Cerebral Palsy certainly does weird things to you when it comes to emotion. I’ve mentioned my rages once or twice recently, describing how my intense anger at the referendum result erupts in a fit of bile, swearing and table-banging. I also think I’ve mentioned my ”squealing” once or twice on here too: how, when I’m happy or excited about something, I make strange screeches or screams – joyous little noises which are almost infant-like. I was thinking about both recently, and it occurred to me that they must be two sides of the same coin. If, as I’ve been told, other people with CP have the same anger problems I do, then it stands to reason that the rages and the squeals are all part of the same issue. Another piece of the jigsaw slots into place.

My squealing probably sounds a bit odd, but it is not a problem. What worries me is how angry I’ve been getting recently – my rages are getting worse. I just erupt. I know I need to calm down and be sensible, and that such pure anger never gets anyone anywhere; yet I can’t seem to help it. For a moment all I can feel is hate, and all I can do is shout and bang my fists. I really need to do something about these moments – they must look so immature, like child’s tantrums; and I’m sure it scares Lyn, or at least pisses her off. She doesn’t seem to have these issues. But what can I do when, as I now realise, such expressions of emotion are tied directly to my disability.

There is something I want to make absolutely clear after writing this entry a couple of days ago: individualism and individual voices rule. Truth be told, I’ve been feeling sort of uncomfortable about that entry; I’m worried that people now think I want us all to defer to an all-knowing, all seeing mainstream. Of course not! There is a lot that’s fucked up about the mainstream. As Lyn sagely pointed out in her comment, by and large all those companies get their information from a few sources such as Reuters anyway. We should all be reading as widely as possible. While I personally place my trust in and have a preference for the BBC, that does not mean I think it infallible; nor do I use it as my only source of news. You would be a fool to trust any one source completely: the more you read, and the greater variety of sources you read, the greater chance you have of building an accurate picture of what is truly going on. Yet that is not to say we should not be wary of those who lambast the mainstream, as a concept, for their own ends.

Just to expand a bit upon what I was saying yesterday, I think the attempt to nullify the mainstream as a concept is an example of how, these days, the idea of the truth is more and more up for grabs. Things are becoming more ad hominem: if someone does not like a certain report, he attacks the messenger rather than dealing with the content of the message. If the media is reporting something someone does not like, he makes a big song and dance about the big bad ”mainstream”. Games are being played; people are trying to manipulate us more and more. We can see a great illustration of this here: on a day when a report on Trump’s corruption came out, he simply got on Twitter and made one of his ridiculous statements, thereby distracting everyone and taking our attention away from the bigger, far more serious issue. Thus what we are told and what we believe is becoming more and more a playground; we are being manipulated, and the information we receive is becoming increasingly fucked about with. I don’t know about you, but I find that a really worrying state of affairs.

I was watching the news yesterday, and I couldn’t help noticing how Al-Assad defended himself in an interview by attacking mainstream media, just as western cultural outsiders, e.g. Right wing bloggers, talk show hosts and conspiracy theorists do. It has as if ”the mainstream” has became something they all want to discredit. They all seek to cast it as something which only the unaware cling to or believe in. There is an overt attempt, by some, to give ‘the mainstream’, as a concept, connotations of conformity and subservience. They, on the other hand, cast themselves as purveyors of ”forbidden knowledge”, according themselves and what they say a form of cultural cache. They have all taken advantage of how, in the internet age, our knowledge sources have been opened up and are now vastly more varied. ”The truth” is no longer the province of a few big media companies.

Instead, such cultural outsiders are starting to actually take aim at the liberal consensus and those who articulate it as something oppressive. they would have us believe that the information reported by the mainstream is, to some extent, bogus, and to believe it is to mindlessly accept what one is supposed to believe. thus they set themselves up as custodians of the truth; they imply that to believe them is to be independent and to think independently. Depicting mainstream sources of information as tainted, and to portray listening to the mainstream as succumbing to a form of mindless conformity, is the only way such outside voices can claim parity with it. Mainstream media has vastly more resources than individual writers: it is therefore more likely to be seen by others as objective. But by casting listening to the mainstream as a form of negative conformity, and it’s claims as the output of a powerful, oppressive force, outside voices can cast themselves as equal to it. Relative objectivity can be cast as subject and flawed; and those who portray the mainstream in this way can cast their voices as being in equal if not superior opposition to it.

The problem is, more often than not, those who adopt this position are fairly Right-Wing. they see the mainstream as pursuing a leftist agenda, and therefore attempt to discredit it in the eyes of others. By and large I think they’re right, in a way: mainstream broadcast media has to cater for a vast audience; it does not want to offend anyone, so it tries to be as broad-minded, tolerant and as accommodating if individual difference as possible. I know there are a few notable exceptions, and it doesn’t always get this right, but by and large this is the stance taken. To some, this is anathema: they see this as ”ramming multiculturalism down people’s throats”, and pedalling a leftist worldview. They therefore seek to nullify it.

Such voices know they cannot compete with the mainstream in terms of resources, so they set about spreading the notion that ”the mainstream”, as a general concept, is negative. This also accords with their right-wing, individualist, anti-communitarian worldview. Individual voices are good, they say; anything spouted by the big corporations is mainstream and tainted – don’t trust it. Thus we are seeing more and more such bloggers and talk show hosts talking of the mainstream as if it was taboo or tainted; as if it was something only those not in ”the know” take seriously. In turn they present themselves as custodians of an illicit, hidden truth not reported by the mainstream. It is all a ploy to get their voices onto an equal footing with it.

While I think there should always be room for alternative points of view and value the rise of the blogsphere as a cultural phenomenon – I am, after all, a blogger – I for one prefer to get my news from mainstream organisations like the BBC. As I said, it has vastly more resources than any individual, and is far more likely to be unbiassed and objective. I wanted to note this ploy, though: this trend in some of trying to discredit ”the mainstream” as an idea; speaking of it as an oppressive entity only the uninitiated take seriously. The danger is, if we were all to take this stance and abandon the mainstream – if we were all to ignore the evening news bulletin in favour of reading the blogs of a few right-wing crackpots – then they could tell us whatever they wanted and we’d be none the wiser. Unsubstantiated opinion would seep more and more into the discourse; the unqualified, unchecked views of a few individuals would be valued as much as, if not more than, big mainstream corporations. As much as I support blogging and value independent voices, I think that way danger lies.

I was watching one of these archaeology programs on tv last night. They were showing the excavation of a skeleton, and it made me wonder: if my body was buried and dug up centuries later, would it show I had cerebral palsy? Would the archaeologists be able to tell I was a disabled man, or would I just look like any other skeleton? CP is quite a big part of who I am; by and large it has shaped my life and my personality, but would that be reflected in my bones? I’m not sure: my skeleton, I am told, has been partially distorted, but future archaeologists might put that down to something else. At the end of the day, whether they will or won’t be able to tell I had CP doesn’t matter – I will, by definition, be dead – yet I can’t help wondering, will such a significant part of what makes me, me be visible to future archaeologists, or will it be lost to the past, making my remains just like any other.

[img description=”undefined image” align=”centre”]/images/turkeys at xmas.jpg[/img] gobble gobble!

I just came across quite a profound observation which I think is worth repeating. I just watched footage of the press scrum outside the premiere for the new Star Wars film, and one of the actors commented that films like this bring people together: big franchise filmssuch as additions to the Star Wars series, or Bond or Harry Potter, capture the worlds attention for a moment. They bring people together so that, for a while, we can put devisions of politics, ethnicity, gender, sexuality or whatever aside, and come together over a film. I think he was spot on. That is surely the power of big genre films. We can all share in their enjoyment; they form a common point of reference. Of course, one can poo-poo such films all day long; I personally think Star Wars is looking more and more like a children’s franchise. Yet they are so big that they cross cultural devision, so that, for a moment sat in the cinema, we become one people again. At a time when intercultural devision and animosity are on the rise, surely that is a good thing.

Yesterday was quite an interesting day. I took myself up to stratford, for the Together2016 disability film festival. To be honest I didn’t know what to expect. A few weeks ago, I had submitted my 1000 Londoners film to them, and they said they would use it, so I thought I would go up to check it out. It turned out to be a great day: it took place in stratford town hall: I got there part way through a discussion, but soon, films were played. Most were fairly short, and I was surprised at how varied they were. Their subjects covered both physical and intellectual disabilities; there was fiction and documentary; live action and animation. There was even some poetry, although, truth be told, I wasn’t much taken by it. My film was shown in the second sequence of films, towards the end of the afternoon. To my surprise and mild embarrassment, when it finished it got a huge round of applause, although that may just have been because I was there.

I started to head home soon after that – I didn’t want to stay too late. It had been quite a fascinating afternoon. I held my head high as I rode the tube home: that applause still buzzing in my ears, it’s good to see people like my work.

Lyn and I went to a Richard Ashcroft gig at the o2 last night. Truth be told, I didn’t know much about him, but L said he was in a band called The Verve, a name I vaguely recognised from my school days. It was nevertheless a great night: although the dude was wearing such thick sunglasses that I wondered how he could see in the dark of the arena, he is a really good musician, banging out some great alternative rock tunes. His anthemic They Don’t Own Me was especially rousing. Sat there at the back of the arena, munching on fudge, it was hard not to get carried away with it all. I also felt a twinge of nostalgia for the nineties: I remember hearing those songs being played on the radio in the taxi on my way to school.

A great night then. We got home about midnight, heads buzzing with tunes. It really is awesome to have such a great, great music venue just around the corner.

You know, it’s the small things in life, those almost minute touches of interpersonal contact, that amid all this growing rage and hate, despite all the current effort to get us caring only for ourselves, that remind one that humanity, for all it’s faults, is basically good. Lyn and I were just in the park, at the cafe, having a spot of latte lunch. The usual guys were there with their dogs. We ate and chatted, generally relaxing. Things were on my mind; I had been writing and needed the break.

We spent an hour or so there, and it would soon be time to go. Something astonishing then happened: Chivon, one of the waitresses, came out and gave us all

Christmas cards. I was touched: we go there quite often, so we now know everyone there quite well; but for them to go to the effort of doing that, showing that they value us not just as customers but as people, as friends, was deeply moving. These days we’re all being encouraged to see one another as rivals – we are supposed to compete, to fight, and to not give a damn about anyone but ourselves. It was only a small gesture perhaps, but it shows that some people are still resisting that force: some of us still care; some of us still value people not as potential profit but as people. As long as we hang on to that glimmer of humanity, the encroaching forces of darkness cannot prevail.

Although it will only be online for thirty days or so, and although I have a quibble with it’s use of the term ‘fix’ as it implies something is broken, I think I’ll flag this bbc programme up. The Big Life Fix was on last night; we caught the end of it, having been out, so I just rewatched it. I think it’s great. It’s about how technology can improve people’s lives, including articles on bringing internet access to remote welsh villages and remedying the judder people with alzheimer’s experience with a special wrist strap. Thus it touched on disability, and struck me as strongly advocating the social model. We were also fairly chuffed to see Ross Aitkin, one of the guys who created the Lynstrument , on it as part of the team. interesting stuff, then, and I’m now quite looking forward to next week’s programme.

I watched something magical happen yesterday – something small, yet truly amazing. In our living room, Lyn has an Ipad set up on the table, not far from the sofa where I laze. She usually does her composing in the conservatory – her studio – but yesterday it took her fancy to create a bit of music in the living room. That, after all, was where her coffee was. From my sofa I watched her, first tapping a simple rhythm into the music app, then slowly building on it; she made it repeat again and again, each time adding a note or two. The overall effect was a piece of music being built up over time. It sounded like a song in itself, and it stuck me that it – the process – was itself beautiful enough to be recorded. The way Lyn made the song emerge piece by piece, adding to the repeating pattern note by note, captivated me. I was quite awed by it’s stunning beauty, and wanted that moment recorded forever.

My rages are getting worse. These days, whenever the smug, grinning face of Nigel Farage appears on tv, I fly into the most almighty storm of anger. Last night it was particularly bad: he was on Channel four news debating the current state of the EU with Ken Clarke, and seemed to shrug off any point Clarke put to him with such arrogance that I wanted to kill the scumbag with every fibre of my being. I was shaking with rage; rarely, if ever, have I been so angry. This man has completely fucked the country through his xenophobic views; he wants to do away with equality legislation, our rights and freedoms in order to impose a laizzes-faire economy based on greed on us. He should be in jail as far as I’m concerned, but he seems to regard himself as a hero, a great man who has freed us all from a tyranny.

It seems, however, that I’m not the only one to get so pissed off: such anger is now gripping us all. Whereas cordial, respectful debate used to be the norm, insults are now being hurled left, right and centre. Everyone is getting angrier and angrier, no matter what side of politics you’re on. With me it finds voice in my blog entries, but I fear people will soon start venting their rage by other, more physically violent means. While others have speculated that this is a result of the rise of social media, I also think the advent of strong, divisive personalities like farage and trump has played a part. Both men stand for something we should all find totally abhorrent, yet there they are, glorying in success and cheered on by hate-filled racists and ultra conservatives who almost venerate them.

The result is the polarisation of politics where everyone sorts themselves into two camps, each quite literally disposing the other. I find it sickening, and I think others do. I’m sure others feel the rage I do; we’re all experiencing such fits of white hot, incontrollable anger on both sides of the debate, torn apart by opposing ideologies. I think this is a very, very dangerous state of affairs. The question is, where will all this anger lead? If history is anything to go by, society is currently heading somewhere truly dark.

I think it’s pretty important that I flag this video from Professor Michael Dougan of the University of Liverpool up. In it, prof dougan spells out what I’ve suspected all along: the outists lied to win the referendum. Dougan makes no bones about it: people were told deliberate falsehoods to get them to vote for something which is not in their best interests. The out campaign was run by crooks, bent on defrauding the country for ideological purposes. I challenge anyone to watch it and to still think the result should be allowed to stand.

A couple of days ago I came across the PBS Spacetime youtube channel, and I’ve been watching it’s videos ever since. Fascinating stuff, although I can’t pretend to understand all the science and maths he comes out with. Today I would like to flag this video up, discussing whether a warp drive is possible. It turns out it is, theoretically at least. There are a lot of hurdles to get over, but in theory mankind could one day fold spacetime to travel faster than light. I think that is awesome. If, like me, you’re fascinated by this sort of stuff but don’t have the background to understand all the complicated maths, these videos are well worth a look.

Lately I have been pondering whether academia is innately philological. By philology I mean a love of and fascination with words and language. It seems to me that academia, regardless of subject, whether science or art, values language greatly. It places great stock in words and their use: everything must be clearly defined; any academic analysis uses complicated, specialist words. Language is how academia expresses and perpetuates itself – it is it’s very currency, underpinning the entire system. Any undergraduate essay or postgrad thesis is a written document; the better it is written, the more eloquently and precisely a candidate can use language, the higher his or her mark. As a discourse it relishes creating new words. To me this makes it a philological exercise. In Lacanian terms, academia is all about the Symbolic; individual success depends on how well one can access it. It all boils down to a deep love and valuing of language. This is a slightly random thing to note for a Sunday morning I know, but it’s interesting how one makes these strange connections when you’re lying in bed at night, waiting for sleep. One love – the love of language – seems to lie beneath the entire academic discourse, a common feature in any academic field.

I think I’ll flag this quite worrying Guardian article up today, concerning the extent to which corporate lobby groups now hold sway, especially in America. They purport to be grassroots groups, but scratch the surface and you’ll find them funded by billionaires and corporations with vested interests. This is especially worrying with a joke like Trump in charge.These groups, pretending to represent common people, will simply do away with legislation on things like climate change; we’re already seeing it start to happen. If we are already despairing at that utter joke becoming president in the first place, it would seem there’s a lot of despair yet to come.

Lyn and I went to the pub last night to celebrate the birthday of a friend of ours from the cafe. I hadn’t been into a pub since I stopped drinking about four months ago, and I was rather worried about it. I knew it wouldn’t be easy to resist the temptation to have a beer; but I also knew that, were that to happen, things would come down like a house of cards and bad habits would return in the blink of an eye. Sat there, surrounded by friends, part of me was getting rather grumpy, demanding to know why I couldn’t just have one beer, like a ‘normal’ person. But I knew that one would lead to two, two to three, and so on. The psychological gates would have been opened, and before I knew it I’d be falling out of my chair again, if not last night then tonight, tomorrow or soon. That was not going to happen*.

This situation came to an end, however, as soon as I ate. We were there before dinner, but, getting there to find food was on the cards, Lyn texted Dom to come help us. All thought of alcohol left my brain as soon as that burger hit my lips, and after that I was right as rain, chatting to people, showing off my thesis and blog on my Ipad. It turned out to be a great evening, and I think Lyn and I made a few new friends. I stuck to Kaliber, nonalcoholic beer; Lyn was on juice. We got home just before eleven. I was feeling tired, but really pleased with myself. I had done it: I’d spent an evening in a pub without drinking a drop of alcohol. Given the state I was in before giving up, I think that’s quite an achievement. What’s more, now I know I can do it, and that I don’t need a drink to enjoy a party. I have no hangover, nothing’s been damaged: alcohol-free certainly is the way to go.

*As a strategy, I imagined Captain Picard had given me a direct order not to drink, using his deepest, sternest voice. It seemed to do the trick.

I have been thinking about Monty Python a lot recently. While it seems my enthusiastic prediction that they were planning another reunion seems to have been premature, I can’t help thinking we haven’t seen the last of the Pythons yet. Of course, now that Terry Jones is unwell, a full reunion like the one in 2014 would seem unlikely. Yet Cleese and Idle are currently touring America with their own show, which apparently includes a lot of Python material; if Palin and Gilliam could be persuaded to join them, surely it wouldn’t take much to get Python back on the road.

2019 marks the golden jubilee of Python. It would be a shame not to mark the anniversary in some way. After all, not many comedy troupes have had as much cultural influence as Python. To mark it, if a full-on reunion is out of the question, then why not some kind of tribute show? You could get fellow comedy legends such as RowanAtkinson and harry Enfield to perform python material. It’s just an idea; I just don’t think Python should be allowed to vanish without a trace, it’s cultural legacy going unmarked.

Simon Stevens is still at it, I see. I came across his latest article in the Huffington Post last night, followed by the usual mixture of appalled, bemused and puzzled comments, flagged up by a friend of mine on facebook. I took a look, and it was the usual nonsensical mess of misunderstood concepts purporting to be analysis. I know, given how much he has worked me up in the past, that perhaps I should just ignore the guy; yet there are a few things about Stevens’ latest article which reveal quite a bit about him, and which I want to point out.

Stevens’ latest article is about ‘Post-Truth politics’, and how it may apply to disability politics. As I understand it, post-truth politics is where politicians, writers or speakers appeal to emotions rather than hard, demonstrable facts. As Wikipedia has it, ” Post-truth politics (also called post-factual politics) is a political culture in which debate is framed largely by appeals to emotion disconnected from the details of policy, and by the repeated assertion of talking points to which factual rebuttals are ignored.” Thus, unable to back up their arguments, we are seeing jokes like Trump and farage appeal to emotions and feelings such as nostalgia more and more they invoke romanticised notions of a past which never existed.

After giving this definition, though, Stevens attempts to apply it to disability. He says that accounts of damage done by welfare cuts to disabled people now fall under ‘post-truth’: ”In terms of people with impairments, the anti-cuts movement has been an expert in using post-truth to win hearts over minds. Sadly these post-truths have now been repeated in so many articles and even accepted by the United Nations, it is going to be almost impossible to undo the damage to people with impairments’ place in society caused by the mythological environment people now accept.” This is, of course, utter nonsense; it’s complete non-sequitur. It is as if Stevens is trying to take a buzz-word much in use at the moment, but which he does not really understand, and shoe-horn it into his grievances with the disability community. To stray into post-truth is not to lie or to state something someone else disagrees with; it is to stray into the subjective. It is a rhetorical concept describing quite a worrying phenomenon in modern political debate, but Stevens uses it as an accusation with which to lambast those he disagrees with. In short he does not understand the concept he is trying to discuss.

We know this guy has grievances with the disability community. He seems to begrudge the fact that he is an outsider, and not as central or important as he would like to be. Thus he sneers ” As someone motivated by real facts and evidence, I find post-truth hard to swallow as I can see how it enables so many individual voices to be lost, especially the voices of many people with impairments.” For ”lost voices”, read his own – this man does not care about anyone but himself. He then goes on to try to claim that the use of precise, statistical evidence somehow also now qualifies as post-truth, writing ” what we have ended up with is a generation of activists on all sides who can only work within the realm of soundbites and popularised headlines. ‘x% of people with label a are not getting solution k’ attempts to justify posttruth because it simplifies and reduces the argument to cause an emotional reaction.” Again that is non-sequitur: producing such definite statistics, as disability rights activists often do, manifestly does not reduce argument to emotion; precisely the opposite, in fact. Yet for some reason Stevens tries to claim statistics are postfactual.

The way he brands the use of such statistical information as regurgitating soundbites, moreover, suggests he has cottoned on to the current fashion among social commentators to use that term and tried to apply it here, where it clearly does not fit – a statistic is not a soundbite. He obviously thinks this makes him sound knowledgable when in fact, it betrays Stevens’ severe lack of understanding. He seems to be trying to attack activists standing up to government cuts, adopting the tone of an expert and employing buzz words and catchphrases he does not understand. He seems to want to carve out a niche for himself as a disability consultant and commentator by expressing views which run counter to those of most activists, claiming that he alone relies on evidence where everyone else resorts to emotion. This quite baseless claim is clearly an attempt to award himself credibility and authority, inviting people to listen to him rather than others. He seems to crave attention, blurting any old nonsense out, trying to sound like the consultant he thinks he is. Yet he clearly does not understand what he is trying to talk about, or the consequences of what he says.

This nonsense goes on. His article reads like a set of poorly understood phrases and concepts tacked together in order to try to sound like an intelligent disability commentator demanding to be taken seriously. Yet any analysis would demonstrate this man’s writing to be the self-serving tripe it is. He seems to want to attack mainstream disability rights advocates, as if he wants to be seen as more important than others. He seems to think his voice should matter more than it does, when in fact it is rightly shunned by most. We can read his attacks on other activists as quite a childish reaction to that very shunning. His misuse of language and concepts seems to me to imply he thinks he belongs in a league he clearly does not. This wouldn’t matter, save for the fact that this man is writing in a major online newspaper, and he appears to champion right-wing views. In attacking people who cry foul, he basically seeks to attack those of us currently standing up to the tories. In the huffington post, this might not be seen by others as the tripe it is.

I love it how things work out sometimes. It has been quite a cool afternoon: Lyn and I just got back from Greenwich, where we were introduced to the sport of Boccia. Last week I bumped into Susan, the woman who runs the wheelchair football, at the cafe in the park. In passing, she mentioned she also runs a boccia group. That sent alarm bells ringing because, not long ago, Lyn said she would rather like to have a go at the sport. Once home I emailed Susan, who invited us both to the next session at The Forum in Greenwich.

For those of you who may be unfamiliar with it, Boccia is like bowls or patonc, played indoors with soft balls. Players take it in turns to roll either a blue or red ball, trying to get theirs closest to a white jack. (Click here to see a video explanation). Lyn used a ramp whereas I found it easier to get out of my chair and roll the ball. We had great fun, playing several games with the players already there. By the end, I had got quite into it, and I think L was too. I think we will be going back next week. That’s just as well, as, Judging by some of my shots today, I think I could do with the practice.

Between this and powerchair football, I seem to be suddenly becoming rather sporty.

I saw yesterday that a couple of papers were reporting that Farage ‘fears for his life’ after the brexit vote, and that he’s getting so much abuse these days that he is now scared to leave the house. My initial reaction was ‘Good! That scumbag deserves every gobful of saliva hurled at him.’ But then I realised that that was exactly how he wanted people like me to react: He wants to cast himself in the victim role, up against all these intolerant, abusive ‘Remoaners’. As the persecution of ethnic minorities skyrockets, largely thanks to him and his moronic supporters, he is trying to make out that it goes both ways, that the outists are facing intolerance too.

This is a sneaky move. If we react how he expects us to react, by saying that he deserves it for all the trouble he has caused and the hatred he has stirred up, we prove his point. He wants us to stoop to his level; he’s bating us, drawing us in in order that he can cast us as the aggressors. He knows we won’t be able to resist challenging such a hypocritical, self-pitying statement, coming from a man who has made the lives of so many a misery. But if we say anything, we fall into his trap and allow him to take the moral high ground. If on the other hand we condemn these attacks, we automatically invalidate any criticism of him, giving Farage the legitimacy he craves: we help him cast his attackers, justifiably angry at the problems this man has caused and the xenophobia he stands for, as being in the wrong. It’s staggeringly manipulative. The only solution for us is to point out what he is trying to do; rather than get angry and start hurling the insults he expects and wants, we must show we can see through it.

I just want to make one thing clear, and get it down in black and white: I will never, ever subscribe to the notion of race or racial difference in biological terms. As far as I am concerned, humanity is a single race, a single species. I know that will seem obvious to most people reading this, at least at present; but the way things are going, I fear this self-evident idea will soon be questioned more and more. Certain people will start trying to shift the consensus; we are already starting to see it happen in the states. With the so-called alt-right on the rise, theories of race which should have been consigned to history are returning. I fear they will soon be seen as an acceptable part of social discourse – the idiots championing such ideas will counter demands they shut up with hypocritical pleas for tolerance, and slowly racism will become accepted more and more. It will become acceptable to judge people and to make assumptions about things like intelligence based purely on the colour of their skin; where such abhorrent ideas were once shunned, they will start becoming accepted as valid opinion, and then I fear as fact. I refuse to let that happen. I will never accept or tolerate such a rancid idea: humanity, for all it’s wonderful diversity, is one race, and all it’s members are of equal worth.

I suppose I better note this, miserable news though it is. Yesterday I got wind that MMU’s Cheshire campus is being considered for complete closure. That means that, now they’ve sold the campus at Alsager, they might sell the one at crewe too. If so, that would mean the end of MMU Cheshire.

In a way I find this heartbreaking. At uni I spent most of my time at Alsager campus. I didn’t really like crewe campus, probably because it was a bus ride away and meant getting up early. Yet it is where I did my Masters; I remember going there for my meetings with Alan. The closure of the entire Cheshire campus would, though, mean that the place I owe so much to, the place where I made so many good friends, the place which essentially made me who I am, is no more. It may now be three hundred kilometres away, and I might never have gone there again, but to hear that place is now being tossed aside like it didn’t matter, when it once mattered so much to me and my friends, is very sad news indeed.

Lyn and I were just making our way home after an afternoon out and about. We were coming through maryon-wilson park again, when I suddenly felt a moment of peace. The sky was blue, the air clear and calm: suddenly it was twenty or twenty-five years ago, and I was being driven home from school through the fields of cheshire. It was a timeless moment: all frets and worries faded as I rolled through that small piece of woodland, the woman I love beside me. All at once I was here, bound for home after a day at school, or here, heading towards Swettenham in my powerchair. Happy memories flooded into my brain: comforting thoughts of family and friendship; youth, and peace.

I felt the past, and pondered the future. That moment made me think about the homeward journeys of twenty years ago; but in turn that made me ponder the future:

what will life be like twenty years hence? What secrets and surprises does time hold? Who knows. What time do we have, but all the time in the world?

What can I do? Every time I read the headlines or watch the news these days, I fly into a rage. I fill with feelings of absolute hate and anger, comparable only to Ahab. Every time I see Farage’s smug little face, I want to put a brick through it: for a moment I fancy I begrudge him every breath he draws – he steals oxygen which might be better used somewhere else. The same goes for Trump. And then the moment passes; I browse on, or the news moves on to another story, and I calm down. Yet, frankly, what I feel in those few moments scares me: I honestly want to kill someone.

I’ve always been hot tempered. Unihock sessions back at school often saw me get worked up into uncontrollable, adrenaline-fuelled rages. I knew it was just a game, butI couldn’t stand to lose. I knew it was just a game, but I often got violent. These days, it’s the same with politics: the team I wanted to win lost, and I suddenly feel absolute hatred for the winners. I know it’s immature; I know I should respect democracy and the will of the people etc, but part of me cannot. Part of me rails that neither Brexit nor the election of trump should be allowed to stand.

But what can I do. Part of that rage stems from the fact I know I am powerless. For a moment I feel the urge to go find farage and rip his worthless head off, but I know that’s impossible. Even if I could what would it achieve? one should debate with the voices you disagree with, not silence them completely. And isn’t such absolute intolerance to opposition one of the hallmarks of the very ideology I am so furious with? Yet, for a few moments, a feeling of absolute fury courses through my veins, and all I want to do is rip this mans beating heart from his chest for all the suffering he has caused.

The world is going entirely the wrong way, and I’m powerless to stop it. All I can do is sit here, have my rages, wait for them to pass, and then get on with life.

I have just got in from a very cool meeting over at the Forum in Greenwich. A couple of weeks ago, the guys there invited me to attend a presentation by people from

Digital Greenwich who are developing an app ”that will map the accessible features in the borough such as where dropped kerbs are, pelican crossings etc.” Although I use my Ipad pretty much daily, I’m still not much of an app person, but I went anyway just out of curiosity. I’m now very glad I did, as I think those guys have hit upon an excellent idea. What they propose will map out all the steps and obstacles we wheelchair users face when trying to get around, including stairs and things like where cafe tables spread across pavements. They were also talking about marking where benches are, so older people can see where they can have a rest. Such an app would be very, very helpful, not just for guys like me but many others. This meeting was about starting thee process of establishing exactly what features the app would need. They plan to start here in South-east London, then roll it out further afield. I am so happy to have been asked to help in it’s development – this really is a good idea.

What must people in this country have felt in the thirties when, looking south across the channel, they saw Germany descending into fascism? Can we now feel something similar when we look to the west across the Atlantic? Hyperbole aside, I’m beginning to fear we can. Then as now, we are watching a neighbour descend into intolerance and reactionism, headed by a charismatic but very dangerous leader. The difference is, whereas Germany was then still recovering from the great depression, America is the most powerful nation on earth. A complete racist nutter, surrounded genuine by neo-nazis, has control of the world’s biggest army and it’s most important economy. I know I can write silly things on here; I know I can get melodramatic and exaggerate; but this danger is real, and I am now very, very scared.

I keep yearning for sheets of paper these days. If only I had a pack of A4, I’d give a sheet to Phillip hammond to draft his resignation on. He somehow thinks it’s more important to cut tax for high earners than to give poor and vulnerable people the means to live. He says the uk must be ‘competitive’, but we all know that’s a smarmy little justification for the greed-based views of the right – the rich grow ever richer while others are left to starve.

I’d also give a sheet to Nigel Farage for him to write his apology on. The dirtbag owes the nation an apology: because of him, we had the referendum; because of him, the country is screwed. The pound is weak, unemployment up; xenophobia and bigotry are rocketing. This all started when farage and dirtbags like him sought to impose their antiquated views on us. He owes us a grovelling apology for the damage he has done and the trouble he has caused.

A sheet would also be handed to Donald trump. Assuming he can even write, I’d force him to draft his resignation. Enough is enough, a joke’s a joke; it’s time for him to stand aside and let someone more qualified and suited for the job take over. The guy is a reality tv show host – for all his bravado, it’s patently obvious Trump does not belong in the white house. He has no idea what he is doing, and the way he has appointed all these fascist shit-heads to prominent positions should have us all very, very worried.

And how about a sheet for Mrs May. Perhaps then she could write down some sort of coherent strategy for Brexit negotiations. It’s quite clear that neither she nor anyone in the government know what they are doing. They say they are going to make all these demands of europe, but the eu doesn’t want us to go – it’s in their best interest to make this process as hard as possible. Better yet, May could use the piece of paper to nullify the referendum: she could point out it was only advisory, put the breaks on the whole damn nightmare and reset the whole issue.

Every time I turn on the news I yearn for this pad of paper. In my mind, it has come a metaphor: I long to present these people with a4 sheets. There are probably more. Who would you give a piece of paper to, and what would you have them write?

I think I need to flag this Guardian article up today, purely out of anger and frustration at my countrymen. It is quite a thorough assessment of the damage done by Brexit from more of a european perspective, explaining why it will have no choice other than to take a hard line in brexit negotiations. There is a lot of frustration and bewilderment currently being directed towards us from the continent; by believing the lies of xenophobes, we have placed at steak things which go far beyond our borders. Europe wasn’t the evil empire certain people made it out to be; it was about community and cooperation. In voting to leave, we may have unleasheda set of forces which could take europe back to somewhere truly dark. As much as I know the peoples’ democratic will has to be respected, anyone who understands the situation must be yearning for the referendum result to be nullified.

I have just come in from an absolutely awesome afternoon. Two or three nights ago, I saw an article on the local tv news about a powerchair football team training in Woolwich. It pricked my interest. I had never heard of the sport before, but it looked like great fun. The players looked about my age or slightly younger, so at first the thought occurred to me to go try out. But then the filmmaker in me kicked in – making a film about them, perhaps on the same lines as my Thousand Londoners film, would be much more up my street.

I got on to Google, found the team’s contact information, and emailed the woman in charge. She promptly replied, and we got into an email exchange. She seemed quite keen on my idea, and invited me down to their Saturday afternoon training session.

I felt fairly apprehensive as I made my way to Woolwich earlier. I’d contacted the guys at Chocolate Films, who told me they had their hands full until well into the new year, so I was not sure what, if anything, could come of this trip. Yet I thought it worth going anyway, just to get the ball rolling. Besides, I was curious – what I’d seen on that news report had looked like fun. Mind you, as I drew near to the waterfront leisure centre this afternoon, I still thought that actually participating in the training would be totally out of the question: I still had in my mind dad’s rather alarmed reaction when I told him of my plans via skype; he knows how I treat my powerchairs, and how quickly I get through them. To be honest, I had to agree.

We need not have worried. When I got to the leisure centre, I met Sharon, the woman I had been emailing. She escorted me to a sports hall, where two or three lads were already knocking large balls about with their powerchairs. I made my way to the edge, trying to start to think about possible shooting strategies.

It was then that Sharon asked me if I wanted to join in. I explained that I didn’t want to damage my chair.

”Don’t be silly,” she replied. ”We use special chairs. Can you transfer?” And so it was that, a short while later, I was in a highly powerful, highly manoeuvrable electric wheelchair with a special guard over the footrest, perfect for knocking the large balls around. All thoughts of film making flew from my brain as I fell instantly in love. There was so much power in that chair; I could feel it at my fingertips. Here was another skill to master, another sport to get into. I was going to enjoy this.

I spent the next hour or so getting to know the sport. Everyone there was very welcoming and friendly. Rather than take it too seriously, as I remember the football training sessions I watched back at university were, this was mostly about fun. They started me on simple driving skills, before seeing how well I could control the ball. This proved far harder than it looked, and it took me a while to get the knack of it; but by the end of the session, I think I had made some progress.

I left wanting more. I had had a great deal of fun: adrenaline had kicked in, and I felt the urge to master a new skill. Perhaps more importantly though, I feel I made a few more friends this afternoon. Thus this is something I can see myself getting into. I have not forgotten about my initial idea though – I still have every intention of making a film about this sport, and think it could be great. It’s just that, filmmaking often being a slow, painstaking process, it seems I now have something to keep me occupied in the interim.

I suppose everyone will be expecting me to say something about Children in Need being on tv tonight. I should, I suppose, tow the disability activists’ line and launch into a rant about how patronising Children in need is; how it traps people with disabilities into reliance on charity. Don’t get me wrong: no doubt CIN does exactly that. Yet you don’t need to hear another rant about it; you don’t need to read me going through the motions, railing against ‘the system’ all over again. These days, too many people attack the bbc, from both sides of the political spectrum. What we need to be doing is attacking a government whose ideologically-based cuts have forced so many kids into positions where they need to rely on charities like children in need. That’s who we need to be railing against. To do anything else, I fear, is to distract ourselves from focussing on the real causes of the problems we currently face.

I was able to fit another piece of the jigsaw regarding my absences into place yesterday. I’ve known they’re basically a mild form of epilepsy for a while now, but I kept noticing that, even though the seizures themselves only last four of five seconds, they were often followed by gaps in my memory. That is to say, fifteen minutes or so later, I would kind of come to, not being able to remember the last quarter of an hour. I’d be fully conscious in that time, but unable to remember it. Yesterday, for example, I know I had one just after leaving Co-Op, but the next thing I recall eating my lunch at home.

That puzzled me, so I thought I’d try to reassure myself by looking it up. I also asked my mum and neuroscientist cousin Cyril about it. And sure enough, what I now know is called postictal amnesia is a real phenomenon. From what I read, the brain just takes a while to get itself back into order, like a crashed computer taking a few minutes to reboot. Knowing that helps; it means I fret less. Indeed, as I reflected here, since I found out what those damn things are it has been a great boon: I can tell myself not to worry, and that they cannot be helped. This new information adds to that feeling; it also explains why I frequently can’t remember adding to the absence record my parents asked me to keep, as well as meaning I don’t have to worry about my more long term memories fading.

I had been concerned that my memory was being effected by these siesures in some vague way. After all, how does one know you have forgotten something if you have forgotten it? Now I know they do, but in a specific, scientifically-established way, I am not so worried about long-term, important things I want to remember being deleted from my memory. I now know it’s less a case of memories being somehow erased, more a case of new memories being prevented or disrupted from being laid down in the period immediately after the absence. And even if I was somehow losing my long term memory, it wouldn’t necessarily be anything to do with my absences anyway – how could you logically tell there was a connection? It’s funny, but even writing this entry helps, as it shows such things are real and can be documented, that others have had such experiences, and that I am not alone.

I remember screaming at my computer screen when I first checked the headlines a week ago today. News of a Trump predidency was almost too hideous to comprehend. The world had finally gone utterly insane: the most powerful person in the world was a crackpot reality tv star. A week later, I feel little different, save that I have the embryonic hope that, when reality sinks in and Donald Trump realises he has now somehow become the head of a nation, he drops the act, starts to think and swerves to the left. We are already seeing him begin to temper his macho talk and rethink his stance on things like healthcare. It’s a small hope I know, but a week in, what else can we do?

I can’t help feeling a little down regarding my blog today. Something went wrong with it yesterday, and when it came back online, Sunday’s entry was gone. I know it doesn’t really matter – it was only a short, minor entry speculating about a Michael Palin travelogue based on David Attenborough’s career- but the fact it broke what I call my chain annoys me. Before then, I had blogged every day for about eighteen months; I was trying to post an entry for a solid calendar year. I now have a gap: my archive for 2016 will show no entry for the thirteenth of October. I know in the grand scheme of things it hardly matters. After all, there can’t be many people who blog so religiously as I do. Yet it was one of those little goals I had set myself. It was going so well, and now I have to start the chain from scratch. Oh well, never mind!

I’m pleased to announce that I can now use hashtags! I was never able to use them before, as my extended keyboard didn’t have a hashtag key. But yesterday I worked out that by pressing the button with the square and three circles and ‘3’, I can print a hashtag. This is important because hashtags are becoming ever more useful these days – how else can one tag something or someone on Twitter? I’m therefore now rather pleased, and I’m off to tag things to my heart’s content.

Last night, just before going to bed, I caught the end of the Graham Norton show. On it, Norton was interviewing Lord Lloyd-Webber. I don’t usually have much time for him, but Lloyd-Webber was talking about his new musical based on Jack Black’s film, School Of Rock. That gave me an idea: what about a musical based on or about the Paraorchestra? I think I mooted the idea of a film about them a while ago (that predictably got nowhere), but it occurs to me that a musical might work better. After all, it would be about a group of people with disabilities who find the means to express themselves through music. It could chart their formation, rise, and participation in the paralympics. Not only that, but it would presumably give some much needed jobs to disabled stage actors. Perhaps Lloyd-webber himself could write the score.

Just one of my silly little ideas, and as usual I have no idea where to go with it, but I thought it worth noting on here.

Let the river rove and roam,

Let the water wend it’s way home.

Let it drift down to the sea shore

Returning to this place nevermore.

Let the sun drop from the sky,

Into the west, as the birds fly.

As the sky turns a dark, dark blue;

Night draws near, sat here with you.

Amid all this doom and gloom, sometimes a coffee at your favourite cafe on a bright, sunny autumn day is all you need… [img description=”undefined image” align=”centre”]/images/at the cafe.jpg[/img]

(that and the woman you love, of course).

I know this might sound awfully negative but, all in all, 2016 is shaping up to be a pretty crap year. Compared to the awesomeness of 2012 (olympics) and 2014 (graduating my MA, watching Monty Python and meeting Patrick Stewart), things seem to have become decidedly bleaker. We are now leaving europe, and the most powerful nation on earth now has a complete nutter for a president. I can’t help reading analysis like this and thinking things for the world in general are about to get far, far bleaker. Parallels with the 1930s seem inescapable. And yet, just as humanity survived that crisis, as well as every crisis before and since, I know we’ll pull through it. As Ned Stark is so fond of saying, ”Winter is coming”. Yet winter is always followed by spring; and however crappy things become – and frankly, that’s looking less and less like hyperbole by the day – I know we’ll pull through it. After all, Star Trek predicts we’ll soon go through a catastrophic third world war before we become the space-faring civilisation we are destined to be. We just need to sit tight, hunker down and wait things out. In all seriousness, things are starting to look rather bleak.