I face are relatively obvious; I’ve also been lucky in that I have the ability to communicate my thoughts and experiences to the outside world. Now I want to give a hand to those who might not have that ability, or whose impairments are less obvious. If anything, people with mental health issues get even less representation in mainstream media than  those of us with physical disabilities. As I say, it’s an area I don’t know much about, but from what I’ve seen and read  so far it’s quite fascinating.

I just got back from quite an awesome event at the o2. Charlton Park Academy also house an organisation called Cenmac, which specialises in creating  and adapting technology to access education. Today to celebrate their fiftieth birthday, they were doing a screening of three films looking at what they do. A few days ago I got an email from the teacher I work with there, Kathryn, asking if they could also screen my 1000 Londoners film there today.

When I read that email it blew my socks off! As a filmmaker, the opportunity to get your work shown on the big screen in a proper cinema  must be seized and relished. I  also felt honoured that they chose to show my work beside theirs. I quickly dashed off the necessary emails  to make sure it could happen.

Heading up there on  the bus earlier today, I was a bundle of nerves. I was very excited, but was getting fretful something might go wrong. And it almost did: when I got up to cineworld at the o2 arena, Kathryn greeted me with the news that she had just been told that something  was wrong with the framerate of the copy of my  film Chocolate films had couriered across, and they wouldn’t be able to play it. Needless to  say, when I  heard that I was devastated.

I followed the crowd  into the screening room anyway. I recognised most of the  people there from the academy, but there were a few new faces – people to network with. Kathryn gave the opening address, and some of  the students did a welcome for the audience. The piece I was most  interested in, though, was a speech by a guy called Abdi, an AAC user with CP who has a Youtube channel with well over three thousand views, about the history of communications technology. It was witty and informative, and I was  struck by the idea of introducing myself to Abdi and perhaps creating something with him.

Then came the films: the main Cenmac piece was shown first: a fascinating piece about their work, no doubt intended inform parents, potential investors and so on. What came across is  how crucial the work they do is for students, and how innovative and creative the solutions they find are. The next film was a case study of a student; what struck me most was the artistry behind it.

Then something happened which made my day. All I  can say is, thank zark for the internet. The projectionists had borrowed a laptop from an audience member, plugged it into their projector and screened  my film  straight from youtube. I felt so grateful that they had persevered. It took one or two attempts to get  the sound to work, but when it did, and I saw my film up on the big screen, I was over the moon.

Today’s event has solidified my urge to make more films. If I can  work with  Cenmac, as both a writer  and filmmaker, to create more films like those screened today, then perhaps we can show the wider populous the work they do. in a way I think the media aspect of what they do is  quite central, as it helps those who are unaccustomed to disability learn what people like me ate capable of  with a little technology.

A couple of days ago my Ipad wouldn’t connect to the net when I was away from our home wifi network. A good  web connection is quite crucial to  me these days, so off I went to the o2 shop in  Woolwich, where I was told I needed to top my sim card up. This I did, and I got a confirmation email. Assuming everything was now tickety-boo, today I was having my usual coffee in  the cafe park when I thought I’d check my emails on my Ipad. Strangely, it wouldn’t connect.

I quite naturally assumed my payment hadn’t gone through for some reason, so sucking up the rest of my coffee, off I set back to Woolwich. I took the long way today, just for the sake of variation, and I’d arrive in woolwich high street closer to the  o2 shop. When I got there,  however, I saw I didn’t need to go in at all: there was a big handwritten sign on the door stating that o2 was suffering a massive network failure, and nobody’s phones were working. I just saw it was so big that the bbc website has the story on it’s front page. Talk about epic fail.

If  you’ve ever wondered what an american might make of Red Dwarf, check this out.  I thought  it worth flagging up because the dude is clearly coming to Dwarf as  an outsider. It has been ages since I last  watched an episode of Red Dwarf, but I grew up with it. My brother Luke was quite a fan, and we had several episodes on vhs. It’s interesting to see someone approach it from a completely different position: from the other side of the atlantic, in the contemporary internet  age. He gives quite a thorough analysis, as if explaining it to someone completely new to Red Dwarf, so he mentions things I had never really thought about. It’s interesting to see something I grew up with and basically took  as part of the background  analysed as if it were new.

I think it was on Friday that I saw Lost Voice Guy, Lee Ridley, on Live at the Apollo. Of course, for a communication aid user to appear on a mainstream stand-up comedy program like that is pretty momentous in itself, and I think it represents quite a large step forward. He put on a good act, but as with all comedians, especially those still finding their feet, some of his jokes amused me more than others. Yet what caught my eye was Ridley’s shirt. His blue shirts with a wisecrack about disability in white writing seem to be part of his image as a performer. The one he was wearing on Friday’s show said ‘I was disabled before it was popular.’

While it is rather contentious, and he was probably just trying to be facetious, I think I know what he was getting at. More and more people seem to be defining theirselves as disabled these days, when in the past they would have just ignored whatever mild impairment they have, classed theirselves as normal and got on with their lives. Without wanting to sound too much like the nonsense spewn by the likes of the Daily Mail, it’s as if certain people want to be seen as disabled or as belonging to an oppressed minority. I see more and more people using crutches or scooters these days; and on the web, message boards are filling up with people saying they are disabled and calling themselves disability activists, but who seem to have lead relatively normal, able-bodied lives. There also seems to be quite a concerted effort by those with mental health problems to group theirselves with those of us with physical disabilities. Everyone wants to be a member of a minority these days – an activist standing up to an oppressor.

As I think I have written on here before, I do not necessarily have a problem with this. After all, who am I to say who is disabled and who isn’t? I just fear that, with this influx of people into the disability community, voices like mine will get drowned out. We all feel so disempowered these days, people seem eager to widen the definition of disability so that it includes the most minor of impairments. In the modern world, resources are becoming more and more scarce, so people seem to want to justify their access to resources by emphasising whatever impairment they have. The problem is, those with more profound impairments who cannot stand up for theirselves get pushed to the back of the queue. At least that might be mitigated by guys like Lost Voice Guy appearing more and more on TV.

There was an evening of programs about animation on BBC Four last night which I found fascinating. I have never really thought  about animation before now, but what struck me was the huge variation in  styles between the short films I watched. Each piece looked very different – far more different than live action films, even given the vast diversity of shooting styles there is  in live action. In animation, each  frame is drawn, created from scratch, so the  style of each piece really hits the viewer in the face; it also makes style much more salient to a piece’s meaning.   One piece in particular, Frankie’s Joke by Andrew Eu, Sheren Ali and Edwin Bulmar, mixed puppetry and animation  – 2d and 3d – in a way  I had never come across before but which  I found fascinating: here was a way of creating images which I found  new, novel and  captivating. It was still film, but it was using an entirely new visual vocabulary.  The film  itself was unquieting and slightly disturbing, about a character essentially in the throws of a mental breakdown, but I think the style and mise en scene was used to  enhance the feeling of discord,   as if the 2d and 3d components of the image were at odds with each other. By the end of the  evening I was fascinated and hungry for more; here is a new art form I can see myself getting into.

I just found this on a facebook page and decided to  share it here

It sums up modern british society, doesn’t it?

I really had fun last night. Since I gave up booze I have tried  to avoid pubs, fearing that the temptation to break my abstinence would be too great. I used to enjoy pubs as social epicentres,  but on the whole steering clear  of them was the best way  to stay sober. Recently, though, I’ve found myself in a pub two or three times: with Charlotte, when I was  up in  Edinburgh, and again last  night  for Terry’s birthday. Each time, the urge to throw caution to the wind and  ask for  a bitter  has grown less and less, and last night I was quite content with a coke.

It was a  really nice evening.  At about midday I had had a text from Debbie inviting me to Terry’s birthday bash in the White Swan, both of whom we know from the park. I replied that I would be happy to go. I  got there about seven, Lyn arriving shortly after, just as a band was setting up.  It was pretty tricky to navigate my powerchair through the crowded room, but at the back  of the pub I found my friends. En Route I bumped into Steven, my fellow film festival  organiser, and got chatting about Peter Jackson’s   new Dambusters remake. The  rest of the evening was  spent sitting and laughing, sipping my coke listening to the band. Terry, who was turning eighty, was clearly having a great time. As the evening wore on, things grew mellower and mellower, friendlier and  friendlier, and I couldn’t  help feeling very lucky indeed to know so many wonderful, kind-hearted people: Debbie,  Terry, Lyn  and everyone. Rolling home with Lyn, both of us stone-cold sober, I realised I had made the happy discovery that  I could go into pubs and have the same great time I always did without getting stupid. A good  social night out with friends  does not mean getting drunk; if anything it was even better, because I  could get myself home without breaking anything.. Now I want to keep it up.

I might be being prematurely optimistic, but things might be starting to look up. It now looks inevitable that Trump will be impeached, possibly within weeks. His dodgy links to Russia now look irrefutable, so much so that it must be only a matter of time before he’s booted from office. On this side of the atlantic, the shit is really starting to hit the fan with Brexit: all the economists predict a catastrophe, and calls for a second referendum are growing louder and louder. It’s only a matter of time before Corbyn heeds  his party and comes out against Brexit. When that happens, surely  this stupid farce’s days will also be numbered.

On both counts, then, I feel we can at last see glimmers of hope. I’ve always said  that it would be only a matter of  time before sensible people start to assert theirselves again and stop the    nationalist idiots. On top of that, we’re going to celebrate our friend Debbie’s  birthday  in the pub tonight (I’m still just on the Coke). Things are looking up.

Let me just say how much I like Edinburgh. It may be fairly hilly, and John had to really put his back into pushing me up one or two of those hills,  but it really  is a beautiful city. Some of the medieval architecture is stunning. We spent the whole of Tuesday there, first taking the bus to Crammond – a small village just east of the city where we tried to get to a small island, but were prevented by the tide – then going to a music evening in a pub in town. It’s quite amazing how much we managed to fit into just one day, although there was so  much more we could have done that we resolved to go back there.

Yesterday was also quite a day, but for other reasons: John needs to fly to Poland today, so we needed to get back to the metropolis, and the cheapest way to do so was by bus. I’ll tell you now: eleven hours sat on a coach takes some stomaching. It wasn’t quite as bad as I had expected, as I’d brought a book to read and John had his laptop so we could watch a film, but nonetheless it isn’t an experience I wish to repeat in a hurry. Next time I think we’ll go by train.

Just to record this moment , I’m sat in an Edinburgh pub after a long fun day. I’m surrounded by people, including four of John’s friends. I can’t see them from the low sofa where I’m sat, but there’s a band playing. It’s rather cool, but I really must record that I think this the first time I have ever heard rap in a Scottish accent, and I think I like it.

I’m writing this on the coach again, although this time I remembered to take a pee before I got on. We spent the morning in Leeds after enjoying an excellent Ethiopian dinner and a good nights sleep. I must say I found Leeds intriguing: it’s city centre is small and walkable, and old industrial buildings seem to juxtapose with modern shopping centres in quite an awesome way. There is an arcade with a new glass roof. You can see it was once a normal street, but it’s roof gives it the feel of the Trafford centre or Westfield in Stratford. I couldn’t help musing to myself that someone had definitely been reading their Walter Benjamin.

John and I are heading for Leeds en route to Edinburgh for a few days. He suggested it a few days ago and I thought, why not? We looked into taking the train but it was too expensive so we decided to go by coach. It takes a bit longer, but it’s something I’ve never experienced before. It’s going quite smoothly and we’re about halfway to Leeds, but about ten minutes ago I found I needed the loo. I’ve been for pees on planes before no problem, but I honestly think I just took the most dangerous piss of my life. Two sets of stairs….through the most narrow door ever…on a bus going at seventy miles per hour. Next time I’ll just hold it in.

Just to pick up on an old subject and one of my  big fandoms, the Independent is reporting that the majority of americans now think Idris Elba should be the next James Bond after Daniel Craig. Why the Indy is reporting American opinion rather than british isn’t clear, but this nonetheless echoes my opinion since the possibility of a black bond first cropped up three or four years ago. Why can’t 007 be black. Daniel Craig has apparently signed up to do a couple more Bond films – and I definitely think he’s capable of them, although he is said to be tiring of the role – but after that the door should be open to take bond in a new direction. Fail to do so and the franchise risks stagnating.

Not that I want to advertise, especially for a company like Disney, but  my jaw dropped when I saw this trailer for the new version of The Lion King. The graphics/imagery look incredible. Imagine watching it in  a darkened cinema auditorium on a big screen.

There must surely be a point at which the people of any country must turn to the government and say ‘enough is enough’, and I think we have reached that point. I just came across this shocking Guardian article on a UN report due  out next year on the devastating effect Tory austerity has had on the UK. It is utterly fucked up: Britain was in breach of four UN human rights agreements relating to women, children, disabled people and economic and social rights. The limit on benefits payments to only the first two children in a family was “in the same ballpark” as China’s one-child policy because it punished people who had a third child. Cuts of 50% to council budgets were slashing at Britain’s “culture of local concern” and “damaging the fabric” of society.  Between this and the utter stupidity of Brexit, how the hell  can we let these contemptible embarrassments to humanity remain in power.

I’m not sure how impartial  or unbiassed it is, but if true the allegations reported in this Young Turks video are very worrying indeed. It reports that Donald Trump is actively trying to have his political opponents jailed. Apparently according to the New York Times, the  p’tahk wants people like James Comey and Hillary Clinton put in jail simply because they  are political adversaries. If there is even a grain of truth to it, surely this is very  worrying indeed: Trump is acting more and more like a dictator, demanding power  over everything. Surely as a responsible, mature democratic nation, it’s only a matter of time before the US grows up, gets a grip and replaces this insecure child with a proper president.

I just came across this anti-Brexit video/song on facebook, and just had to flag  it up here. It’s very catchy, and will probably be stuck in my head for a while, but that’s cool. More and more  things like this are appearing online every day, to higher and higher standards. I get the impression that a distinct artistic and cultural movement is amassing against brexit; so much so  that it is now just a matter of time before the bollocks is stopped.

I’m heading back to London after a weekend in Manchester and Chester. After visiting Jenny and steve a couple of weeks ago, I decided it was time to pop in on Charlie and Alex. I stayed at their beautiful new Manchester house on Friday night, before we drove to Chester yesterday. Rather awesomely we bumped into our friend Becky while enjoying a kebab at a christmas market in Manchester; and the evening at a barn dance in Chester last night was like nothing  I’d experienced before. I just waved goodbye to C at the platform at Picadilly, tired but refreshed. Although as she told me, it isn’t without it’s problems, Charlie seems to be slipping into life as a teacher well: I’ve always thought my old university friend is a born teacher. She seems to have a boundless, infectious enthusiasm which has left my head buzzing with ideas and a fresh optimism, so does Alex, and I’m travelling home determined to be more creative.. I think this weekend has done me a world of good.

Have you ever noticed how that irritating twit Jacob Rees-Mogg always tries to present himself as a master of language? Not only does he try to sound articulate, but he goes out of his way to correct people on the language they use. Yesterday, for example, when a news anchor asked him if a coup was in ,process, the pretentious little p’tahk replied that it was not technically a coup, giving some facetious bullshit reason. 

It was perfectly obvious that a coup was in progress: Rees-mogg and his chums were, and are, trying to force May from power.JRM was trying to get himself in to a position of power rhetorically. By correcting the reporter so overtly, he was trying to appear superior. He tries to make himself look like a philologist, and so take ownership of the Symbolic. That is the only way the outists life him can present their views as having any credibility, stripped as they are of any other form of logic. In other words, he’s basically saying people should listen more to him because he speaks more articulately, when in truth he is just as moronic as any other outist. By presenting himself as a master .of the symbolic order, he seeks to figuratively dominate what people say. It.’s a cheap trick easily seen though, but I thought it worth pointing out..

Just to divert everyone’s attention away from Brexit a bit, how about this for an interesting new bit of tech. A company in america have found a way to manipulate video to make it look like people have said things they haven’t. I find it interesting to watch how they change the appearance of the muscles  around the mouth so that it matches the sound coming out of it. While you can easily see how  this sort of thing would be useful for dubbing films into other languages, you also have to worry the this would make fraud a lot easier. We can no longer trust video evidence when it comes to what people have or have not said.

I think this New European  story/video is well worth  drawing your attention to.Dutch MEP Esther de Lange was applauded in the European parliament  when she pointed out the hypocrisy of Nigel Farage. The piece of shit just sat there smirking and  shrugging as de Lange stated the obvious. “This is a man who led his party and country to the Brexit vote – only the next day to admit he lied and tricked and jumped his ship and leave his party.” The fact that the p’tahk has the gall to still attend the European Parliament as if he has the right to be there (presumably still picking up his wage) shows us what a despicable  little hypocrite  he is. The sooner he is rotting in jail where he belongs the better.

Although, to my knowledge, none of the money in my wallet is purple or any other colour apart from the usual grey, green and brown, I think this is definitely worth flagging up. Today is apparently Purple Pound Day, which is intended to draw attention to consumers with disabilities. “Shopping can be frustrating at the best of times, but for many disabled people it comes with even more unnecessary challenges – narrow aisles, no step-free access, rushed shop assistants. But one businessman and wheelchair user has turned his frustrations into a national event – Purple Tuesday – in a bid to get hundreds of retailers to improve their customer experience and tap into the £249bn disabled customers spend each year.” A step in the right direction – albeit a modest one – if you ask me, although as the bbc article itself points out towards the end, it is not enough to just have one day to acknowledge consumers with disabilities. Surely ‘we’ should be included and accommodated all year round.

Something rather cool happened this morning.

My friend Lee Donnelly  was a big WWE fan. I hadn’t really thought about wrestling since I was about ten or eleven, but it was  mentioned at donno’s funeral and I’d been thinking about it since then. Wrestling is very strange,  when you look at it: it’s obviously theatrical, yet it claims to be real, and the pretence of reality  is taken far further than any  other form of theatre. To any other person, it looks  pantomimic, yet it takes itself so seriously. It seemed very odd to me.

When  I turned my computer on this morning, I found this article about Wrestling on the BBC website.  I read it, and came across the name of an academic I didn’t then recognise Dr. Ben Litherland. Deciding it was time to look a bit further into this  bizarre phenomenon,  I plugged the name into google expecting to find a musty old academic, but the strangest thing happened: it turned out that I already knew the guy, and he was a school friend of my brother Luke.  We had chatted before, six  years ago, having come across each other not through Luke but  a mutual friend, James C. I love  how the web works sometimes.

We got chatting (again) and I told ben of my newfound interest.  Apparently, there is a growing literature on the subject, but Litherland said he was against the idea of a  ‘wrestling studies’. That seemed curious to me: if wrestling is an art, shouldn’t it be studied  like  any other (narrative) art form in terms of it’s characters and storylines? But he seemed to be suggesting it was something else; not just a weird panto about men hitting eachother or a type of soap opera. It has a real world, political dimension, especially when you consider that Trump has  appeared on it, and Vince McMahon was one of the biggest backers of the Trump campaign. That which I once dismissed as childish and puerile now seems worth looking into deeply.

Something very, very strange is going on with professional wrestling. It’s obviously fake, but claims to be real. It is presented rather like a soap opera, but disbelief is suspended and the illusion of reality is kept to the extreme. Ben even introduced me to their word for it: Kayfabe.  Something which might appear childish does in  fact take itself deadly seriously, and to it’s fans is  as real as any other sport. These people cannot actually be hitting one another or they would be seriously injured;  and the way in which the camera captures events outside the ring suggests the action is somehow planned and choreographed; yet, as in sport, events are shown live and the audience seem  to think they are watching events which have not been rehearsed. Thus I am baffled – what is it? Theatre? Sport? artform, or something else? How  can something which appears so silly have so much cultural impact? When I read a book or watch a film, I know I’m dealing  with a created artefact – something designed or created by someone to tell me a story or convey a message to me. Wrestling is obviously a similar kind of creation, yet it refuses to admit it is anything other than real (undertones of Lacan there, maybe?) I must admit I’m intrigued.

The world being as dangerous as it currently is, with nationalism dangerously  on the rise, I think I ought to flag  this article up.  ”French President Emmanuel Macron has urged world leaders marking the centenary of the World War One Armistice to reject nationalism. Addressing leaders in Paris – including US President Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin – he described it as a “betrayal of patriotism”.” A truer  word has never been spoken. To love one’s country is to love the things which makes it unique. By extension, that means one loves  how your country contrasts with others, which means engaging with other countries and cultures. To me, then, to just love your own country is folly; one must relish the whole of humanity in all it’s diversity,  working together across petty, arbitrary borders. We need to work as one, not compete. That is the only way we can avoid repeating the type of barbaric stupidity which ended a century ago today.

Just to update yesterday’s entry, late last night my good friend Debbie sent me  a link to an Ipad  troubleshooting forum. I just checked it out and  tried  one of the fixes I found there, and it worked. I suddenly have a  voice again. Hearing that  mechanised voice was such a  relief! I owe debbie a hug, and  a coffee! The trip all the way to the Apple shop in Stratford was pointless; it just goes to show how much  those so-called experts actually know, or rather, how  much they want to pressure you into buying new merchandise rather than giving you the solution to your problem.

I’m afraid to say that it has been a long, rather annoying day. Ipads are fantastic, useful machines – until they go wrong. Late yesterday afternoon I suddenly lost all sound output from my Ipad. That’s quite a problem for me  as I use mine as a communication aid. I had a look at it but couldn’t get it talking again, so today I took it back to the guys in Woolwich I mentioned  a couple of entries ago. This  time, though, they couldn’t do anything, and suggested  I take it to an Apple shop. After I’d returned home for a coffee, I set off for stratford – after all, I still rather like it up there. After I’d found the Apple shop, I told the young assistant what the problem was, and he kindly fastracked me to see a technician. The guy looked at it but couldn’t do anything: it turns out  that the headphone mode had somehow been locked on, even though there are no headphones connected. I was told I either had to reset my Ipad, losing all my data and specialist apps, or buy  a new Ipad. Needless to say, I came home feeling very frustrated indeed. Does anyone have any other suggestions?

I went up  to the British Museum yesterday. My friend John suggested meeting up there, having first proposed a trip to Oxford, and I thought it was an awesome idea. Seeing Oxford again would have been lovely, but we’d left  it too  late. Getting there was easy enough – just two busses – and once I was in there I was instantly fascinated.  They currently have an exhibition on on Syria, so  there were many ancient stone tablets from the middle east on display.  The Rosetta stone, of course, took pride of place, but there were many more around it. I couldn’t help feeling, though, that it was all decontextualised: taken out of their original places and transported several thousand miles to a rainy city in northern  Europe, these objects inevitably lose some of their original meaning. Wouldn’t it be better to see these fascinating pieces of art where they were made? And isn’t having them in the british museum in the first place all essentially an act of imperialist theft? Then again, you might say it is  better to house these artefacts here, where they can be correctly preserved, than leaving them in the war-torn Middle East; and leaving them in the countries where they were created would mean people like me would never be able to see them. I couldn’t make up my mind  either way, and came  home vowing to go  back there to see more when I can.

It worries me how dense I can be sometimes. A week or so ago, I was going down a steep slope in Maryon-Wilson park when I slipped out of my powerchair. I was fine,  as was the chair,  but a while later I noticed what appeared to be  quite a big crack in my Ipad screen. I tried to ignore it at first but as the crack got bigger I thought I better get the  screen replaced. Yesterday, then, I went down to Woolwich  to get it sorted. I asked in a couple of shops whether they do Ipad screen repairs, before being directed to a shop on General Gordon Square.

I handed the guy in there my Ipad, having first asked  him how much a  new screen would cost. Almost immediately, though, he smiled: the screen was fine, he said; I’d just  kinked the screen protector! I had completely forgotten we had put one on a few weeks ago.

The  guy replaced the protector, cleaned up my ipad, charged me a tenner for it (a bargain compared to the seventy quid a new screen would have cost) and  sent me on my way, feeling rather silly.

You   may recall that the very last entry I made before my  old blog went offline was about the summerhouse in chalton park. It had stood abandoned for as long as I’d lived in charlton, but I was interested to see that it’s renovation had begun. Well, I’ve been keeping an eye on it since then, and it has been fascinating to watch the building get transformed from a  derelict old shell. I would say it was halfway there now, but what’s cool is what it could now become. I popped into Charlton house this afternoon to ask about it: it  dates from about 1610, and was originally used as a banqueting hall. It must once have enjoyed phenomenal views northward over the river. Excitingly, at last week’s film festival meeting, there was talk of using it as a screening venue. And having hung around so many contemporary theatre students at uni, I’d wager it would make a great performance space. With that it mind, I just tapped it into Google and found this update on the Summerhouse’s restoration and refurbishment. It certainly looks like the old shack has a bright, interesting future (and I’m glad to see that it will be wheelchair accessible.

I just want to state this once and for all: from now on, as far as I am concerned, Brexit is illegal. More and more detail is  emerging  of the crimes committed by the Leave  campaign. It’s now quite clear that they broke the law over their funding. At the very least,  the Brexit process should be halted while the  electoral commission investigates. The only way  out of this mess is  to  hold a second referendum – now that the shit is truly starting to hit the fan and it  is becoming clearer and clearer that the 2016 was reached illegally, how  else can things be put right? Until then, however, I’ll continue to view the path the uk is now following  as illegal. How can anyone possibly respect such a dubious underhand and damaging result?

You would think that a man whose arrogance and stupidity has caused so much damage would have the  good grace to shut the fuck up and keep out of politics, but apparently David CaMoron is considering returning to frontline politics. Words completely fail me. Has the P’tahk any idea of the damage he has done and the division he has caused? To even be considering such a return implies that he thinks he is held in some kind of esteem, when surely anyone capable of independent thought views him with a mixture of derision  and contempt. He called  a totally unnecessary referendum to try to fix a problem in the Tory party, it backfired on him and as a result the entire country will be up shit creek for years. How can anyone have the gall to think he still has a right to  help  govern  the country? CaMoron should be on his knees begging our forgiveness.

How I wish more bus drivers were like the one in this Evening Standard story. When nobody moved to make space for a wheelchair user, a bus driver in Paris ordered everyone off his bus and  told them to wait for the next one. Bravo that bus driver! Although to be honest I can’t really see anything similar happening on the 422 down to Woolwich.

Yesterday I came across something very interesting indeed. When the halloween episode of Inside No. 9 was broadcast on Sunday evening, I thought I’d give it a watch. I usually like Reece Shearsmith and Steve Pemberton’s work. A few minutes into the program, though, the sound cut out. To check there wasn’t something wrong with our TV, I changed the channel – the sound was fine for bbc1. I changed it back and bbc2 was still silent, so I decided to watch the news instead.

Earlier though, I had come across a link to a Guardian article praising the program for it’s innovation. That, of course, aroused my curiosity so I decided before reading the article in full to give the episode another go. Strangely, though, the same thing happened: it started like any normal drama or sitcom would, with an old guy finding an old lady’s mobile phone, trying to reunite it with it’s owner. But then the same thing happens: everything goes silent.

The guardian article mentioned something about unusual happenings, so I decided to persevere this time. Besides, I was watching it on Iplayer where surely technical problems would have been dealt with. But instead of the sound coming back, the program cut to the bbc2 logo and the announcer apologising for technical issues. I began to regret not sticking with it two nights ago as the effect would have been intriguing: viewers would have been left wondering whether the beeb was having a meltdown or whether this was part of the show. Not watching it live the effect was somewhat lost..

What followed was half an hour of remarkable television which played with the viewer. It wasn’t clear what one was watching. At one point an old episode of Inside No. 9 was tarted, apparently to replace this faulty one, only for the new episode to return. Actors were shown in their studios, watching themselves on live tv and talking about the live twitter feed. Brecht’s fourth wall was torn apart so that we were left wondering where fiction stopped and reality began.

That, however, is what intrigues me. This program begs for analysis. For the bbc to agree to broadcast something like this, it would have to have been planned out to the last detail. Yet it gave the appearance of non-fiction. The actors spoke about themselves as they watched themselves on live tv speaking about themselves. It had a sense of the Real to it, exceeding the scripted and planned. At the same time, we know what we were watching is a pre-planned fiction by the fact it must have been filmed, edited and broadcast. After all, programs like this don’t automatically appear into existence. Try as they might, then, the program makers have to rely on viewers suspending their disbelief if they want to pull something like this off.

By and large, though, I think they succeed. The very fact that one is taken aback by the sound problem as the program begins means one is never totally sure what is real and what isn’t. From then on, the writers and directors play with the viewer, interweaving fiction and reality so that the mobile phone problem from the beginning of the program reappears at the end. We see hand held and head mounted footage cut together with news broadcasts, both of which we associate with reality but which we know must be part of the program. The result is highly inventive, intriguing, and very apt for a halloween special.

Lyn and I went to see David Byrne at the o2 last  night, our first gig in a while. Truth be told I didn’t know much about Byrne so I didn’t really know what  to  expect. I read he was big in the eighties as part of the band Talking Heads, but further than that things would be a surprise.

I was in for a treat. It’s always a pleasure to go up to the o2 Arena; having a phenomenal mega-venue like that virtually on  our doorstep is quite phenomenal. Byrne and his group put on a  great show, although there probably isn’t much I can say about it. I enjoyed hearing songs like Once In A Lifetime, which reminded me of listening it on  local radio on the way to school as a child. His style of music is very eighties, and a tad too dance oriented for my tastes. That  is to say, the group did lots of intricate dance routines which I felt distracted slightly from the music. Apart from that, it was a great evening. The o2 arena really is a fantastic venue, and I left wondering who we could watch there next.

The world has today taken yet another very worrying, very frightening turn. I first got word of Bolsonaro’s victory last night from my Brazilian cousin Christina, but waited to see confirmation of it this morning. It is true: Brazil has followed the UK and USA in losing it’s mind and succumbing to the mindless folly of populist nationalism. As bad as this is for Brazil – and it as now elected a truly despicable human being for it’s president – we should also be very concerned about where this trend is taking the world at large. Hard right  views are taking root all over the place; intolerance and xenophobia are once again becoming socially respectable having until recently been confined to uneducated reactionaries. Between Brexit, Trump and now the election of Bolsonaro, we are seeing a trend take hold which I fear will lead the world to a very dark place. All over the place people are being taken in by simplistic, tribalistic, ‘us and them’ narratives which opens them up to manipulation and exploitation.  They believe the conspiracy theories told to them by people like Farage, Trump and Bolsonaro,  not realising that they are being used. The world  has been here before some seventy years ago – surely we haven’t forgotten how that  dark episode in world history ended.

I realise this is a rather random, slightly  silly question, but I am  sort of curious about it (that  and I need something different to blog about). Not very far away in charton village is  a wall. It divides the park and the road, and I follow the pavement along it quite frequently. It looks very, very old – old enough to arouse my curiosity. Judging from the look of the brickwork and the height of a doorway cut into it, I’d say it was at least medieval. My question is, then, how can I find the age of this  wall?

No doubt the two weasels in question will try to lie their way out of being held accountable for their crimes, but yesterday Lord Alan Sugar stated  the obvious: Michael Gove and Boris Johnson should be tried and jailed for deliberately misleading the country during the Brexit referendum. I could barely agree with that more. Before the 2016 vote, they toured the country in a bus bearing a pledge to give the money we currently send to the EU to the NHS. They  knew full well that no such money existed, and that such a promise would be untenable; they just wanted to use our affection for our national health service to con us into voting to leave the EU. I find that utterly, utterly despicable – even by the low  standards of these troubled times.

However they might try to justify their lies and worm their way out of it, as far as I’m concerned, Gove, Johnson  and the other Outist leaders are criminals who must be held accountable for the damage their lies have done. Our rights, freedoms and prosperity are now imperilled because these snivelling insults to humanity conned the country into voting to return  to their Dickensian hell.