I am just going to flag up two very, very scary videos today which, combined, I think paint a picture of just how fucked up things are getting in the states. The first is this one by The Young Turks. In it, Cenk Uygur describes how Donald Trump has got the Republican party to, as he puts it, loose it’s mind: it is now blatantly ignoring any evidence, no matter how tangible or irrefutable, which contradicts their views on trump. They believe trump over any other source of information, no matter how inarguable, to the extent that, to Uygur, support for trump is starting to take on aspects of a religious cult or even fascism. As he says, trump is turning those who support him away from law enforcement bodies like the FBI, so that they now regard Trump as an authority above all others. Support for him has started to take on elements of fascism.

Similarly, this Big Think video describes how fundamentalists back Trump, and how Christianity has been usurped and distorted by all these nutjob evangelicals into an ultra-capitalist, intolerant cult. They use something called ”the Prosperity Gospel” to claim that christianity supports their greed-driven, intolerant views, and regard trump as something akin to a messiah.

I know I can be a bit extreme on here sometimes,, and that I can be too liberal when it comes to accusations of fascism, but here part of me wants to believe that these videos go too far in the picture they paint. Surely they are being hand-wringing liberals, overreacting to a republican president; a case of Godwin’s Law. Yet their arguments are well made and hard to deny, to the extent that one suspects that there is a large element of truth in them. If that is so, though, and what is happening culturally in America is indeed taking on strong fascistic elements, then we should all be very, very worried.

Lyn and I just got in after a lovely afternoon up in Stratford. Believe it or not, I hadn’t been up there for a few months, and I was surprised by how much it had changed. The place seems to be thriving, with multi-story buildings going up all over the place. Queen Elisabeth Olympic Park has really blossomed into a great place to go, and the short walk by the River Lea we took reminded me of when Bill used to push me along the canals near Alsager.

Above all, though, visiting that park never fails to remind me of what took place there six years ago. Walking towards the stadium, following Lyn, it felt like many decades had passed since the night she and the Paraorchestra played for the world in there. So much has happened since then, both good and bad. But you never forget events like that: Occasions so enormous and wonderful that they stay riveted permanently into your memory; and whenever you need to remind yourself of just how truly spectacular life can get, you have only to think about them. Before 2005 there was nothing in that area apart from a couple of ramshackle tower blocks, but seven years later we hosted a truly great olympics there, putting on a performance which blew everyone away, leaving behind one of the coolest parts of the metropolis. Going there thus not only reminds me of great memories, but what we can do and are capable of.

The world has changed a great deal since 2012, and not for the better. That year was an incredible one for me, and things got even better two years later. Since 2016, though, things seem to have gone down hill for the whole world, which is probably why my memories of 2012 now seem so distant. Yet despite the stupidity currently enveloping both the UK and America, there is still room for awesomeness: I only need to take the short tube ride up to Stratford, preferably with Lyn, to remember that.

Lyn recently got some stickers with her radio station’s logo on, and has been putting them up all over Charlton to advertise what she does. I thought I may as well stick one on here too.

What are you waiting for? Go listen!

It has been far, far too long since I last visited Paris.

There was a bit of an unexpected treat on tv last night: the late film on bbc2 was My Old Lady, a comic drama with Kevin Kline and Maggie Smith set in the french capital. It was quite a lovely little text about an American Guy and a doddering old Englishwoman, but the principal effect it had on me was that it made mewant to go. It was set in the centre of the city, so there were some great, rather adoring shots of the quaint french streets. There was a certain romanticism for Paris to the film, and it reminded me of the stories of British and American ex-pats living there in the Twenties. London is awesome, but I still think there is a beauty to Paris which I don’t think any other city has.

had something very interesting waiting for me when I got to my computer this morning. Lyn had sent me a link to a film on Youtube. She had found it over night and sent me a link, mentioning that she had done so when she came to bed. The film L sent me was dubbed in Italian, but a quick bit of googling later produced the original Australian version of Dance Me To My Song.

I just finished watching it. As Lyn had told me, it was about a woman with Cerebral Palsy, but I must say I did not find it unproblematic: it is a very dark film indeed, essentially depicting the abuse of someone with severe CP. On the other hand, the way the woman, Julia, becomes more and more independent as the film goes on is uplifting; and it was good to see the bitch doing the abuse get her comeuppance in the end.

Having watched it, I find myself in two minds. To be honest, Julia reminds me a lot of Lyn; and it was good to see a character with severe CP being played by someone with severe CP, Heather Rose, who also wrote the film. On the other hand, I found the film sometimes nevertheless lapses into stereotype, and I found myself wondering whether the characters would really act in the way they did. Above all, though, I found watching someone with a severe disability getting abused like that – both physically and getting taken advantage of – very disturbing indeed. Thus, while I’m glad lyn flagged this film up for me, I must say I found it rather frightening. Mind you, that is not to say that I don’t think it warrants a second viewing.

Last night I finished reading Go Set A Watchman. When I started it the first time, I abandoned it halfway through, so it had been lying by the sofa in our conservatory unfinished for about a year. I had given up on it because of the way I felt it spoiled To Kill a Mockingbird: it took a character who had been aa hero of mine, Atticus Finch, and re-presented him as a racist. However, after finishing Fire and Fury last week, I thought I had better polish off Harper Lee’s effort before starting anything else.

I decided to make an effort and get it read quickly. Once I started it a second time (I thought it best to start from the first chapter again) I found I could hardly put it down. It was still a difficult text, but this time I found it intriguing. It is an exploration of the American South and the Southern way of life. It does not forgive or excuse bigotry, yet it explains it. Scout, returning to her old home town after so many years in New York, finds herself at odds with the racist values she returns to. Even her father, whom she had always looked up to, seems to now share these values.

Yet the invaluable lesson this novel teaches us is one of acceptance. Nobody has the right to force their values onto anyone else, and whether we like it or not that includes bigotry. True tolerance must include tolerance of those whose views we find abominable. That is what Lee is saying through atticus.

It’s a very difficult lesson to learn, but one we could all do well to heed. Scout finds herself utterly at odds with the maycomb she returns to just as we remainers find ourselves increasingly at odds with Brexit Britain. But rather than rail against the system and try to impose her views on her old town, Atticus shows his daughter that true tolerance lies in acceptance: true bigotry, by definition, is refusing to tolerate other people’s views. Thus, at least as Lee frames it, if scout tried to impose her more liberal values on the citizens of Maycomb, she would effectively be as intolerant as the white supremacists she rails against. Atticus is thus not a bigot but a liberal in the truest sense.

Now I have finished it I see Go Set A Watchman for what it is: an absolute masterpiece. I was once upset at how Atticus’ portrayal in this book seemed a betrayal of how he was portrayed in To Kill A Mockingbird, yet Lee shows how they are in fact one and the same character. That is where the beauty of this novel lies.

Last night we watched the president of the united states pull the country he claims to lead out of the Iran nuclear deal, for no reason other than the fact that it was signed by his predecessor. The deal was far from perfect – what deal ever is? – but it was a concrete step towards peace in the middle east. For Trump to try to tear it up simply to get back at Obama, childishly begrudging his predecessor his legacy, demonstrates beyond doubt what a pitiful insult to humanity Trump is. He calls it a ‘bad deal’ as if he knows what he’s talking about, when in fact he hasn’t a clue. Trump has absolutely no experience of international diplomacy, yet yesterday he tore to shreds an important treaty, for no reason but his own pettiness. It is becoming clearer and clearer that Trump is a major threat to the security of the world; he has no idea what he is doing, and should not be anywhere near the white house. He is so immature and naive that he has put his own petty desire to undo what Obama did before the security of the world. In all seriousness, I now think the international community must now put pressure on America to elect a more suitable, qualified president as soon as possible.

I just came across this Ted Shires vlog which I think I definitely need to flag up. In it, Shires looks at his top disability-related song, but rather than going for anything specifically related to disability, or anything cheerful or uplifting, he selects Can’t Win by Richard Thompson. While the song itself is not about disability, Shires shows how it could relate to many disabled peoples’ experiences: the lyrics are about being told that you will never amount to anything, and how one’s dreams get shot down by the forces that be. Of course, while I’ve never heard the song itself, I suspect it is actually probably about class, and how working class people get kept in their place. Yet I find shires’ rereading of it very astute: we crips arguably experience such repression more than most, and from the sounds of it this song describes the way we are all taught to not even try very well indeed.

You know the world has gone stark raving bonkers when the lying criminal currently calling himself our foreign secretary has to go on television in order to get the attention of the embarrassment to humanity currently calling himself the President of America. And when he does, the little creep doesn’t tell Trump to stop what he’s doing in Iran as any sane person would, or that abandoning the Iran deal would be catastrophic. Instead he tries to butter him up, spouting absolute shit about nobel prizes. As I have said before, Johnson should be rotting in jail for deliberately misleading the country over Brexit. The guy’s a criminal liar who thinks he has a right to rule because of the family he was born into. He should not be speaking for the UK but instead we have to watch him lick Trump’s arse in the most cringeworthy way.

At least we have the sunshine to distract us from this ridiculous spectacle.

I was probably just being a miserable old fart yesterday. When I come to think about it, I don’t really hate dogs or any other animal, and was probably just getting grumpy because they were getting all the attention and not me. Truth be told, I do see the point of pets. When I’m lying on the sofa in the evenings watching tv, our cat Guy often comes and lies on my chest. For a moment I consider shooing him away, but then he purrs the sweetest, most content purr, and settles down as if to watch the box with me. And all I can do is cuddle him. Such unconditional love is wonderful: sure, you can analyse it and say that he just wants food or whatever, but that misses the point. The point of love of any kind is that it goes beyond language, far deeper into something nobody can ever explain. That’s what pets give us; that’s their point.

I’ve always had trouble with animals; I’ve never really got on with them. Dad’s allergic to cats and dogs, so we didn’t have any pets other than goldfish when I was growing up. This has caused me to be quite hesitant around cats and dogs: I don’t wish to sound mean, but I view them as greedy, selfish little things, and I don’t see why other people think so much of them.

The group of ladies we meet with in the park are, on the other hand, devoted to their dogs. Sat outside the cafe they swoon over them, treating them almost like children. One lady Lyn and I know even pushes three or four dogs around in a pram. I should probably be fine with such behaviour – it doesn’t hurt anyone, and each to their own – but yesterday I got really wound up about it.

I had already been there for some time, drinking coffee and trying to read. When Deb arrived I went over to join her for a chat. I really enjoy Debbie”s company and she’s great to talk to, but when other ladies arrived with their dogs, she switches her attention entirely to them.

Something in the way they talk to the muts as if they can understand human language, and refer to theirselves as the dogs’ mothers irritates me. Perhaps I’d had too much coffee, but it really started to wind me up yesterday: the way they over anthropomorphised these yapping little MCDs (Mobile Crap Droppers – Dads label for dogs) got to me, and I wanted to yell that they were animals, not children, and there were many real children in the world in desperate need of the care and attention they seemed to award these yapping little pests.

However, I didn’t. To do so would have been mean. In the end I just trundled away, hoping I hadn’t offended anyone by being so sullen. I don’t know why I got so moody over it. Part of the problem is my battery is going on my powerchair, so I can’t go for my usual strolls. If these dogs bring them so much joy, then that’s fine; but I just don’t understand how they can seemingly anthropomorphise these animals to such an absurd degree.

I better admit that I voted Labour this election, more out of pure habit than anything firmer. Part of me feels guilty about that: I was torn between Labour and the Lib Dems. I know Labour back Brexit but I like most of their other policies. I also thought that voting labour was the best way to make sure the tories didn’t get elected. Perhaps I should have shown my opposition to Corbyns outism and voted for a Remain party, but at the end of the day I thought stopping the tories was more important. Besides the tories are more resolutely outist.

I’m pleased to report that progress on my book has been much faster than I thought it would be. It really is starting to take shape: I finished the third draft three or four days ago and sent it off for feedback, and today I made a tentative start on draft four. At over 28000 words, it’s probably about as long as I want it to be, and more or less tells the tale I want to tell. It’s just a case of tweeking it a bit, before moving on to the second part of my plan (more on that in due course).

Now that that project can be put on the back burner (I’ll still work on it, just not as intensely) I can start other things alongside it. I had a bit of an idea today. Lyn had a delivery: she had had some stickers made to advertise her online radio station, Journey Radio, and they came in the post today. Of course, L instantly set about putting them up wherever she could, including in the Cafe in the park.That gave me an idea.

What we need is some kind of promotional event. Maybe Michael would let us use his cafe – in an evening, perhaps – for some kind of gig where Lyn could show off her radio station to people. The public could come, have a coffee, and listen to Lyn do a mix as she does on Journey. It would certainly attract more listeners. I could even ask matt B to help me film the event; the resulting film would promote Lyn’s work even further. It’s just an embryonic idea at the moment, and I have yet to pitch it to mike, but I have a feeling it could eventually grow into something awesome.

When I was up visiting my parents a couple of weeks ago, they introduced me to the Rachel Maddow Show. This is a MSNBC news program which you can watch over the web, and gives you a very good glimpse of what is going on in America politically. Watching it, it becomes exceedingly clear that Trump is in deep, deep trouble: he is on the verge of being subpoenaed by the american supreme court to answer questions over collusion with Russia. Were he anyone else, he would already be toast. And yet, what strikes me as odd is, we don’t hear a word about it on the mainstream news. This is a shitstorm bigger than Monica Lewinsky, bigger than Watergate; I get the impression that it could be just days before that ridiculous stain on humanity is booted from office, and yet if you just watched the BBC or Channel Four evening news bulletins, you would never know anything was wrong.

I finished reading Fire And Fury this evening. In terms of writing a review I don’t know where to start to be honest. My prime criticism would be, reading it, the text began to sound like gossip. Wolff doesn’t cite any sources and the style he uses is quite informal, so I found myself wondering how I could trust what I was reading. It felt like a stream of gossip and heresay, some of it so far fetched it is hard to believe, even given what we know about Trump. That said, this is nonetheless a damning critique of a chaotic White House. It is absolutely clear that the man currently calling himself the president of America is utterly unqualified to be in his position, and every day he is there makes the USA look even more ridiculous.

Not that I’m particularly interested in the music charts, but this story is just too delicious not to flag up. ”Green Day fans have launched a campaign to get their 2004 anthem ‘American Idiot’ to number one to coincide with President Donald Trump’s visit this summer.” It is a great idea if you ask me. What better way to greet the egotistical halfwit currently claiming to be the leader of the free world than with a bit of this?

I’m still working on my book. It’s getting there slowly, and I am really enjoying the process. I’ve been recently going through a few of my old blog entries about inclusion and the whole inclusive education debate, leading me to reflect on how my attitude has changed since I wrote them. I used to oppose what I called segregated education quite militantly. I had been lead to believe, by various people I had met online, that segregated education was totally needless, and that special schools were more or less designed to deliberately oppress disabled people. To such people it was a black and white issue, and for a time I agreed with them. After all, why can’t everyone get taught together?

It’s a lovely idea, but these days such militancy worries me. In the disability community, these self-proclaimed activists seem to think disabled people are oppressed as black people or women once were. For instance, I’ve come across one or two people seemingly branding the death of Alfie Evans an act of murder. They go far too far in making out that the problems we face are deliberately put there, as if they want to think of theirselves as freedom fighters in the same vein as Gandhi or Martin Luthour King. One of the reasons why I volunteer at Charlton Park Academy is to avoid falling into such dogmatism over the issue of special education.

I am not saying we don’t face problems – of course we do – but, at the risk of being a bit controversial, I’m starting to think some of these ‘activists’ are just in it for the self-promotion. They go on and on about how disabled people are so oppressed, and how they courageously fight for all our freedom, but most of them only have mild impairments and very little first hand experience of the things they claim to be resisting. Education is not a black and white issue, and one size does not fit all. Trying to teach certain children alongside kids who don’t have special needs sometimes does more harm than good. This is not an issue we can politicise or be dogmatic about, just because you like being an activist.

Today was quite a grey and cold one, but summer is definitely on it’s way. When I went to the park earlier, I was greeted by a glorious sight: the first cricket match of the year. I cannot tell you what a marvellous sight that was. It feels like an age has passed since I was last out there, watching local team the Mighty Eights bowl a few overs. I have always loved cricket, and, sat there this afternoon, I thought about Dad, who introduced me to the sport. It also made me think of all the glorious summers spent watching cricket or playing it with my brothers. It put me in one of those relaxed, reflexive moods where everything gains a little perspective. And suddenly, sipping coffee as the game slowly got going, all the world’s troubles seemed to vanish. The sky may have been grey and it may have been cold, but it felt like summer had arrived.

It’s time to dust off my pink tutu, I think. I just came across word on Facebook of a drag protest against Trump’s visit. Details are still fairly sketchy, but the idea is for everyone to dress up and meet in central London on the 13th of July to show Trump how angry we are about how he treats LGBTQ people. ”Due to the appalling way the Trump administration has regarded the rights and welfare of LGBTQI communities of the US, the idea of a Trump visit to the UK is unacceptable. Let’s get visible, stand with our sister’s, brothers and others in America, and show that we are a country that celebrates diversity.” It’s an awesome idea if you ask me: bigots like Trump have no place in world politics, and what better way to show that p’tahk he is unwelcome here than with a festival of frills, petticoats and bright pink lipstick.

I try to steer clear of talking about cases like Alfie Evans. They’re a minefield: people get so emotional about situations like his, and you can never get it right. Is it better to try to continue to care for him, or let the poor kid pass away? Continuing to care for him doesn’t offer much hope – he’ll never live a full, proper live, or even become fully conscious. Yet if you let him die you are effectively playing god; choosing whether anyone lives or dies is a decision nobody has a right to make. And you can then extend that line of thinking to say that if you stop the support for babies like this, you could then justify stopping support for various other people, perhaps with less serious conditions.

It’s an extremely difficult one, but I really don’t like how worked up various people are getting over it. The doctors involved have apparently been receiving death threats. I find that the worst part to all this: people adopt a stance on it, and then refuse point blank to hear the other side of the story; they then become quite violent over it. By all means campaign for this child to be kept alive, but to act like a fascist about it does your argument no favours because it just makes you look ridiculous. Even writing blog entries on the subject like this one risks attracting angry comments from people like that, which is why I try to stay away from doing so on here.

Lyn and I were in the cafe in the park yesterday afternoon. We spent quite a while there, talking to our friend Debbie. Yesterday was colder than it has been, so towards the end of the afternoon we were in the small cafe talking about this and that, when we got onto politics. One of the regular customers there, whom I know mainly by sight, was wearing a Jeremy Corbyn T-shirt. I told him I liked his shirt, but I only disagreed with Corbyn on Brexit. At that, his wife told me that they were socialists, but had voted for Brexit.

Predictably, that set me instantly off. I felt my usual stab of rage, before starting to try to explain that I saw that as a contradiction. The woman said the EU was essentially about capitalism, but I told her that the worst forms of capitalism would now be set free in britain. She did not realise she had directly aided the system of greed and selfishness which she thought she opposed. I worked myself into my usual spazzy huff and probably went too far: she was a lovely woman perfectly entitled to her view, and I had no right to shout at her.

I tried to calm myself down and instantly felt guilty. Deb knows me rather well now, and she has seen me get like that before. Chuckling, she told me to cool off. I apologised to the lady, and she told me that there was no harm done.

Yet it seems to me that there is a firm moral to this tale. It isn’t just me who gets angry over Brexit; the whole country is torn in two, with one side furious at the other. That is a ridiculous, childish position to be in. We should not be enemies of one another; remainers should not hate outists, or blame them, or call them stupid or racist. That only leads to more devision. I should not hate the couple in the cafe. What happened two years ago, happened; people voted how they voted. Continuing this argument only breaks up friendships or prevents them forming.

I told myself to write something more lengthy on here today. Most of my recent entries have only been a few lines long, and it’s high time I posted something of at least four or five paragraphs. But then I came across this video of Michael Wolff in conversation with Armando Iannucci and decided that it was essential that I flag it up. They discuss Trump, of course, and it seems to me that their conversation goes to the heart of the matter. As they say, there is a tendency for us to assume that all the gossip about Trump being as thick as two short planks has been exaggerated, and that he can’t be as moronic as he is taken to be. Yet, as Wolff says, he really is that stupid. Thus this video presents us with two experts, one in politics and the other in satire, discussing an utterly absurd situation, beyond even the best writers of political comedy. When the most powerful country in the world is being lead by someone with no idea what he’s doing, sometimes all we can do is sit back like these two men do, scratch our collective heads and ask each other how the smeg we got to this point.

lI usually try to steer clear of Saturday night talent shows like Britain’s Got Talent, but I think it absolutely imperative that I direct everyone here. I’ve been broadly aware of ‘Lost Voice Guy’ Lee Ridley for a while, but I think his appearance on Britain’s Got Talent last night was a major milestone, not just for him but also for communication aid users in general. His performance is genuinely hilarious: he comes across as witty, charming and self-aware, clearly impressing his audience. It is awesome to see a VOCA user blowing everyone away like this, demonstrating to everyone what ‘we’ can do. I really, really hope Ridley goes all the way in this competition.

It may be a couple of weeks old, but I think I’ll just flag this video of Stephen Colbert interviewing Dr. Evil about his firing from Trump’s cabinet. I’m not that much of an Austin Powers fan: I like parodies, and have nothing against parodies of James Bond, but Mike Myers’ parody of him seemed a bit too unsubtle to me. That said, this use of Myers’ take on Blofeld seems perfect. After all, the only way we can respond to a cartoonish, grotesque president is with equally cartoonish, grotesque characters. You do not need to be subtle and nuanced when it comes to Trump; the childish toilet humour of Austin Powers suits him perfectly.

It was pretty weird when, last year I bumped into someone from my old special school at powerchair football training in woolwich. Hebden green is miles away in a quiet corner of cheshire; that was a world I had assumed I had left far behind. To bump into someone from that world here in my new one was quite a turn up, but I am pleased it happened.

Dan is training to be a barrister. He was telling me about it yesterday, and about how he has been turned down from many interviews due to his speech impediment. Dan speaks more clearly than me or Lyn, and does not need to use a communication aid, so I was fairly disheartened to hear that was a problem for him. Nonetheless, in the interviews he does get, he does well, and is well on his way to becoming a lawyer. In fact, I just saw on Facebook that he’s been in the Brazillian Press about it. He told me yesterday that he has another interview today, so let me wish him the very best of luck.

I may have been wrong about my old school. I now know quite a few former students who are now doing very well for theirselves. I didn’t do too badly, either. I once dismissed it along with all special schools as little more than daycare centres. While I still say there are major problems with the system of segregated education, for me to dismiss all the staff who work in such schools as not bothering to teach students properly was clearly quite wrong.

It feels great to have things back to normal. Lyn got home late last night after I had gone to bed. It was so nice to wake up with her lying beside me again, as if normal life had resumed after a short interval. Mind you, in other respects, things aren’t so normal: high summer seems to have been suddenly sprung upon us, and I was able to sit out in the park in the heat for most of the afternoon. Lyn joined me there, then my fellow Hebden Green oldboy Dan, before we all came back here to sit in the garden. A truly normal day, then, but I really hope this lovely weather continues.

Peers have defeated the government on the issue of staying in a UK-EU customs union after Brexit, the BBC reports. I always knew those old duffers were useful for something. Let’s just hope this is a sign of things to come, although I suspect that as the reality of leaving the EU becomes clearer and clearer, such defeats for the Outists will become commonplace.

Mind you, I’m only occupying my mind with such matters while I wait for my beloved to get home. I am starting to try to avoid politics altogether as it just makes me angry, and the recent news of Lee has reminded me that there are more pressing issues to worry about.

Smeg I miss Lyn! I haven’t seen her in over a week and, to be honest, it’s becoming painful. Since I got home, the house has not felt right: it has been empty and quiet, barren of music. I’ve missed looking over to Lyn’s studio and seeing her at her desk; I’ve missed kissing her every morning as I get up; I’ve missed kissing her goodnight on my way to bed. I’ve missed talking to her, chatting to her, arguing with her. I’ve missed the laughter, the puns, and the awful jokes. I’ve missed the cuddles and the warmth. I know it has only been ten days or so, but it has felt like an age. I know now how Mum must have felt when Dad used to go away on business when I was small. I miss Lyn badly, and can’t wait for her to get back tomorrow.

Believe it or not, but yesterday I finished the first draft of the book I’m working on. I am surprised how quickly it has come together, but yesterday I decided it was time to combine all the chapters into one document and send it to Lyn, my parents and a few of my friends for feedback. It may have needed a bit more work before I called it a draft, but it was getting there. At over twenty thousand words it’s quite substantial. Steve has already given me some excellent input, so today I started draft two. At this rate it should be ready in no time.

Mind you, I’m awareI’ve been neglecting my blog, so expect some longer entries on here soon.

I really need to flag up this week’s episode of Click. Towards the end, there is quite a cool segment about alternative and augmentative communication, and how technology like the ipad is being used to enable young children with learning difficulties to communicate. It is not too far from what Lyn and I use our ipads for, although the emphasis in the article is more on learning difficulties. It points out, for example, how tablet computers can now be used to supplement picture exchange systems. Great stuff well worth checking out if you’re interested, although I still think Lyn should be credited as one of the pioneers of the Ipad as a primary communication aid.

Can you believe yesterday marked this sites fifteenth birthday? I’ve been blogging for fifteen years. I think that’s quite impressive, especially given how regularly I post. Most blogs these days have decidedly shorter lifespans, or are only updated occasionally, but I’ve made an effort to keep it up. Here’s to another fifteen years of ill-informed rambling then, although this evening I don’t have much to say. The world, it stands once again on the verge of all out war, having been lead there by fools and megalomaniacs. I suppose we ought to hope we’re all still here in fifteen years.

These days, apart from the occasional twinge of beer-related lust in times of stress or sadness, I’m becoming more and more pleased with my decision to stop drinking. It has been almost two years now, and I have no intention whatsoever of going back to that stupidity. It would appear I’m right to take that attitude. According to this BBC report, just one drink a day can take years off your life. Not only is it dangerous in it’s reduction of bodily control, it’s also harmful to your health. Call me a party pooper if you must, but I hope others will now join me in stopping drinking altogether.

I’m safe back in Charlton. The journey down from Crewe was uneventful, although tellingly it took more time to get from Euston to Charlton than it took to get from Crewe to Euston. It was a lovely four days, and it was great to see my parents and Esther. I was just chilling out here, though, when I got a message over facebook. It was from Phill, an old school friend: Lee D, whom I’ve known since we were seven or eight, has been taken to hospital, having had a suspected stroke. He’s apparently doing well. My thoughts are now with him, and I hope he’s okay.

Mum, dad and I went over to Alsager this morning, just to see how much the village had changed. Call me melodramatic, but I’m now not sure I ever went to go there again: the place I spent six years making so many friends, the campus which means so much to me, is now completely gone. So many memories, now buried underneath an endless housing estate. It really was upsetting to see the place where I became who I now am, and where I first met people like Steve, rocky and Charlotte, and even where I first physically met lyn, now completely obliterated. It’s no longer the village I knew . I’ll never go there again.

We had intended to go over to Alsager today just to see how the place had changed in the eight years since I was there, but it’s quite miserable out so we decided to stay home and put a dvd on. Dad let me choose, so I selected the new Ghostbusters film. I suspected it would be crap, but I hadn’t seen it before and I just wanted something amusing to watch.

Having just watched the film I was right about it’s quality, but at the same time I loved it. It’s a strange piece, at the same time wanting to seem totally new yet constantly nodding to the original films. Bill Murray makes a cameo, for example, but as a completely different character. There may be two bound copies of my MA thesis on film upstairs, but I loved what I just watched not for any of the intellectual reasons I wrote about. Watching the film sat next to my father, in the very room where I probably first encountered ghostbusters as a child, for a few moments I was that fife or six year old again, sat next to his dad, laughing out loud at funny people zapping ghosts. The film may have been awful, but sometimes that isn’t the point.

I went over to see Esther in Crewe this afternoon. I hadn’t seen her in over two years. Writing this sat in my old family house, I must admit I feel very upset. I don’t want to go into too much detail on here as it would not be my place to do so; but this afternoon Esther told me the details of her brothers death. Suffice to say she has been through what nobody deserves to go through. Esther is not only one of my best friends but a person I owe a hell of a lot to: without Esther I would never have made it through university. To hear her tell me what she told me this afternoon, that she had to endure such sadness, broke my heart. I find myself wishing, if only there was something I could do to make it right.

This morning finds me at my grandmothers house in Harlesden, having just spent my first night outside Charlton away from Lyn in quite a while. I’m here with my parents; we drive up to Cheshire this afternoon. I’m going up for a few days, mostly because I want to visit Esther. After the sad news of the loss of her brother a few weeks ago, I really want to give my old friend a hug.

Seeing my grandmother en route made a lot of sense. She is rather infirm now, and needs a lot of support. I think she was happy to see me. Sitting in the same house I remember crawling around as an infant brings back a lot of memories.

We just Skyped my brother Luke. Most of those memories, of course, include him. He’s doing very well, currently living near Oxford. I don’t see much of either of my brothers these days except over Skype, something the news from Esther has made me determined to rectify. The loss of any sibling is tragic. Esther has long felt like a sister to me, and I want to support her as she has supported me.

Thinking artistically again, I still say postmodernity and remixing are the way forward. Both Mitch and John are here, and we were just talking about all the different genres of techno music that there now are. That got me thinking: these days, so much of music is about remixing. It’s about taking old songs and adding something new to them. Rather than making something completely new and original, music makers now often take two or more old pieces and fuse them together.

That interested me. It made me wonder whether it would work with other art forms. What if I took the text of one short story, cut it up and merged it with another? Of course, people do it all the time with video on Youtube: taking two clips and splicing them together is now quite straightforward with video editing software; I’ve started to do it myself. What interests me is the potentials this creates. We can have so much fun: your two favourite characters can now meet and talk to one another; someone from one narrative can now be placed into a completely different scene. Such possibilities excite me. As in music, they mash together beats and rhythms to generate altogether new meanings. Nothing is now set in stone, but can be reused and played with in this postmodern, ever-changing, remixed world.

I learned two things today: me, too much coffee and politics do not mix, and that I should not park my powerchair under the tree by the cafe, if I don’t want to get bird crap all over the control stick.

Even though it uses a few too many nauseating cliches, I think this BBC article is worth me flagging up. Did Stephen Hawking change perceptions of disability? I think he did. He was a figure to represent us all; both a spokesperson and a positive public figure. Mind you, one downside is, I have lost count of the times some little shit has shouted ”Oi, Stephen Hawkins (sic)” at me.