Zooming around Charlton as usual, a couple of days ago I noticed security fences had been put up around the old Summerhouse near Charlton House. The Seventeenth-century building has stood abandoned and dilapidated since long before I moved down here. It was apparently designed by Inigo Jones, but I must have passed the old ruin a hundred times without giving it a second thought. Yet the sight of guys in high-viz jackets clearing it out has for some reason pricked my interest, and I’ve started to go that way just to see how they are getting on. As when I saw geophysicists in Charlton Park, it gets me wondering, what secrets could that tiny old hut yield? what history might be uncovered in a building abandoned for so long?

I’ve always liked Rudyard Kipling, but rarely could he have seemed so prophetic or apt…

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Just to keep the ”funny spastic” theme, started by Lee Ridley yesterday going, I think I’ll just direct you all here. Lyn pointed Spack In The Box out to me yesterday, and he made us both laugh. He too is one to keep an eye on, although I suspect we’re about to see a proliferation of comedians with Cerebral Palsy and other disabilities coming onto the scene, spring-boarding off Ridley’s BGT win. I do not, however, mean that negatively in any way – the more the merrier! It may turn out that the vehicle of comedy may make it easier for others to relate to what we, as people with disabilities, have to tell them.

Not that I usually pay any attention to Britain’s Got Talent, but I must say how happy I am with the incredible news that Lost Voice Guy, Lee Ridley, won the show last night. I got wind of it last night just as I was going to bed. From what I’ve seen of him, Ridley is a great guy with a good sense of humour. He opened Communication Works two years ago. In a way he does what I try to do through writing in his stand-up act: he shows people the world from his point of view in a self-knowing, ironic way. Lee’s strength is that he is unafraid to make fun of himself, taking up prejudices and assumptions people may have about people like ‘us’ and throwing them back at them.

The only problem I have with that is, when they are presented as comedy as Ridley does, they become just an act – something light-hearted and throw away. In order to examine the position of people with disabilities in the real world, you have to go deep: that’s why I have kept plugging away at my blog for the last fifteen years. What Ridley does is all well and good, but to a certain extent, he merely plays the crip-card – ”look at me, I’m the funny spazz” – without presenting anything new or original. Yes, there’s irony in what he says, but how deep is his knowledge and analysis really? Frankly, the jokes he makes are the same ones my Communication-aid using mates and I have told for twenty year; Ridley just presents them to a fresh audience. To become the self-knowing soothsayer Ridley seems to want to present himself as requires much, much more. And, as Lyn pointed out when I reported this news to her on my way to bed last night, you have to wonder whether he didn’t simply win through pity.

I don’t want to seem too critical or curmudgeonly – this is indeed great news and a huge step forward for VOCA users – but it would seem the cultural critic in me cannot be silenced.

I’ve never been much of a football fan, preferring cricket, but I casually keep my eye on three or four teams: Macclesfield town, being the closest half decent side to Congleton, my home town. Then there’s Charlton Athletic, who play just down the hill from me and Lyn. I support Manchester United, because – well, you know they are the best. And I support Liverpool, simply because they were Andy Fox’s favourite team. I am, however, considering starting to follow a fifth football team.

I was up in the olympic park this afternoon. I go to Stratford fairly regularly to shop in the giant Westfield there, but today I wanted to give the olympic park a proper explore. It really is developing nicely into a beautiful addition to the list of London’s great parks. The river Lee flows gracefully between large gardens planted with flowers; paths wind smoothly between lawns, leading you from the orbit tower to the aqua park to the velodrome. To think that, under twenty years ago, that was all just wasteland is astonishing. The Olympic stadium itself now looks great, decked out in it’s new West Ham colours but looking forward to all kinds of sporting and musical events. Looking at it, thinking about what happened there in 2012 as well as all the awesomeness yet to come, there and then I made a decision: from now on, I’ll support West Ham too. I cant’t name any of their players and have no idea how they’re doing; but then, I don’t know anything about any other football team I nominally support either, so why not?!

Back at school, I remember coming across the notion that intellectualism should be shunned, and that paying attention in class and trying to learn was only something geeks and outsiders did. Such notions, of course, ran directly counter to everything my parents were telling me at the time: they were always trying to get me to read and work more, not less. So I was sort of pulled in opposite directions.

When I went to college and then university, my work ethic solidified (somewhat). I retrospectively put my classmates’ attitude down to the fact that, having Muscular dystrophy and other life-limiting conditions, they weren’t really motivated as much as other people are – why toil and struggle if you know you aren’t going to live past twenty-five? Yet, since then, I have often come across the same, shun-all-teachers attitude in other people who did not have that excuse. In fact it seems quite commonplace, and I find myself wondering if it was this attitude which lead to the Brexit vote.

It is an attitude which shuns authority and learning, and where experts are just geeks who don’t know anything about ”the real world”. Why would anyone with such a worldview bother to listen to anyone who said leaving the EU would be cataclysmic? In fact, if they are anything like my classmates, they would do the exact opposite of what the experts say, just to spite them. Of course, you can put this down to class, social disenfranchisement, economic disenfranchisement, or whatever you like, but I’m really beginning to think that this shun-all-teachers attitude had an effect on the referendum two years ago.

Lyn and I just got back from a lovely long walk, and I have to say we found a view even more spectacular than the one I mentioned here a year ago. It was up shooters Hill, but on the other side of the road, about here. I was up that way on Wednesday evening for a film festival meeting, and kept catching glimpses of a view right across the city. They took my breath, and I made a mental note to take L up there as soon as I could. I’m glad I did. Streetview doesn’t really do it justice, but you have to be able to see at least twenty miles up there, right across the city, especially on a day like today. (Smeg knows what a view like that does to house prices up there.)

When Lyn and I were in the Apple store up in stratford yesterday afternoon, we were shown the new Siri. I was quite impressed with how clear and loud the music it produced was, especially for something so small. The nice woman with us was demonstrating how she could speak to it and ask it to play songs, so I suggested a few of my usual favourites – Carly Simon, Cat Empire etc – much to Lyn’s embarrassment. It wasn’t until, much later, lying in bed thinking over the episode, that it occurred to me how cool it would have been if I had innocently requested this song and had it blurt out across the shopping arcade.

I go up to the Greenwich Peninsula quitefrequently these days, either on my way to the O2, the tube station or just for a walk by the Thames. Over the last eight years, I’ve watched the area slowly evolve. When I first moved down here, it was largely flat and empty, the large white half-bubble of the dome sticking out like a sore thumb. Coming back along the river this afternoon, though, I noticed how much it has changed. These days the area is awash with multi-storey blocks of flats. It is bright and urban. It felt, in fact, like New York.

I haven’t been to the Big Apple in over twenty years, but walking through the Millennium Village this afternoon, something about the tightly clustered high-rise buildings encircled by water made me think of Manhattan. It made me wonder: has that area been turned into London’s answer to New York? With the skyscrapers of Canary Wharf nearby, are the city planners deliberately trying to replicate something resolutely urban, bohemian and middle class on the North Greenwich Peninsula? Are they trying to Manhattanise north Greenwich?

If you want to really understand what is going on, listen to Noam Chomsky. Chomsky is, without a doubt, one of the leading thinkers of our time. As he discusses here, Donald Trump can be seen as merely a distraction: we are supposed to get angry with him while, backstage, the Republican Party set about completely dismantling the American State. Chomsky says the Republicans are the biggest threat to human civilisation ever, due to their attempt to destroy the environment.

Part of me thinks that what he says is a bit too much like conspiracism and the bollocks conspiracy theorists spout, but there is a lot of truth in what Chomsky says. Whereas most conspiracy theorists are just egotistical nut jobs who crave attention, Chomsky bases everything he says on evidence. He knows what he is talking about, and we ignore him at our peril: there are forces at play in the world out to keep power in the hands of the white, rich and privileged. The problem comes when others try to usurp the credibility of analysts like Chomsky to forward their crazy worldviews, which sound similar to begin with, but then often stray into racism, antisemitism and bigotry.

A week or two ago I ordered Andrew Lycett’s biography of Ian Fleming from Amazon and started to read it. I’d decided I wanted to know more about the man who created one of my favourite fictional characters. I sat down with it on the sofa in my usual way. It’s a very well-written biography, and the text flows very well, although the academic in me doesn’t think he cites his sources enough. However, the problem I had is, the text on the page was too small: my eyes were struggling, and it was taking ages for me to get through it. I found myself wishing I had someone around who could read it to me, as I once got my dad to read to me.

In desperation, yesterday I gave up and decided to look online for any PDF versions I could put through my screen-reader. That’s how I came across Audible, Amazon’s online audiobook site. It had the book I was trying to read on there, so I signed up for the thirty day free trial and decided to give it a whirl.

Not that I want to sound like an advert, but so far I’m impressed. Listening to the book is much easier, and I have always thought hearing the words being enunciated adds something to them too. I let the audiobook play while I have the book open on my lap, reading along. I have got through an entire chapter already today, after only reading four over the last couple of weeks.

I’ll be onto the next book I want to read, Matthew Parker’s history of Goldeneye, within a couple of weeks, which is also on Audible. At this rate, I might well sign up to pay when my free trial ends, especially if there are lots more books I want to read on there. The problem is, I’ve had a few issues with amazon recently, signing me up automatically for things I didn’t want, so I’ll need to keep an eye on it. Nonetheless, I’m pretty thrilled with my new way to read things I want to read quickly and easily.

I just watched something which really wound me up, before I realised that that was exactly what it was intended to do. On facebook, somebody had posted a video on one of the Remain pages of a man apparently ‘destroying’ Remainers. He was making all sorts of claims, provocatively accusing people fighting the referendum result of being melodramatic wimps who don’t know what they’re talking about. At one point, he showed one clearly confused protester saying we had the NHS because of the EU, thus framing ‘us’ as stupid.

Of course this naturally got me going: I flew into one of my spazzy rages, and started shouting at my computer (not too loud, because Lyn’s still in bed). I decided I wanted to kill the little shit who made it, so I paused the clip and tapped his name into Google. I then realised something interesting: the moron in question, Paul Joseph Watson, wasn’t just an idiot who’d somehow got hold of a webcam as I had assumed. He is a well-known conspiracy theorist with links to Alex Jones and the alt-right. People like him and Jones stir people up deliberately; the video was designed to be provocative and get me going. Such people are trying to play with us, manipulate us into getting angry by saying things which they know we will have problems with.

Having lost all the other arguments on any other level, the only way these far-right zealots can cease any kind of advantage is by making us so furious that we screw up. They cling to the racist, xenophobic discourse which says they, as white heterosexual males, are superior. The problem with them is, mainstream society rejected that crap decades ago (or should have!). In order to reclaim an advantage over a dominant idea they resent, they try to provoke us into getting angry and slipping up. They want to make us look stupid. They want to send us into fits of frustration and fury as that is the only way they can present theirselves as the sensible, grown up, pragmatic ones in this debate. It’s a provocative, antagonistic tactic, but it’s the only way they can attempt to still appear relevant, and we must not rise to their puerile bait.

Just to follow up on this entry, it has now been confirmed that Danny Boyle will direct the next Bond film. ”Oscar-winning director Danny Boyle is to reunite with Daniel Craig for the 25th Bond film, which is due to be released from 25 October 2019.” As I said a few weeks ago, I think he’s a great choice, and I can’t wait to see where such a prominent, leading director with a reputation for grittiness and realism takes the franchise. The fact that it’s chalked up to be Craig’s last Bond film also means they are more likely to throw caution to the wind and try things they might previously have held back from. It’s just a pity we have to wait so long to see what Boyle comes up with.

Today was Communication Works 2018 at Charlton Park Academy, and it has been a very cool day indeed. I didn’t have much of a role in organising it this year. Last year I put on a bit of an exhibition about myself, but this time I sort of stepped back. To be honest I haven’t been into school much this academic year, something I really want to rectify in the autumn. Mind you, I submitted a coolpiece of writing for the event, which I was proud to see on the wall in the event’s museum area. The funny thing is, I didn’t know when it was this year: as luck would have it I popped into school a couple of days ago, more or less just to say hi, and was asked if I was coming in today.

I’m now very glad I made that trip. As usual, it was quite a fascinating event, with displays of all the latest communication technology. It was opened by Abdi Omar, a motivational speaker and VOCA user with CP from Somalia. There was also a lady from the BBC there I got chatting to: she said Louis Theroux was planning a program about communication aid users, which she was doing research for. Of course this pricked my interest, so I showed her my blog and some of my writing, and she said she would email me.

After that, I spent my time browsing the stalls and talking to exhibitors. After a while Lyn joined me there, and we had a good afternoon chatting to people before, at about three, we decided it was high time for a cup of coffee. It’s awesome to have such a great event, about something we are both quite passionate about, virtually on our doorstep. Now, though, I’m feeling quite bad that I did not help out at school much this year; something I definitely need to remedy come the autumn.

When my brothers and I were growing up, mum used to make excellent chocolate cakes for our birthdays. Nice and gooey, with a layer of chocolate icing running through the middle, we always thought they were the best chocolate cakes in the world. I never tasted a better chocolate cake, until this afternoon.

A few days ago our friend Heather from the park offered to make a cake to celebrate Lyn’s birthday. We had all been told how good this cake was, so we arranged to meet in the park to eat some. While I was looking forward to it, I was quite unprepared for just how good this cake was. It apparently contained Guiness, and the moment I bit into it I was dumbstruck. It was so rich and tasty, with the greatest respect to mum and her cooking I think her crown has been taken. At the very least I know who to ask for our birthday cakes from now on.

I just had a glance at my archive – something I do quite regularly – and found today marks ten years and a day since I posted this entry about the first time I celebrated Lyn’s birthday with her. Can you believe that was ten years ago? A decade already! It seems to have flown by. Mind you, what a decade it has been, both good and bad. L and I have done so much awesome stuff in the last ten years, it makes me wonder what we’ll do in the next ten.

This entry is just to wish Lyn a very happy birthday. After the fun of Saturday evening, it has been a quiet sort of day: we just had brunch in the park, and stayed there all afternoon. On days like this, though, you realise how lucky you are. Sat there, talking to friends, sipping coffee and eating sausage sandwiches while the most fantastic city on earth thronged around me, I could barely have been more content. I really hope Lyn had a great birthday.

My warmest birthday wishes go out to dad too. His birthday was yesterday. He and mum are away at the moment, and I hope they are having a great time. I love you guys.

There could well have been a picture of some woman’s arse on here this morning. Lyn, Paul and I were out in New Cross last night, at the New Cross Inn. We had an incredible time: they had a rock night, with three heavy rock bands playing. Although I didn’t recognise any of the songs played (they were all original, and the music was too loud for me to hear any of the lyrics) it was right up my street. I still love all the headbanging, metal stuff, and I really got into it. L and I sat quite near the stage, and had a very good view of proceedings. Frankly I just had fun looking at some of the hair styles of the rockers in there; there was even one guy who looked like a viking, with bright, red bushy hair and a beard to match.

At one point, though, a woman came and stood right in front of Lyn so that she couldn’t see. The quick-witted Lyn asked on her ipad whether she should take a photo of the woman’s butt, as it was right in front of her Ipad’s camera. Fortunately someone behind us at that point saw Lyn’s question and asked the woman to move, but I think L should have taken the photo – it would have made a good blog entry.

All in all it was a great evening: it feels like ages since we last went out properly like that, but I’m now dying to go again. We got home at about half twelve, tired but both completely sober. Awesome nights like that is what this city is great at, and that’s why I still love it.

I received another bit of sad news this morning: my Uncle David has passed away after a long, valiant fight with cancer. I was quite fond of my uncle, and warmly remember exploring his farm in Brazil on horseback ten years ago. My thoughts go out to my Aunt Toula, cousins Christina and Alexander, and their families. I love you guys – stay strong.

Lyn and I got in from quite a pleasant afternoon out and about to news of yet another shooting at a school in America. I just feel bemused. I genuinely don’t understand how the Americans can continue to let these shootings happen. There have been several school shootings in America already this year, and yet they do nothing to stop them. It’s sickening, chilling news, but perhaps the most peverse thing was how the evening news bulletins glossed over this bloodshed to make room for a story about two rich, irrelevant people getting married.

I just got back from a really cool early evening. As well as the Saturday afternoon sessions, there is also a powerchair football practice session at four on Thursdays. I went along today with Matt. I want more footage for my powerchair football film, as I’m not really happy with my first attempt. It turned out to be a great, great session: we actually played a game today rather than just practicing skills, which I suspect wielded some great footage. My skill at the game is also coming on in leaps and bounds, and I can now hit the large inflated ball with some accuracy.

Part of the way through the session, though, my mind flipped back to the last time I hit things around sports halls. Back at school I used to love playing unihock with my class. Whacking a small orange puck around the wooden floor of the school hall was how the eight of us let off steam. We got quite skilled at it. What I didn’t realise at the time was it was probably also a way for my classmates to let off steam. Over in Woolwich earlier, I was struck by an idea: could I now use those old unihock sessions for the basis of some kind of story, either as prose or on screen? Eight or nine severely disabled adolescents letting their frustrations with the world out on a hockey puck could well be a story worth telling.