I hear there is a new bishop of Rome – a new Pope. A man who, despite all the talk of reform, seems as conservative as the last one. Forgive me for trying to discuss something I am quite ignorant of, but I cannot see the catholic church reforming in the way it needs: it is essentially a medieval institution trying to stay relevant. Frankly, I’m baffled that it is still so strong. I suppose it gives people something solid to hold on to, but that can only last so long.

i had one of my odd but interesting thoughts recently. If I were the Pope’s PR guru (and what’s the betting he has one) what woud I advise the pontiff to do in order to maintain a modicum of relevance? How could we dispel the myth that the pope is an out of date institution dedicated to maintaining a power it does not deserve and protecting it’s peadophile priests? Why, I’d follow the example of the british queen and have il papa perform in a stunt alongside a major film character – what better way to show the 76-year-old Francis to be in tough with the Facebook generation? How about having him be flown to the cathedral by superman, or he could sing some frank zappa, or he could do a version of this old Pyhton skit.

Now, I know what you’re saying: no such thing will ever happen, even a version which didn’t use my suggestions. But why? if the queen could do it, so could the pope, or what is he above which the queen isn’t? I mean this as a serious question: if an institution like the british monarchy can be open to such play, why not the catholic church? At least it would show it to be capable of modernisation and engaging with popular culture. Yet it won’t: it sees itself as Holy, above such things, and thus it has no place in modern culture.

I daresay it’s high time I brought you some proper disability news, so I think I’ll send you here. A legal challenge has been mounted to try to stop the closure of the Independent Living Fund (ILF) which thousands of disabled people rely on for their survival. The government say they want to replace it with more local systems, but that just means passing the buck to local councils in order to save money. Given that such councils don’t have the funds to replace it, thousands of disabled people stand to loose their independence. The ILF MUST be saved, then, and I really hope this challenge succeeds. I’m really sick of these tory bastard putting their selfish desire to lower tax before the needs of disabled people.

It would seem that I’m not the only person to lament the loss of a wheelchair. I came across this eulogy by Stella Young earlier. It’s a beautifully written piece (especially for an australian) articulating the emotional attachment some of us crips feel for our chairs. They’re not just mobility aids, not just tools for getting from A to B: they are liberators. As Young points out, most norms se them as signifiers of weakness, illness or desease, but to us they are objects of supreme pride and strength. Poetically addressing her chair, young writes ”You have been an integral, unwavering support to me. With you I have finished high school, had my first kiss, moved away from home and begun my adult life. I have fallen in love in you, had my heart broken in you, lost my virginity… beside you. I have jumped for joy on your trusty seat, turned my head and sobbed into your backrest. I have danced and laughed and become someone.” Our chairs are part of who we are, and a source of power. They are metonyms for disability, this supremely vibrant community full of wonderful people in which I’m proud to belong, and as such my chair is part of my very being.

I suppose the ironic thing about the fact that I’ve been rabbeting on about the Olympics so often for the last few months is that I don’t give a fuck about the sport. Apart from Cricket and occasionally football, to be honest I don’t give a damn about who beat who in whatever event. What interests me is the social aspects which come with sport: the cultural and artistic side-effects, as it were. That, to me, is the true value of events such as the olympics: as stated here, in quite an interesting piece about the potential effects of Mumbai hosting the games, being awarded the olympics can have profound and positive consequences for a city.

Yet, at the same time, that’s all bull. In the long term what good would having a few hyper-fit people running around a track for a couple of weeks do for one of the poorest cities on earth? Indeed, what good did it do London? Glorious though it was, it’s central focus is still about sport, about winning and loosing, about very lucky, privileged people competing. At the end of the day, the only bits that interested me were the ceremonies, and they were just book-ends to the main event – an event in which competition, not articulation, was the focus. While works of art have meanings which last forever, sporting events produce results lists which loose value the next time the event is played. Thus, although it was fun while it lasted, now the olympics is over, it is over, and all that matters is the next event. All we have left is the bill. The only thing left to debate, as I so often do, is the content of the ceremonies.

What I’m beginning to ponder, then, is how we can remove sport from the equation yet retain the cultural aspects of the olympics. What I want, I suppose, is a festival on an olympic scale; an event in which art replaces sport, but in which the city is still emphasised. All the nations of the world would come together, but instead of competing in sport, they would show off works of art. There could still be opening and closing ceremonies, of course, which would produce the same spectaculars I’ve been writing about, but elite athletics would be replaced with painting, music, film and any other artistic genre you can think of. Expression would replace competition; creativity would replace the fetishisation of physical ‘superiority’.

I’m not necessarily calling for the replacement of the olympics, but for a properly instituted cultural Olympiad to sit alongside it. After all, all humans are creative, on some level, but not all humans do sport. Therefore it seems to me that such an event would appeal to far more people, and have far more meaning. It would allow people to express themselves, both in terms of world culture and that of the host city. Moreover, such an event would probably be far cheaper to host than the olympics, as fewer venues would need to be built. It would allow people to sample cultures from all over the world, just as the olympics does now but with much more emphasis on those cultures. Why does the only major event which truly unites the world have to be one devoted to competition and the pursuit of physical ‘perfection’? Why not also have one devoted to human creativity? Frankly, I’d far rathe see a city like Mumbai spend it’s money on an event like this in which everyone can participate, than two weeks in which a few lucky people with ultra-fit bodies compete in competitions whose results have no possible bearing on anything else.

I just want to post a short little entry today wishing my Mum a happy mother’s day. Mum and Dad just got back from new york, where they celebrated their thirtyfifth wedding anniversary. Great going guys! Have a fantastic day, mum – love you lots!

Although I think I have said all I want to about the meeting of Bond and the queen, having gone back and added repeatedly to entries like this, this and this one, I find myself still fascinated by it. I am intrigue by the way it blurs fiction and reality; with how it forces together two aspects of british culture, one real and the other fiction, making it apparent that the two are interchangeable. In our postmodern world, there is no longer a definite boundary between fiction and reality: everything is a construct, part of the Lacanian symbolic which mediates the gap between the Real and the Imaginary. Thus this sketch simultaneously confirms the Bond franchise as a huge central part of our culture, and reveals the queens position as existing within the same sphere of cultural iconographies rather than above it, on a par with James Bond and any other fictional construct.

I am interested in where and how such fissions happen. The stunt with her majesty at the olympics was huge: under what other circumstances could you get a head of state to act, especially one held in such high regard. Whatever you think about the monarchy, you must admit that this was quite a big event, a big deal. It was, therefore, a one off – the queen will never act in a fiction again. I keep trying to find other such colossal events: it seems to me that examples of this type of cultural textual play only occur at events like the olympics. The only other place I can come up with is at charity telethons. Only there can you get the same strange type of forced entertainment, the same type of attention-seeking stunt, overtly intended to grab headlines. The only other example I could come up with is Can’t smeg, Wont smeg, where the cast of Red Dwarf appeared in character in an episode of Can’t cook Won’t Cook for red nose day. It isn’t on the same scale, of course, but there too you can see the same intrusion of imaginary-symbolic characters into something which calls itself real.

While I am aware of the repressive effect charity has, such events interest me, then, as they bring about the same type of circumstances where fictional spaces are opened up to reality and vice-versa. While they might seem mere bits of fun intended to grab attention, it seems to me that such devices open up realms where reality can be seen as the fiction it is, cultural iconographies are blurred and distorted, renowned institutions are shown to be constructs and constructs become real.Indeed, as my old film tutor Alan said after I shared my thoughts with him, ”What if Daniel Graig was really James Bond and the actor Daniel Craig was just an imaginary figment of the symbolic formation/fiction that we call ‘ordinary life’, the kind of entity that masquerades as part of social symbolic reality but is in fact a merely fictitious emblem of our collective desire for hero worship.” That is to say, for all we know, it is daniel Craig the actor who is a fictional construct, and the olympic film therefore showed a real man called James Bond walking alongside the queen.As I wrote here, though, that implies this country has a highly secret group of government assassins running about the place who are above the law – something totally undemocratic and very, very scary. Nevertheless, my point is that sketches like this raise such questions, in turn saying something of our culture. Given the large stage upon which they appear, they have a unique resonance too: yes they are forms of play, but I am starting to think they can be seen as lapses into the real through which certain truths about the constructed nature of society can be glimpsed.

Time for me to calm down after yesterday. Calling for someone’s death, on the basis of their politics or anything else, is something I shouldn’t do and it’s not something I’m proud of. Yet the fat remains that I feel extraordinarily angry at what is going on: angry at this group of people, who think they have a right to power, can act so unfairly; angry at the anguish they are choosing to put people through; angry at the fact that they would rather make the poorest people in society suffer rather than tax the rich; angry at the fact that they don’t understand, and I can’t explain. Posting angry entres on my blog won’t help the situation, though. So I suppose I’m powerless. What else can I do but hammer away at my keyboard, typing words which will go forever unheeded, railing at a world which is becoming increasingly unjust.

I was just at a meeting, and I think I just saw one of the most horrific, disturbing an heartbreaking images of my life. It was a discussion session, where people talk about things on their mind. One lady was speaking: she had fairly severe CP – worse than mine or Lyn’s – and was speaking using VOCA and a head-switch. She was telling us how concerned she was about the future; about how she had had a letter about the bedroom tax. Then she kind of broke down: onher face was look of sheer panic and fear, genuine, absolue fear. A look I’d never seen before, but one which filled my heart with rage. How could anyone subject such a person to this type of anxiety? How could any government do this. The tories have an alternative, but they would rather subject disabled people to this tax, pushing them to a state where they fear for their lives, than use it. How could they do this? How the fuck could they? I’m sorry, but anyone who can allow such things to come about is not quite human, and deserves only the hatred of anyone who cares. In that moment, I felt a hatred and anger like no other: that which Ahab felt for the white whale is nothing compared to what I now feel for Camoron’s government. Frankly, if they can let such things come about, they and the mindless pricks who voted for them deserve slow, painful deaths.

I get angrier and angrier every time I hear CaMoron speak. I can bear the lies less and less. It has reached a point where it makes me physically sick. I just watched his latest speech: where do I begin with that tissue of dissemblances, distortions and untruths? He blames the last government for our economic woes, when in fact that government saved us from even greater catastrophe. He derides red tape when without such precautions capitalism would have ran even more rampant. He cuts tax, thereby taking money out of the system when we need money going in. He says we are all in this together when he promotes individualism, a system where those who are able to get rich while the rest of us starve.

And we are starving. Week after week I see stories online of disabled people starving, dying through lack of care or committing suicide through despair.

Responsibility for such deaths lies with the tories, not with labour. It is they who are cutting services, they who are letting us starve while they cut tax for their rich friends. Theirs is selfish philosophy based on greed, a philosophy where you care only for yourself and your on money, and the rest of society can go to hell. They may talk of the private sector picking up the slack, but the private sector only cares for profit, so for CaMoron to say that services for people like me and Lyn won’t be effected either betrays his stupidity or the fact that he, like most tories, doesn’t give a fuck. In short, they are leaving us to starve and suffer while they and their friends grow richer and richer. Low tax only favours the able and the greedy. What they are doing is criminal, and something must be done to remove these selfish lying bastards from power immediately.

I don’t have much to say today, but as a Bond fan I think I’ll send you here. Ian Fleming was an interesting figure. He worked in naval intelligence during world war two. I many ways Bond is a composite character created from several figures, many of whom he mt during the war. This bbc article tell some of that story: it’s long, somewhat grizzly, but quite fascinating. And I love the fact Fleming had the codename F.

Awesome days seem to come thick and fast in the capital sometimes. I don’t know why, but there seems so muh to do here: it’s as if London is it’s self contained world; a throbbing, pulsing organ of a city ejaculating human creativity. Lyn and I were invited to the BT Tower today for a launch event concerning technology for disabled people. A few weeks ago I received an email from some people I met at a disability event last year: they remembered was interested in film, and wondered if I’d like to get involved in a film they were making. Initially they wondere if I’d just like to shadow the crew, but then they sent me some o the preliminary artwork. It turned out they were interested in alternative ways of accessing technology.. One image showed a person typing with their nose. Of course, I told them that is how Lyn uses her Ipad, which got them quite interested, and they then invited us both to be in the film.

That’s how we found ourselves at the BT Tower this afternoon, attending the Technology4all award launch. To be honest filming was straightforward – they just wanted us to say a couple of sentences to camera. We weren’t there for that long, but I must say I was captivated by the view: we could see for miles. The best part was when I suddenly realised the room was spinning! It’s been quite a day: one of films, speeches, and spinning rooms. Where will London take me next?

This morning, for the first time this year, I enjoyed my first coffee of the day out in the garden. The sun was strong and bright, and it wasn’t at all unpleasant: spring, it seems, is here at last. Mind you, I should probably point out that I didn’t have my first coffee today until about noon, due to the fact that I didn’t get up until gone eleven, but that was because we had gone to bed rather late.

Lyn and I were out last night. We went to a bobby mcferrin concert, up at the Barbican. To be honest I don’t think I had ever heard the name bobby mcferrin until Dominik mentioned it on saturday, but it seemed to get Lyn excited, and when they explained that he was the guy who sang Don’t Worry, Be Happy, I became just as enthusiastic. I love that song. Dom had only suggested going on saturday; we’d bought tickets over the phone Sunday morning, and, yesterday evening, D’s friend Asia with us, we were setting off up into London. I love how quickly such things sometimes happen.

However, getting there didn’t turn out to be so straightforward. In fact it turned into a bit of a game of Mornington crescent, (although nobody got this reference when I made it last night). It was lucky I was in my manual chair, as the problem was finding our way to an accessible tube station near enough to the venue. We were forced to go all over the place, eventually arriving a few minutes late despite leaving in plenty of time.

I think we missed one or two songs, but it was a great gig. I was very impressed by Mcferrin’s vocal gymnastics: he does something akin to what now would be called beat-boxing – using his mouth to create sounds which are not words. To hear it live is truly impressive, and I was genuinely stunned at what he was doing. He was playing alongside a band, as well as his equally talented daughter, and together they made some truly cool music. If I had one criticism of the night, though, is that the content of many of his songs was a tad too religious for my taste, but then, he is from the american south (I think). I was also disappointed that he didn’t play Don’t Worry Be Happy after all, unless that was one of the songs we missed at the top of the show. But then,, after about forty years of playing that song, he must be quite fed up of it.

The journey home was much more straightforward than the journey there. We stopped to buy a pizza in the local kebab shop, and, shortly after wolfing that down i my usual pizza-devouring manner, I went to bed, humming this, despite not actually hearing it played.

While I’m not sure I agree with everything he says, this is an interesting opinion piece from the artist taxi driver. While I am something of a fan of the BBC, I sometimes suspect I have an over-romanticised view of it, and cannot exonerate it from everything it is accused of here. Comic relief is something of a fig-leaf for problems in africa caused in large part by Britain. Yet, while I do agree that the beeb could do a lot more to expose injustices inflicted by the british, both in the past and now, I fear it was rendered impotent by the Iraq dossier affair, and has to tread warily. Even so, the beeb is a thousand times more trustworthy and honorable than any of the Murdoch press or rags like the daily mail, and it pisses me off when such bigots attack something we should be proud of. I”d much prefer the ad-free beeb to the rancid rantings found on fox.

Just a quick observation today: I was in woolwich earlier on a walk. As I was going through the ancient market, one of the stall-holders shouted ‘Rasberry!’ Obviously he was selling the fruit, but I’m so used to cockney rhyming slang that I stopped in my tracks. I thought he was hurling random insults at me, as in cockney raspberry translates into cripple via ‘raspberry ripple’. I thought someone was randomly hurling abuse at me. Of course, when I turned around I realized what he meant, but it is kind of strange to note how such mistakes can arrise, and, perhaps, how sensitive I’m becoming.

I fear it no exaggeration to say that fascism is again rising in europe and must be stopped. the success of ukip last night in Eastleigh and elsewhere, is surely just a protest. People are disillusioned with politics in general. If people actually thought about what ukip stands for, of course, nobody would be idiotic enough to vote for their brand of fascism-lite. For fascism it is, no matter how much farage and his minions might like to pretend that it isn’t: they would have us believe that they merely promote a valid, rational, alternative point of view when they stand for xenophobia and illiberalism. They are anti-immigration, anti-gay marriage, anti-tax and anti-wealth fare state. When you look at their policies, their general anti-modernity stance, they remind one of german nazism of the thirties. The truly frightening thing is, though, like german facsism, they are gaining popular credibility: people do not see them for the xenophobes they are, and instead talk about controlled immigration and leaving the EU as if it was rational.

It isn’t. I know I keep just writing things like tis and making generalizations without giving my reasons, but the fact remains stances such as those taken by ukip are not rational. They stem from a deep distrust of modernity and ‘otherness’: of course, people like Farage would have you think otherwise, pretending that their views have solid social and economic reasons behind them. But let’s cut the crap: what harm does immigration actually do? Even if it reached a level where the culture or even language was changed, so what? It has always changed, so it will merely be another chapter in he never-ending story of these isles. Nobody will be swamped and nothing will be lost: things will just change, an change is inevitable and natural.

But that is what people like farage don’t get. They seek to hold back progress, stop time, keep values fixed and absolute. The result, had they their way, would be oppression; a forced conformity to a norm that does not exist. It would also be isolationism: their misplaced desire to keep the uk independent wold merely keep it alone. We would become an irrelevance. In turn we would become more inward-looking: as our social fabric becomes stricter, it will split. As homophobia and xenophobia become normalised, as they will if people continue to give bigots like farage air-time, society will rupture, and the only thing that could hold it together is a system akin to that of fascist Germany. Thus if this trend continues we will loose sight of who we are.

This is why I am so worried about the rise of ukip and other far-right parties across Europe. He might seem jocular and amenable, and I realise that as people get desperate, they often turn to political extremes, but farage represents the return of something very dangerous indeed.

This probably isn’t the best place for me to broadcast my artistic ideas, especially ones so embryonic, but I just have to jot this down somewhere to get the ball rolling. I was watching the culture show last night, about Matt Stone and Trey Parker’s new musical about The Book of Mormon, and it ocurred to me that someone should take an equally irreverential attitudde to disability. I know that people like Francesca Martinez are beginning to show the funny side of disability, as do programmes like The Last Leg, but to some extent they hold back. What if we got really dirty? I mean, obscene to the depths of South Park. What if I could somehow expand upon the ethos behind Spastic Ballet? I mean, there was an anarchic element to that: I love the fact that people thought that someone had dressed wo cripples up and forced them to dance; I love that mismatch between perception and reality. Surely there is dramatic and comic potential behind that. What I aim to do now, then, is start playing around with ideas, start generating characters, perhaps use some of the comments people leave on youtube to create scenarios. My aim isn’t to take the piss out of myself or lyn, but to take what we started with Spatic Ballet a step further and develop it into a full narrative.

I seem to think the oddest thoughts. Last night in bed, for instance, I began to seriously wonder whether anyone had ever been christened Elisabeth Swallocks. It’s odd, when you think about it, because Swallocks sounds as if it could be a genuine surname, so it’s not inconceivable that someone, somewhere, at some time in the past has genuinely been called Betty Swallocks. I even went so far as to google it this morning, but that just turned up a few joke pages and didn’t resolve the issue..

I also continue to think about the Olympics. Last year made quite an impression on me. This morning, in the bath, I was mulling over the fact that London probably won’t see a summer like that again for a long time. I don’t mean that pessimistically, but realistically: London has hosted the games three times, the only city to do so; the first time was in 1908, then forty years later in 1948, then sixty-four years after that in 2012. The mid-point between forty and sixty four is fifty-two, so we’ll probably next host them some time around 2064, and that’s if we’re lucky. After all, the general impression I get is that Paris is just as prominent a world city as London – it might even outrank it, given it’s beauty – and if it wins is 2024 bid it will have been a century since it last hosted the Olympics. Thus I doubt London will be an olympic city again in my lifetime, as, if a city as great as paris can be ignored by the ioc for a century, and given that London is the city it has selected the most, then it has to be fair on other cities and ignore London for a while.

That made me think, though: I never thought I’d live in a city while it hosted the olympics, and, as I wrote here, I felt it a privilege to have done so. In the moment of that thought I felt a tinge of sadness that I’d never experience it again. But then, I thought, maybe not in London; if the fates conspired to plant me here last year, who knows where I’ll find myself in the future. Who knows where Lyn and I will be in five or ten years. While we are very happy in London, I don’t think we can rule anything out. We both like new places, after all. Thus if it is possible for me to find myself living in London during a summer in which it hosted an event it hadn’t hosted in sixty years and probably won’t again for another fifty, then it seems to me that I cannot rule out finding myself and Lyn in, say, Paris when it hosts it’s third games, or new york when it hosts its first. Nor can I rule out finding myself at a myriad other splendid happenings!

What an experience that would be. Living with Lyn I know not to rule it out: she has an air about her, something which says everything is possible. Knowing her, I could again watch her play an Olympic ceremony; in New York that would be amazing. Whatever the future holds, then, I’m sure it will be bright. I look forward to many more glorious summers with lyn, In London, Paris, New York, or wherever fate takes us. Who knows – during one of them we might find someone really called Elisabeth Swallocks.

Today I just want to post my annal birthday blog for my brother Luke. We dont see much of eachothr these days: although we both live in London, the city is so vast that it kind of feels as if he lives in another country. The fact that he’s such a busy goit that I don’t know when to Skype him doesn’t help, nevertheless he will definitely be seining my spasticated mush on his computer screen later tonight. Happy birthday bro!

Last night saw our first proper night out in a while. By that I mean a night of music ad song – a bloggable night. Lyn and I went to a monthly event at a local tapas restaurant, Cataleya, organised by our friend and all round top dude Gus. I think I’ve mentioned it on here before. However, last night was extra special, in more ways than one.

Firstly, last night ruled because Lyn did a set. While it is not an open mic gig, Gus asked Lyn to play a song or two. She was more than happy to perform, and, despite a brief struggle setting her kit up, Lyn’s music was warmly appreciated by the audience. Her electronica is quite different from the rock Gus and his friends play, but I really think the room enjoyed it. Lyn played two songs of her own creation, but I suspect Gus will ask her to do more at future events.

Last night was also special because my old friends Robert and Bernie were there. Yesterday afternoon, I noticed Bernie mention on Facebook that my old university flatmates were in town, and, remembering Rob’s penchent for rock, invited them along. To be honest, I thought there was only a slim chance of them making it, given te short notice and the distance they wound need to travel. But come they did. Sadly, though, thy arrived too late for Lyn’s set, but by then Gus was paying a few old school rock numbers, which I must say sounded awesome. It was great to see them: oddly, my uni days seem at once a lifetime ago and last week. Part of me cannot believe it has been three years since I left cheshire, but another part of me is equally convinced that I have always lived in London, and that I moved here a lifetime ago. Thus, when my old friends walked in, Rob’s brother with them, it was like I had seen them the day before and like I had not seen them in years.

I hadn’t, of course. I had last seen rob three years ago, on my last day on campus. He hadn’t changed much, yet it was great to catch up with him. Both Robert and bernie are doing well, and, dare I say it, seem to have grown together. We chatted and listened to the music: it was wonderful to hear instruments played by men who knew how to play them; there is something about the combination of to guitars, a drum and a double bass which is just plain cool. Gus usually plays on his own, yet last night he and his mates rocked. It’s only a small restaurant, and we were sat at the front near the band (in fact I almost fell on them at one point) so it was hard to hear each other speak at points. Even so, it was the coolest night I have had in weeks. I now think of gus as a fiend, so with Lyn there, and my old uni friends, it felt quite personal, quite intimate, and very special.

It would seem that Lyn and I have succeeded in creating a meme when we made Spastic Ballet. I don’t know what ‘Ufoporno’ means (presumably some kind of erotica for extra terrestrials) but I just came across this. It’s not the best video in the world, but the random, Banzai-like backing track with which they replaced the original’s Tchaikovsky appeals to my sense of humour.

I know it’s another piece of lazy blogging, but this is just too awesome for me not to share with you. This is a link to the world’s largest panoramic photo, taken recently from the top of London’s BT tower. It’s a stunning piece of photography. They mentioned it yesterday on click, and, having just watched the repeat, gave in to the urge to blog about it. Photography, with it’s ability to freeze time, intrigues me – I can spend hours on Google maps Street View – so no doubt this image will keep me occupied for quite some time. I must say the resolution on this thing is gorgeous; although it was taken over several hours, it’s as if London it it’s entirety was captured in a second. Now, time to go and try to find our house.

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Credit to Don Naylor. Excellent stuff!

Although Lyn and I don’t use taxis very often, I’d dearly like a trip with the cabbie mentioned here. He is a poet, and recites verses to customers. He seems to be fairly good at it, too. I love it – where but in the metropolis can you find such things? Here, it seems, artistry naturally juxtaposes with privation, beauty with squalor, in a way even Walter Benjamin might not have envisaged.

My dad visited us yesterday. My parents are in town to help look after my grandmother, so Dad popped in while mum stayed with her. He had picked up a copy of the Metro en route, and while he was here we took a collective glance at it. Interestingly, dad spotted an article oddly relevant to us, about a man who had just been given a communication aid after being paralysed for twenty years. It was an interesting article – well worth a read. Mind you, it raised some interesting questions, like why now? Why did the poor fellow have to wait all that time for a voice? Given the way in which such devices are becoming less and less of a rarity, why was this article written in such a gushingly emotional manner? It was written as if VOCAs had only just been invented, and this guy was some sort of a pioneer. The media frequently take that stance – it always strikes me as a litte odd how they use such stories to elicit motion. What irritates me is the pitying manner in which they write about such things: it only reinforces negative stereotypes of disability. I wish this guy luck, but I also wish journalists wouldn’t use such cases as a source of pity, and instead ask why it took so long for him to get the equipment he needed.

Today I would simply like to link to the newly-established blog of my friend Ben. He is a friend from uni, and, excellent writer that he is, I think his output is well worth a read. Although he only has two entries online, he shows much promise, and as a fellow writer I fel it my duty to link to him. His thoughts on OCD are especially interesting. Check it out!

For me one of the most intriguing things about living in London is trying to work out what was here before the city. Rolling around the streets of the suburbs, especially here south of the river, I feel a sense of history. The place is a maze, a higgledy-piggledy mess of streets which could have only come into being if the place had built up over time. As I wrote a coupe of days ago, this gives rise to all kinds of fascinating combinations: ancient churches butt up to modern towerblocks; victorian terraces suddenly end, having been partially knocked down in order to make way for duel carriageways. The result is a palimpsest, a fast-fading echo of what was there and is no more. Fascinatingly, in some places, I think I can see the ghost of the hedge-rows of the fields which must once have been here. Old maps from the time of Pepys show this area surrounded by them: Charlton was once a village, miles from the town of london. Those fields have now disappeared under concrete and brick, replacing farm and river with a vast metropolitan labyrinth. And yet sometimes you can still see it – if ou look hard enough, you can still tell where the old hedges and lanes once lay. Thats perhaps why, whenever I go to Woolwich, I get the uncanny feeling I’m walking between fields as I once did in cheshire.

My James Bond DVD collection is complete again, after technically being incomplete for about five hours. Well, I needed time to go to ASDA to get Skyfall, didn’t I? I just gave her a second viewing – the first being at the cinema – and need now to reiterate how great I think this film is. I almost don’t know where to start, but I think the hype abt this film is well founded. It occurred ti me, as I was watching it, that this film is not about bond per se, bit about M and her past misdeeds. That is, M is brought to the fore while Bond supports and protects her. It was great to see Judi Dench being allowed to show her stuff rather than just being the person who sends Bond on his mission.

Now, I can’t say I think this film is perfect. There were points which I found weak, and I thought the second act could have been stronger. That is to say, the intrigue developed in the first half of the film was not fully carried through into the second. As I noted in my first review, there re also lines which don’t fit, as well as lines which are poorly delivered. Nevertheless, I still think this is a great Bond film, and a great film full stop.

007 continues to fascinate me. He is a character I find intriguing. He seems hold a unique place in our culture: only he, surely, could jump out of a helicopter with the queen, surely. I am still intrigued with that scene, what it could mean, and the significance of Bond in general. Skyfall only fuels my interests, as it adds yet another dimension to him. n this film we begin to understand why bond is bond, this cold, mysogynistic, ultimately imperial figure nobody should by rights like. Yet we do: indeed, in Skyfall, MI5 has to answer to accusations of being anachronistic – accusations that could be levelled at bond himself. It is a nice move, ironically demonstrating why this franchise is still alive: it simultaneously reinvents itself while staying the same.

For Bond is bond, fifty years old and forever young. The guy who defeated Dr. No and the guy who duelled with scaramanga; the enemy of blofeld and the guy who beat La Chiffre; the man who prevented goldeneye from killing thousands and the man who escorted Queen Elizabeth II to the 2012 London Olympic opening ceremony. Rhetorically, he is one man, one figure, we seem to need him, and probably will for quite some time to come.. His name is Bond, James Bond.

Every friday night, Lyn and I listen to Bob Lawrence on Radio Caroline. Bob is a very cool guy, and plays a very nice mixture of music. Last week I emailed him: Lee’s death was on my mind (it still is) and I wanted something to commemorate him, so I requested he played Jessica by the Alman Brothers. Lee, like Rich, loved cars, so the theme from Top Gear seemed apt. Long ago we had used it in the dance component of one of our school p.e classes. Unfortunately I was out on friday, but Lyn said he played it, mentioning me and Lee. I now wish with all my being that I had stayed home – I plain forgot – but, wonderful as she is, Lyn recorded the repeat last night. That Mr. Lawrence did this forme means more than I can say, and I am forever grateful to him.

I come from a town which, should you want to, can be walked around within two hours. I got to know it like the back of my hand. I doubt I will ever know London like that. I have been living here for two years, and still know but a fraction of her laberynthine streets.

Lyn and I are currently sat by the river. We are halfway through a walk: lyn has been following her nose, and I have been following Lyn. She took us down roads, that, despite my many independent wanderings, I had never been down before. She took me to fascinating places where ancient churches butted up to ultramodern tower blocks, And thus we ended up here, to a bench by the thames watching the sun set and the twinkling lights of canary warf. London. Is before me, it seems, and I have rarely seen a more beautiful sight.

I realise it is lazy blogging, but today I would just like to flag this tv program up. The Genius of Invention aired last night, but by then we had opened a bottle of a very good south african white, so the program didn’t have my full attention. However, I just rewatched it on Iplayer, and I’m glad I did. It’s straight up my street, offering quite a good potted history of photography, early cinema and television, albeit from a scientific rather than artistic perspective. I’ve been very interested in such things for some time, so I found it a great bit of tv. Of course, it doesn’t look very deeply into it’s subject – it is, after all, only an hour long – but for what it is, it is excellent. A good springboard for other avenues of research.

Lyn is my love, and lyn is my life.

Godspeed the day lyn becomes my wife.

Curled up in bed, side by side

She is my happiness, my honour, my pride

She completes me, and makes me feel new

Picks me up when I feel blue

I feel so lucky, so glad she’s mine

So fortunate to have Lyn as my valentine.

I just gave License to Kill another viewing. As I noted here, I don’t think I quite managed to follow the plot when I went through all the bond films in my mad marathon, so a second viewing was in order. I just got around to it, and, altogh I think I missed a few details, I think I was much more comfortable with it this time. It is rather more nuanced than it’s predecessors – there seems to be more in terms of plot and character, full of double-crossings and deceits. I do feel Dalton made a fine, convincing bond: his is a three-dimensional bond, capable of making errors and acting out of vengeance. Above all, the film is a rip-roaring adventure with the right balance of wit and intrigue. It’s also a film wich came out in the late eighties, so it made me feel young again. Two hours well spent, then.

Something odd just happened on the way back from London. As I said earlier, we went to the Apple store. After we had finished there, it was time to eat. We had a nice dinner in covent garden, and then came home. everything was going as per normal: at north Greenwich, we have to transfer from the tue to the bus, so Lyn and I split up. Lyn got on the first us- a 422 – and I waited for the second. This happened to be a 472, which I was in two minds about boarding as it’s slow and doesn’t go quite where I need it to. I got on anyway. One of my fellow passengers, a fairly young girl, asked where I was going. I told her ‘Charlton village’.

”This doesn’t go there.” She replied. I tried to tell her I was fine, and capable of getting home, but she insisted on ‘helping’ me. She asked the driver to let us stop at the next stop, and told me she would help me get home. I tried to explain I didn’t need helping, that I was fine, but she ignored me. The diver stopped and put his ramp out. I protested, but, mostly for the sake of the other passengers, got off. The girl followed me, so I decided to just peg it home under my own steam. After all, I wasn’t that far from home, and I needed to get rid of this irritating girl.

Pretty soon I had left her behind me, and was preparing for a chilly walk home. But that is when something quite remarkable happened. A 486, exactly the bus I needed, drive up and stopped next to me. I wasn’t even at a stop, but it put it’s ramp out and let me on. Heaven knows what that girl had done or said, but I was instantly grateful to her – it even stopped as soon as I hit the button, which was rather odd because you’re supposed to hit it before you get to the stop you need. In all, then, a pretty cool end to a pretty cool day; If I ever see that girl again, I intend to buy her a drink.

One of the best things about having an iPad strapped to one’s lap is I can now blog on the move. I am writing this, believe it or not, waiting to pay in an apple store. Lyn and I have been rather artistic recently: this afternoon we visited the national portrait gallery, and while up here I thought we may as well visit Lynn’s favourite shop. The pictures were ok, but, as far as lyn is concerned, computers are much more interesting.

Another cool thing about having an iPad is that I can check my email on the move. My parents are away at present, and I just got their last message from brazil. It is full of news of exotic foods carnivals and uncle David’s farm. It even mentions the noble steed Shadowfax. Life in London might be fun: this may be the city of the queen, the tube, bond and several apple shops, and I find it utterly thrilling, but in brazil they know how to party…and, I have to say, the weather sounds much better there.

Ahh, time to pay.

I was watching jacob rees-mog on TV Earlier lamenting the secularisation of society, and I felt suddenly incensed. It occurred to me that If a child says they tak to their imaginary friend, and that it guides them, you smile and hope they grow out of it soon. If an adult claims to hear voices which guide him, you send him to a doctor. So why shouldn’t we do the same for those who believe in god and use that belief to dominate, discriminate and oppress others? Those on the right look down on atheists: I get the impression that they think they’re better than us, that they 6hink we are bespoiling society by taking God out of it, and that we should respect their point of view. Well, it’s time to cut the crap. to believe in god isn’t a mark of wisdom or superiority: it just means you’re a gullible idiot clinging to superstition because you”’re unable to cope with reality. why should we be forced to tolerate these morons opposed to secularisation when they perpetuate intolerance? god cannot exist – get over it, and stop sneering at those who base their ideas on religion. If we are ever to have a free, open and tolerant society, it must not privilege one belief over another, which means basing it on reason.

I suppose it has been quite a nice little weekend, all in all. Nothing much happened…Well, I say that when what I mean is, compared to some weekends Lyn and I share, nothing much happened. No gigs at the palace or appearances with Coldplay. We did, however, go out to a very nice exhibition at the South London Gallery, Peckham, yesterday, to see an exhibition about gender. Although getting there was a bit of a trek (sorry guys – my bad), we saw a couple of interesting short films about transsexuality, crossing gender lines and so on. Right up our street, and definitely something I’ll have to follow up. It was there that, inspired, I jotted down yesterday’a poem. Great stuff!

Today was also cool, but far more chilled out. I’ve mostly spent it on the sofa, reading at first, then watching TV. Believe it or not, I dob’t think I’ve ever seen ‘The Search For Spock’ until today, or at least I hadn’t since I was small. Those early trek films can be hit and miss, and I mus say I wasn’t very impressed. Nevertheless, it was good to see the old crew played as they should be; as usual, I found myself wondering whether Bill shatner could ever play Kirk again. I doubt it, but stranger things have happened: after all, we live in an epoch where the queen can be escorted to the olympics by 007. (I know I’m obsessed by it, sorry!). True, he may be too old, and but has been just under twenty years since he pulled on that uniform, but part of me wishes he would. The same applies for Patrick Stewart – I long to hear him say ‘Make It So’ one last time. Perhaps that era is gone, and I should let it become history, but what is the harm in a little nostalgia on a wet sunday afternoon.

In all, then, a pretty nice weekend. Time, then, to get dinner going, go back to my sofa, and look forward to Top Gear and then the Baftas. Here, I wonder what clarkson and his pals would make of a crippled trekkie, presently sporting a nice purple leotard…

Gay and straight. Man and woman. What are these

But words? Constructs and creations,

Reducing and reductive. Intended to imprison. There are no absolutes, no binaries and no constants

Save one. Love.

And that sets us all free.

Much is currenty being said about benefit system reforms, disability tests and ATOS. On that subject, I think I can do no better than to direct you here. It is a forceful video blog by the artist taxi driver. I must say he is surprisingly well informed about disability issues and this issue in particular, and I think he gives voice to many of the concerns ‘we’ currently have, as well as the shock others are no doubt experiencing.

I know I said I’d stop blogging about Olympic matters, but this is disability related. Team Gb have won an impressive haul of medals at the Special Olympics Winter Games in Pyeongchang, South Korea. They have picked up thirteen medals, including six golds. The Special Olympics movement is the third sibling in the Olympic Family and at least on paper it is equal with the other two: the Olympics, the Paralympics and the Special Olympics. It is for elite athletes with cognitive rather than physical disabilities, although there is some cross-over.

This is great news, but I have to ask, if these games are on a par with the Olympics and the Paralympics, why isn’t this story headline news? Last summer every time team gb won a gold it topped the news bulletin. This story is not even at the front page of the beeb’s sport page! Do people with cognitive impairments matter less? Do they not deserve the same fanfare? Indeed, before this morning, I didn’t realise these games wee happening – why wasn’t it’s opening ceremony (assuming it had one) on TV? Where were the fireworks? This strikes me as very unfair, and indeed very disrespectful to athletes who no doubt work just as hard as any other.

Part of me thinks I should be writing more entries about Lee, and that not to blog about my old school friend would to be somehow disrespectful to him and his memory; writing about other subjects implies that I have forgotten about him, and that I don’t care about his death. But how can I? Where Do I begin? What can I possibly say on here that would convey what I feel. A guy who I went through my adolescence with is now dead, as indeed most of my classmates are. I can find nothing to say about that simple, brutal fact. So I’ll continue to blog about other things, and keep that issue off here from now on – it is probably best I keep that issue personal. I will never forget Lee Mayer, or indeed any other of my classmates, even if I might not mention them here.