I suppose it must be admitted that yesterday was a bit of a sad day, or at least it was rather disappointing. Since our last visit here about five years ago, John and I had intentions to return to Oxford so we could have a beer in the Eagle and Child pub. When we first briefly visited, I was still abstaining from alcohol; but since then it had been a huge wish of mine to have a beer in the very pub Tolkien once drank in. A few weeks ago, when John suggested returning to Oxford for a couple of days, I thought it was a great idea.

We traveled up by train yesterday morning. The journey itself went smoothly enough, and by late morning we found ourselves among the dreaming spires of Oxford. The problem was, Oxford didn’t seem to be playing ball: the more we explored, the more museums we found shut or inaccessible, or the more footpaths we found unnavigable. While we had a good afternoon exploring a few of the parks, to be honest it began to get a little wearing.

The greatest disappointment of all, however, came in the early evening when we eventually decided to make our way to the Eagle And Child. It was just a short walk from the city centre, and I was really looking forward to getting some Inkling vibes: a pint or two in my favourite author’s favourite pub would be so awesome! However, the closer we got to the place, the clearer it became that nothing was happening there: it was empty and boarded up, and looked like it had been for a couple of years.

It was a sad, draining sight. There would be no Tolkien fan worship, no drinking where he drank. It seemed like we had gone all that way for a boarded up door, and it made me feel very low indeed. With nothing to tell us why it had shut or whether there was any chance of it ever reopening, there was nothing else for us to do but go and find our hotel room.

All of a sudden this country seems to have reached a very dangerous impasse. Every morning for the last three or four days, we have woken to news of far right thugs tearing up town and city centres across the country, fuelled by deliberate misinformation. How we got here we can only speculate, of course. I suspect it has a connection to the far right gathering I’m ashamed to admit I was witness to a few weeks ago. There, I got to hear speakers like Tommy Robinson spew all kinds of xenophobic nonsense, manipulating people’s fears and prejudices in order to whip them into a frenzy of victimhood: they were told there were two tier systems in place, and that people who were native to the country were being disadvantaged in favour of immigrants.

Such rhetoric is, of course, as baseless as it is repugnant; but online it spreads like wildfire, especially between those who already feel left behind by modern culture. It preys upon feelings of oppression, misdirecting them towards minorities who are just as oppressed. By grouping together and demonstrating, these far right rioters seem to think they are exerting a form of cultural power which they think should be theirs but which they have been robbed of, when in fact they are simply laying bare their ability to understand modern multicultural society. These are people who have been left behind by the education system, and who now resent those they see as ‘elites’ telling them what to do and how to behave. Thus these riots have more to do with frustration and confusion than anything: a type of social bitterness which, when misdirected onto those they perceive as ‘other’ by charlatans like Robinson, becomes something very ugly indeed.

My brother Mark just flagged something very interesting indeed up for me. According to this Guardian article, Tom Cruise will appear in the Closing Ceremony of the Paris Olympics. ‘[The] Actor will drop 42 metres from Paris stadium roof before prerecorded footage shows him bringing the games’ flag to 2028 host LA, via a series of death-defying stunts.” That sounds a lot like some kind of Top Gun-themed answer to Happy And Glorious. Cruise et al obviously saw how James Bond was involved in London 2012, and decided to steal some of his thunder by trying to do something similar. The problem is, Top Gun doesn’t have a fraction of the cultural cudos of Bond, and I suspect pretending it does might just look lame. Either way, I suppose we’ll just have to wait and see if it actually works.

I am still very concerned with issues relating to gender and transsexuality, of course, so I have to say that the controversy currently unfolding around the Olympic boxer Imane Khelif strikes me as quite sickening. She is female, was born female and has lived her life as a woman, yet somehow every transphobe out there is accusing her of being trans, and of cheating for having unusually high testosterone levels. I’ll admit that I don’t know much about the issues at stake here, but this seems to have allowed every transphobic bigot to suddenly creep out of the woodwork and demand Khelif be disqualified, just for being who she is. Surely we are better than this.

Like everyone else, I am watching events unfolding in Southport with increasing astonishment and horror. As a blogger, I feel compelled to say something about the situation there, although I know as much about it as anyone else. It is now becoming clear, however, that far right thugs have seized on a very delicate situation to try to stir up xenophobia and animosity: the recent attacks clearly had nothing to do with immigration, yet the far right have pounced on it to try to turn this into an immigration narrative. Thus I fear this feeds into the bigger issue that the far right is having some kind of resurgence, and will now jump on anything it can to try to stir up xenophobic hatred.

I have described here before how I use straws to drink. These days, I use firm clear rubber tubing which I usually get from plumbing shops. I have used them since I met Lyn, and I like them because I can carry one or two with me, wash and reuse them. I can usually drink through them very easily.

The problem comes when I have an ulcer. Mouth ulcers make sucking drinks through such rubber tubes far more difficult, and indeed painful; to be honest the process of sucking is quite agonising. I’m afraid I have one at the moment, and to be honest drinking is becoming frustrating.

It was at school where I was first encouraged to start using straws to drink. Back then I used normal disposable plastic straws which I found I tended to bite and flatten to easily. Before that, though, my mum had a technique of feeding me my drinks: she used to hold my chin with a teatowel and pour the drink directly into my mouth. Like this I could slurp down whatever I was drinking very quickly and easily. But of course, that meant I needed someone around me who could feed me whenever I was thirsty, which is why straws became my default drinking option.

I hadn’t drunk that way in a very, long time – not since before uni. Even when I’m around my parents, these days I use straws. I met my parents in Greenwich park today though, and they could see I was struggling to drink. It’s a hot day where taking on liquids is obviously essential, but Mum and Dad could see that trying to suck water through my straw was causing me quite a bit of pain. Naturally, parents being parents, dad grabbed my cloth and we started to do it the old way.

Frankly, it was wonderful. I was suddenly drinking again, feeling it flow refreshingly down my neck without any of the effort or pain I’ve experienced over the last few days. I felt so grateful to see them, to have their love and support when I most needed it.. In that moment, though, I decided that I now need to teach my PAs Serkan, Dominik and John how to feed me drinks like that. Straws will still obviously be my default option, but if I’m going to keep experiencing these ulcers, I’m going to need a way to drink without my mouth erupting into agony.

The online confusion over this just seems to keep going.

I just saw on the evening news that Tom Daley won a silver medal for diving today. That’s great news, of course. As one of our most prolific olympians, Daley is currently on our screens quite a bit; but I just want to draw everyone’s attention to the fact that hardly anything is said about his sexuality. Daley is an openly gay man, married with a husband and child. In times gone by, I suspect that would have caused a bit of a fuss, but these days, apart from the occasional reference, nothing is said about it. We sometimes see Daley hugging his husband, and it is treated as any other guy cuddling his partner would be. That is obviously as things should be, but I think it is an encouraging sign that such diversity is becoming normalised.

As eager as I was to catch up with it, and sad git that I am, I watched the Paris Olympic Ceremony yesterday in a couple of chunks. I was eager to see if there was anything I could get my analytical teeth into. Now that I’ve watched it though, I must admit I found it a bit boring: there were parts which, frankly, I didn’t see the point of, like the use of The Minions (an American franchise), and overall I found it all rather drawn out. It didn’t really seem to go anywhere. I also think it could have made far more use of Paris’s cinematic history, although I still wasn’t feeling a hundred percent so I may not have picked up on everything.

Mind you, there is one part which I think I should say something about: Checking Facebook after I’d finished watching the ceremony, I saw that various people had grown indignant because they claimed part of it ‘mocked’ the Last Supper. Bemused, I went back to rewatch the section of the ceremony they were talking about, and instantly saw they were talking utter nonsense. It was a single, two or three second shot of about eight men in drag lined up beside a catwalk. To claim it was alluding to anything else was just deranged. This was clearly a case of religious idiots attempting to shoehorn their narrative of victimisation into a current event in order to get attention. There was no way that the shot in question could have anything to do with the Last Supper, and claiming it does is just pathetic.

Of course, I’m glad I took the time to watch it; the ceremony just didn’t have much to get my juices going though. Obviously there were quite a few remarkable technical aspects, such as the use of lasers and the image of a mechanical horse galloping up the Seine, although it occurred to me that it could have all been pulled off just as convincingly inside a stadium. At least there are still three more to look forward to.

I was intending to write something nice and long about the Paris Opening ceremony today, having been looking forward to it for such a long time. The irony is though, I seem to have caught quite a nasty bug on Wednesday or Thursday, and was in no fit state to concentrate on anything last night. I still don’t feel quite right. With the help of the internet, I plan to catch up on the action fairly soon, although from the highlights I’ve seen this morning there was no outstanding, jaw-dropping ‘Bond and The Queen’ moment. Nonetheless, I still look forward to giving it a proper watch, and seeing what I can say about it.

If anyone is wondering why I haven’t blogged about this news that a disabled woman was unable to collect her Freedom of the City award because there were steps up to the stage, the truth is I didn’t see the point. I thought about noting it here when I first heard the story last night, but then I decided not to. Why would I? Things like this happen so often and with such regularity that they hardly constitute news. Wheelchair users are constantly denied access to events like this – access needs to such prestigious award ceremonies are almost always forgotten about. It happened at both my graduation ceremonies, and dozens of other events I can tell you about. Thus I didn’t find this news surprising in the slightest, and find it noteworthy only because it happens so pathetically regularly.

I think this hits the nail on the head with regard to Trump. He’ll never be able to get over the fact that he was beaten by Biden, never be able to handle the reality that he’s not as popular as he thinks he is. Now that Harris has taken Biden’s place, and all being well will expose Trump as the egotistical charlatan he is, I doubt he’ll ever be able to get over that beating.

As much as I’m looking forward to watching Friday’s Olympic opening ceremony, there are several questions about it which I’ve been mulling for a while. I have, of course, known about Paris’s plans to stage their ceremony on the Seine rather than in a stadium for several months: on the face of it, it strikes me as quite an innovative, creative idea. Yet, when you think about it, it isn’t at all clear how such a ceremony will actually work.

Olympic and Paralympic ceremonies are obviously usually held in stadiums. Massive audiences gather in one huge circular arena to watch a spectacular performance taking place in it’s centre. This allows the host city and country to put on a kind of pageant, through which it can showcase it’s cultural personality or elements of it before the rest of the world. The reason I adore the London 2012 ceremonies so much is that Danny Boyle selected certain aspects of British culture and played with them like never before.

The thing is, it’s not at all clear to me how our French neighbours are planning to do this. It has been common knowledge for months that the Paris Olympic Opening Ceremony at least is going to take place in the form of a procession along the river Seine, rather than as a conventional performance in a stadium. It seems to me that this raises several questions: for one, there won’t be a single audience focussing on a single spot. Like theatrical productions, olympic ceremonies usually have action taking place in front of one united audience; everyone in the audience is able to see what any other audience member can.

This will not be the case in Paris. The Seine is a long, winding river. Anyone watching the ceremony from it’s banks will presumably be only able to watch a thin sliver of the action. If the ceremony is just going to be a procession of the participating nations floating down the river in boats, that would be fine. But how do the Parisians plan to deal with the spectacle side of things? The London ceremony had all kinds of pageantry taking place in the stadium in Stratford, as well as two or three short films shown on the stadium’s huge screens. That way, everyone was able to watch all of the action as one audience. It isn’t at all clear how this will work in Paris this Friday.

Then there’s the question of the other ceremonies. To be honest this concerns me quite a bit. Paris has chosen to use it’s river as the focal point for it’s olympic opening ceremony, but what about it’s Paralympic opening ceremony? Is that going to take place on the Seine too? As a disabled man, it seems essential to me that the Olympics and Paralympics have a kind of parity – they are, after all, two events as one. If the Olympic Opening ceremony is going to take the form of a giant river pageant, the paralympic one should too. One of the reasons I’m still so enthusiastic about London 2012 is that all of the ceremonies, Olympic and Paralympic, were given roughly equal weight and standing. If they take a different form in Paris, I fear it would make the paralympics look like an afterthought, as though they didn’t matter as much to our French neighbours as the Olympics do. Paris obviously intends Friday’s ceremony to be about the city itself, highlighting it and taking place throughout it, rather than being confined to just one stadium. When we watch it as most of us will, on our television screens, it promises to be spectacular. I’m just concerned that the emphasis Paris is putting on its opening ceremony mean that the other three coming ceremonies take secondary roles, or aren’t awarded the same prestige and importance as the Olympic opening.

Naturally I could be wrong here. There is every chance that the coming ceremonies could blow us all away; I’m just airing a few questions which have been playing on my mind recently. The French now have an opportunity to showcase their beautiful capital city like never before. Exactly how they do so remains to be seen, but for my part I can’t wait to find out.

It might be behind a paywall so I hope everyone’s able to read it, but I just came across this truly epic piece in the New Yorker by Adam Gopnik. It’s a reaction to Joe Biden’s decision to withdraw from the presidential race yesterday, pointing out it’s Shakespearian undertones: Biden’s move can be seen as having tragic qualities – a great man brought down by his own failings and limitations. To be honest what I find most impressive about it is how quickly it came out, given that this news only emerged yesterday evening. It presents Biden as an almost Lear-like figure, falling on his own sword for the greater good. “of all the Shakespearean figures whom Biden’s fall recalls, it is Lear. Lear in his sense of self-loss; Lear in his inability to understand, at least at first, the nature of his precipitous descent; and, yes, Lear in the wild rage, as people sometimes forget, that he directs at his circumstances.” Mind you, I did have to raise an eyebrow at the extent to strayed into pretentiousness: it does seem to over-egg the pudding slightly, but on the whole is a good read first thing on a Monday morning.

As for myself, I think Biden has made the right decision. It was becoming clearer and clearer how frail he was becoming; he wouldn’t be able to hold his own against Trump. Perhaps Harris will now bring renewed vigour into the Democrat campaign, giving us hope that western civilisation might be safe after all.

(Very) long term readers might remember that, not long after the London 2012 Olympics, I announced that I had created a Facebook page called Brits for Paris 2024. I reasoned that, if we Londoners had to endure all that crap, so should the French. More to the point, though, I wanted to see how our neighbours would show theirselves off, were they given the opportunity. The opening and closing ceremonies of London 2012 had blown me away: we had triumphed before the entire world, with turns from Mr. Bean, Monty Python and James Bond. Knowing how proud the French are of their capital city, as well as how artistically minded they can be, I was very curious to see what they would do in response.

It looks like we’ll find out on Friday. To be honest I can’t wait: frankly, I expect something spectacular; anything less than mindblowing will probably be a disappointment, given how the London opening ceremony made me feel twelve years ago. How will Paris show itself off? How might it use it’s upcoming ceremonies to reveal itself to the world? What statements could it make about French culture? Either way, with just days to go until the games begin, you can probably expect me to return to this subject quite a bit.

When I looked at my calendar earlier, I was staggered to realise that today marks ten years since this happened: Ten years since probably the greatest night of my life; ten years since the final performance of the greatest comedy group ever; ten years since they reunited, virtually on my then doorstep, so I could just trundle up to the dome to get tickets. Even now, I still often think of that night. Whenever I need to remind myself of how awesome life can get; whenever I feel down and need to kick myself up the arse, I just think of the night me, Lyn and Mitchel went to watch Monty Python Live at the O2. Even now I still think it was absolutely incredible: a legendary comedy group who hadn’t performed together in decades, whom everyone assumed would never get back together again, suddenly giving one last performance just up the road. I was there the night Michael Palin sang the lumberjack song, probably for the last time; I was there the night they did The Spanish inquisition; the night John Cleese needed prompting slightly during the parrot sketch. To have been there still feels amazing, and no doubt always will.

Of course, I was born after Monty Python’s Flying Circus first aired, so I had never watched the TV programmes fully. But I was well aware of what Python was, what it represented, and how funny those guys were. I remember laughing my head off at many of their sketches and films – they were, more or less, the funniest things I’d ever seen. And of course I absolutely adore Michael Palin’s travel documentaries. Thus when it was first announced Python was reuniting one final time, I couldn’t believe my luck; and then, when I got tickets, I was over the zarking moon!

But of course that was ten years ago, and a lot has happened since then. Things change, and not always for the better. Whenever I need to cheer myself up though, whenever I need reminding how incredible life can get, I think of that night ten years ago today. It is one of three or four events in my life which I think of almost daily, just to spur myself on. I’ll always cherish my memories of that night of course; but probably even better, such memories make me wonder, what equally awesome thing might happen next?

I am not a conspiracy theorist. I know full well that, as soon as you start to speculate on ulterior motives, or to claim that certain events were orchestrated by certain people, you start down a very slippery slope and you soon start spouting inane gibberish which nobody wants to read. I also know that we must be wary of making light of events which were very serious indeed, and could have ended tragically. Yet over the last few days, my curiosity and bemusement concerning the recent assassination attempt on Donald Trump has grown steadily. I’m sure I’m not alone in now thinking that there are things about it which don’t make sense, or that there are details which are just too convenient to have happened by chance.

Just from a semiotic/iconic perspective, it seems too good to be true for Trump. Someone shot at him, yet all he has to show for it is a bandaged ear. That way, he can appear before his supporters bearing the outward signs of his attack, but without having to endure anything worse. Now, I know next to nothing about guns and firearms, but surely the notion of a bullet just flying past a man’s face, hitting his left ear but not doing any further damage, pushes the limits of credibility. If something similar had featured in a film, it’s plausibility would surely have been torn to shreds and viewers would be asking why the guy’s brains weren’t blown out. If the shots came from the range and angle we are told, Trump’s head ought to have been blown off.

Yet apparently it wasn’t, and forty-eight hours after this highly traumatic event in which he was mere millimetres from losing his life, Donald Trump was out in public again, with nothing but a small bandage on his ear to show what had happened. Again, I avoid conspiracy theories – such speculation very quickly descends into idiocy – but there are things about what happened a few days ago which don’t sit right. Trump should be dead; any bullet flying through the air at far above the speed of sound would have torn the man’s head off, not just given him a bloody ear. Yet he seems to be already back on the campaign trail, basking in the glory of his survival. Trump will obviously now use this to his advantage, making the most of having been shot at by his enemies.

Forgive my cynicism, but this is fantastic publicity for him which no doubt he’ll now use to his great advantage in the upcoming American election. I’m pretty sure I’m not the only person to smell a rat here.

I think I would be lax as a disabled blogger if I did not direct everyone to this horrific story this morning. It was the first thing I saw when I turned my computer on a few minutes ago, but it was too tragic and troubling for me to ignore: according to the BBC, a man with Down’s syndrome in Gaza has been attacked by an Israeli Defence Force dog and left to die. The report goes into quite a bit of detail, and doesn’t make for easy reading at all; but you have to wonder how such things could be allowed to happen. At the top of their article, the beeb warns us that some readers may find some of the details below distressing, but given that it informs us all of something which is essentially a war crime, I think that’s rather an understatement. While it may not be anyone’s fault as such, surely things like this cannot be ignored by those of us who are concerned about things like minority rights and social justice.

John suggested going to check out the Astronomy Photographer of the Year exhibition at the Greenwich observatory today, so that’s where I just got in from. To tell the truth I hadn’t heard about it before John told me about it, but I’m now very pleased that he did: the vast majority of the pictures in the exhibition are truly, truly remarkable. I don’t really want to say anything about them, as trying to describe the images we saw earlier would just do them a disservice, but I don’t think I’ve ever seen a more fascinating and evocative set of images. Space fascinates me anyway, but many of the pictures blew my mind; the vast majority were just so spellbinding and intriguing that I couldn’t help this song starting to play in my head. If you have the opportunity to go, I wholeheartedly recommend checking it out.

As coincidences would have it, I was up stupidly early this morning. I couldn’t sleep, so lying awake in bed at about four I opted to get up and check the news. I’d intended to get back into bed before long, but when I saw the headlines, that suddenly wasn’t an option. As much as we may despise Donald Trump, what happened in Pennsylvania last night was unacceptable. I personally find it ludicrous that the world’s richest, most advanced democracy would even contemplate electing (indeed re-electing) such a charlatan, but I don’t think he should be assassinated. Surely resorting to violence would make the already frighteningly heated political environment in America even worse. The guy’s a disgrace, but killing him would just reduce American political discourse to something totally uncivilised. I thus just wanted to record my horror at the utterly disturbing news coming to us this morning. Frankly it’s remarkable that Trump wasn’t killed, because then things would surely have been far, far worse.

Something quite curious caught my attention this afternoon. John and I went up to London again, this time to watch Bye Bye Tiberias at the centre for contemporary art. It’s quite a shocking non-fiction film centred on Palestinians. After the film, we had a short walk along the South Bank, where we found something I didn’t expect: a stall by the river was giving away free beers. Just small ones mind, and everyone who received one had to have their hand stamped so they couldn’t get a second, but free all the same. It cheered me up I must admit. What caught my attention enough to want to note it here, though, was that John then told me that such things aren’t allowed in the EU: giving away free alcohol is apparently prohibited in the European Union, so it’s only now we’ve left that such things can happen. If that is true, may we have encountered one of the very, very few positive effects of Brexit this afternoon?

I must admit that I feel rather pleased with myself this evening. I just got back from watching La Chamera with John at the Barbican. The film itself isn’t that great: it was slow, and didn’t seem to be going anywhere. It was just a dull story about some Italian grave robbers. However, what I’m happy about was that the film was mostly in Italian, and for once I had no problem with the subtitles. I’ve noted here before that I tend to struggle keeping up with subtitles because my head usually keeps moving around too much, but today I was able to follow them quite easily. To be honest I feel rather chuffed that I did so well- such little things often mean the most.

To be honest I’m not sure how much say about this, given that I’m not American so I don’t have any real right to interfere in or comment on American party politics. Yet the fact is that America remains the world’s most powerful nation, and what happens there effects us all. The fact also remains that it’s becoming clearer and clearer that their current president is becoming less and less fit for office: anyone watching can see that age is swiftly catching up on Joe Biden, and people like me are starting to worry whether he’ll be able to hold his ground against Donald Trump.

At the end of the day, the last thing the world needs right now is for the USA to let Trump back into office: He’s a total charlatan obviously under Putin’s control, and things are likely to take a very dark, worrying term if he gets back into power. Of course, we can hope that any sensible American would vote for anyone opposing Trump, including Biden; but it’s becoming increasingly clear that the Democrats need a proper candidate to stand up to Trump, and that Biden probably won’t be able to deal with the disgrace to humanity as he needs to. Any decent, educated, articulate politician should be able to send Trump back to the fetid hole he belongs in, but given the recent evidence it’s not at all clear that Biden will be able to.

As much as we may like Biden, then, and as much as we may prefer him to the spoiled man-child the Republicans selected to oppose him, we can only hope that American Democrats see the light, choose to be sensible and put forward a younger, fitter candidate. Until then, we can only watch as Biden deteriorates even further, and worry about the carnage we’re likely to see, not only in the coming presidential debates, but also if Trump regains control of the world’s most powerful economy.

Just as an update on this entry from Tuesday, I’ve now been assured that the crash was non-fatal. A teenage boy on a bike was hit by a bus: he broke his shoulder, but his injuries were non life threatening, and he’s expected to recover. Read this for details. Given that what I saw looked so serious, that is quite a relief.

I suppose that, alongside the awesome, thrilling stuff I record here about life in this great city, I ought to touch upon the grizzly stuff too. It has been quite a mundane, drizzly day, spent mostly with my friend Eddy as he helped me carry out a few routine chores. Nothing noteworthy really, except that, when we were just coming out of a shop on Eltham high street earlier, we noticed that police cars and ambulances had started to gather on the road just a few metres from where we were. They hadn’t been there when we went into the shop just twenty minutes before, but all of a sudden it appeared that something quite catastrophic had happened. A blue tent had been erected on the road, but apart from that I couldn’t see much. Ed tried to take a closer look, and told me that it appeared that a young boy had been knocked down by a bus: it looked like he was still breathing, but was in a pretty bad state.

Things like this really get to me; I feel extremely upset by what just unfolded in front of me a couple of hours ago. It’s just an average, damp, Tuesday afternoon. I was just out shopping, yet at a moment’s notice something catastrophic had happened. We didn’t hang around, but thought it best to return home. From what I have heard since then though, the news about the boy isn’t good. Such things make me reflect how delicate life is, and how quickly things can change.

One of the reasons why I love London so much is that you never know what you’ll come across next. I was trundling through Greenwich Park earlier, fretting over this and that, wondering what on earth had happened to summer, when out of the corner of my eye I spotted something interesting. A film crew was at work down the hill from the observatory. It wasn’t very big, but it was clearly using a lot of high spec, professional equipment. Of course I Immediately charged course to investigate.

My mind naturally went back all those summers to when I met Danny Boyle filming in Charlton House, but this was clearly a different kind of production. Appropriately enough though, when I asked one of the .crew what they were filming, they told me it was something to do with the Paris Paralympics: it was a promotional film for Bupa about two para-athletes as they prepared for the games.

After a short trip home to get a jumper, the rest of my day was spent watching the filming. It was extremely cool to see a professional production crew at work – they were even using a proper clapper-board and everything! I spent the rest of the afternoon in Greenwich Park following the film crew around as they went from site to site. They were friendly people and I think I made a few friends. I was, however, told that I couldn’t give too many details away here, but I’ll probably say more in due course.

How can you not love a city where there’s a chance that you can come across a film crew at any moment?

Yesterday was a pretty weird day for me to be honest. First things first I needed some cash, so I headed up to my Building Society in Eltham bright and early before it shut at midday. That was nothing unusual to be honest. The problem was, it was starting to rain, but going back home wasn’t an option as Serkan would be still cleaning my flat. It’s usually best that I’m out when he does so, so my freshly-mopped floor has a chance to dry without me getting footprints or tyre tracks all over it.

I decided to hang around on Eltham High Street for a bit, dodging the showers and trying to get the loud, annoying street preachers to shut up, before hopping onto a bus to Woolwich. I thought that perhaps there I’d find something interesting, without any luck. From there I hopped onto the Elisabeth Line to see what was going on at the Excel Centre, but that too was oddly quiet for a Saturday. The rain was clearing a bit by then though, so I headed out to explore some more of North-East London.

East London is an odd place: much of it reminds me of the town centres in Cheshire I grew up in, but it is much more compact with none of the wide open farmland dividing the commercial areas. There are, however, quite a few pleasant paths running through parks and beside rivers which I often like to follow. Most of these lead up to the Olympic Park in Stratford, so that is where I eventually found myself yesterday afternoon. By then, it was around 3pm, and the park was getting busy as the England Football match drew closer and closer.

At the far end of the park is Canalside, a line of four or five nice little bars built into the former media centre. By the time I got to the area, I was getting hungry, so I bought myself a wrap from the Tesco which is now there and went into one of the bars to eat it. It was one of these trendy little places where people go to play video games, with various kinds of games consoles lining the two side walls. The situation seemed straightforward at first, but as kick-off drew closer and closer things became busier and busier. Fortunately I had managed to eat my lunch before the place became really crowded: two or three large screens had been set up for people to watch the match on, and they were filing in by the dozen. To begin with, from the table I was sat at I could see the football perfectly well, but as time wore on my view became more and more congested. To make matters worse the bar was card only, meaning they wouldn’t accept my cash for drinks.

Things were, it must be said, getting less and less comfortable, so when the first half ended a disappointing nill-nill I decided to call it a day and come home. It had been an interesting day, but the culture and excitement I had been looking for had never really materialised: It had just lead me to quite a pretentious bar in an increasingly gentrified corner of the city. By the time I got back, extra time was just ending, so I hadn’t really missed much of the match. It’s always great to go out into this vast metropolis though, to experience a bit of what my fellow Londoners are getting excited about.

To be honest I’ve been pondering what to say here all day. By now, anyone reading this will be well aware of last night’s epic election result, so I don’t really need to break any news. Frankly, I’m just glad that we finally have someone with a shred of humanity to him leading the country. Starmer obviously isn’t perfect, but I’d choose him over any self-serving Tory scoundrel any day of the week. I’m just glad that the polls held true, so that perhaps now the country has a chance of getting back onto something resembling the right, socially just, outward looking track.

Mind you, having said all that, I’m not at all happy that three Reform p’tahks have been elected. Such xenophobic scum surely shouldn’t be allowed anywhere near parliament.

Perhaps the most interesting, relevant thing I have noticed over the past few days and weeks is that I have barely encountered any political campaigning. It could have been banned or something, and nobody has told me, but whenever I have been out and about, I haven’t come across anyone trying to persuade me to vote for one party or another. That has surprised me to be honest, as I would have expected such campaigning to be more visible than ever, given that this election is so crucial. All of the suburban town centres I have been through recently, be it Eltham, Woolwich, Greenwich or Bromley, have, however, been politically silent. Perhaps it’s because London is such a labour stronghold, and the result here is more or less a foregone conclusion; but even so I wouldn’t have expected other parties to have given up on the capital so wholeheartedly. Even so, I really hope that this is a good indication of tonight’s result.

I just got back from the cinema, where John and I watched a film called Kinds Of Kindness. I don’t think I can even attempt to write any kind of review of it, but can only ask what the hell we just watched. I mean that quite earnestly rather than rhetorically: I doubt I have ever seen a bigger departure from post classical Hollywood cinema than the film I saw this afternoon. Nor have I ever seen anything more dark, chilling, perverse yet somehow weirdly comic (although perhaps that was just me). It was as if Silence Of The Lambs had merged with some kind of occult melodrama. I don’t think I can do any more than encourage people to go and watch the film and then tell me what it was about. Don’t say I didn’t warn you though.

I have, of course, been watching the coverage of the UK election quite a bit recently, and I can’t help noticing something which has cropped up again and again. Whenever he has been interviewed or asked anything, surely it is obvious that Rishi Sunak always tries to drag the issue back to tax. No matter what he is asked to talk about, the current PM always makes the point that Labour will put up tax if they are elected, as if the very idea is an anathema which everyone will want to avoid. If you ask me, this small trait tells us all we need to know about Sunak and the Tories in general: they are people who are only in it for theirselves, and who resent contributing to wider society via taxation or any other means. To them, money is theirs to be hoarded rather than used to contribute to the wider community, even if that means letting the poorest, most vulnerable people in society go without the help they need. Given it is our primary means of contributing to society, improving it and making sure nobody goes without, paying tax should be cherished, not begrudged. Tories are thus like spoiled children who were never taught to share, keeping all their toys for their selves and throwing a paddy whenever any other child wants something to play with. That’s why Sunak thinks people will be scared about tax increases, not realising that by making the point, he’s betraying himself as the vile, selfish, money-hoarding scumbag he is.

We have all woken up today to yet more extremely worrying, troubling news: France’s far right National Rally party lead by Marine Le Pen is now in poll position to win it’s general election. Now, I don’t know much about French politics, but I know that Le Penn, like her father, is a vile xenophobe who would take France down a very dark path. Such politics should have been banished from Europe and the world in general decades ago, yet for some alarming reason we’re now seeing it’s resurgence: Trump in America, National Rally in France and the growing popularity of Reform here in the UK are symptoms of the same chilling trend. They are all a conscious rejection of the liberal, tolerant, accepting values we should all now hold dear, and the return of the reductionist, idiotic, “my group is better than your group” mentality which should have been made extinct at the second world war.

Why we’re seeing this resurgence we can only speculate: personally I think part of it is connected with those who feel left behind in the last two decades; those who never got to university and couldn’t keep up with the recent cultural revolutions, both online and off, such as the rise in LGBTQ+ acceptance, now feel disenfranchised. They want to see the return of the ‘traditional values’ they feel comfortable with, and the restoration of a simpler world they could understand, not realising that such a world allowed the overt exclusion and persecution of countless minorities. But perhaps such people don’t care, as long as straight, white and able-bodied people are once again dominant.

We cannot let that happen; we cannot let this far right resurgence continue. I think we should all be very, very worried about what we’re now seeing, in France and elsewhere. I glimpsed it here in London a couple of weeks ago. We currently live in a world where people are accepted for who they are, irrespective of skin colour, sexuality or physical ability like never before; it’s far from perfect, but it’s better than it historically has been. Yet those who feel disenfranchised by such trends now seem to want to undo them, and return the world to one where they are free to persecute and belittle anyone they feel is inferior to them. Such notions should appal us all, so the time has come to stop it. Surely we want to live in a world where diversity, equality and tolerance are cherished, and where anyone who doesn’t fit the straight, white able-bodied norm is free from persecution.

I just have two links to direct everyone to today. As I said, I didn’t watch the Trump/Biden debate, and from what I have caught of it since, that was a good decision. As with when I watch Farage, watching Donald Trump speak automatically makes me fly into an intense, red hot fury: I do not understand how that total disgrace to human civilisation can have the audacity or arrogance to spout the bullshit he does. Thus I don’t think I can comment much on the debate itself, given I didn’t watch it. I will, however, direct you all here, to Steve Shives evaluation of it. It’s somewhat long winded, but shives makes some veery good points: Biden’s performance wasn’t excellent, and his age was clearly showing, but that is no reasons not to loose faith in him. Shives advises his fellow American Democrats not to panic, and that above all Biden is still a far, far better candidate than trump.

The second thing I want everyone to watch is on the same subject, but is far more lighthearted. When I watched it half an hour ago, this piece from Wierd Al Yankovic blew me away. It’s a brilliant piss-take on the debates, but what impressed me most was how Yankovic created and got it online so fast: barely forty-eight hours after the actual debate and we’re already seeing rap parodies of it, with clips of the two candidates speaking being re-edited, mashed up and put to music. Brilliant!

Both pieces of media are very different, of course. But in their own ways I think they both show just how concerned progressive, liberal America is becoming about their upcoming election; as well as just how worried – even petrified – they’re understandably becoming about the prospect that Trump could return to the White House.

One of the most pressing questions of our time must surely be, why don’t Americans see Trump for who he so obviously is?

If you were expecting a bit more commentary from me on the recent political debates on TV, I’m sorry to disappoint you. The truth is I have consciously tried to avoid watching them – what would be the point? I had decided who I wanted to vote for months if not years ago, and watching such political Punch and Judy shows would only wind me up. As it is, the short clips I saw on breakfast TV the morning after such debates were quite enough to get me going to the point of wanting to hurl stuff at my screen; Sunak clearly lied his arrogant Tory head off last night. I therefore think it’s far better just to watch something else, like the football. The same, of course, goes for tonight’s Biden vs Trump debate in America, although no doubt there will be so many clips of it circulating online that it will be impossible to avoid.

I just got in from a lovely long stroll along the Thames. I took one of my favourite routes: down to Charlton, up to the Dome and along to Greenwich before coming home through Greenwich park. It really is a lovely walk, and the river looked beautiful. You know, I still find it stunning to think what a major facet of London’s geography the Thames is; before I moved here, I had never realised how intertwined the metropolis is with the wide, stately waterway dividing it’s north and south. I also hadn’t realised how much the Thames is used for transport: all kinds of boats use it, from the Clipper service to great big cruise ships.

Mind you, it must be said that I’ve never seen anyone swimming in the Thames. That isn’t surprising, as it’s far, far too dirty. It may be beautiful, but only a complete nutter would swim in it. On that note, when I got in I came across this quite alarming Young Turks video. The Paris Olympics are only a month away, and there are apparently plans to hold not just the opening ceremony but the swimming competitions in the Seine river. As the guy in the video says, that is a recipe for disaster: the Seine is far too dirty, and efforts to clean it haven’t gone at all well. It has cost millions, and the river is still filthy. On top of that, there have been huge protests with people threatening to poo in the river to show their objection to how much it is costing. At least London built a brand new Aquatics Centre which is still being used, but it seems the Paris Organising Committee is prioritising the potential picturesque-ness of having athletes compete in Paris’s river over the obvious dangers to their health. As much as I am looking forward to seeing how the french capital shows itself off this summer, I must say that strikes me as quite appalling.

I may be slightly biassed, but I don’t remember London having this much trouble in the run up to it’s games twelve years ago.

I won’t say much about it because it’s a pretty thorough exploration in itself, but if anyone is still interested in cinephilia and it’s demise, I highly recommend watching this Steve Shives video. While to be fair Shives covers a lot of the ground many academic writers have been going over recently, he lays out a pretty decent summation of why cinemas – referred to by him as movie theatres – have lost their appeal. Basically, it boils down to a question of, why go out to a cinema when you can watch any film you want at a click of a mouse? Yet Shives also points out that cinemas will always have a romance to them. While accessing films might be easier than ever, there will always be an attraction to actually going out, physically entering a screening room, sitting down among hundreds of other people as the lights go down and watching a film on the big screen. What he says thus has strong overtones of Andre Bazin, although Shives does not mention the father of cinephilia.

Yet I certainly agree that watching a film at a cinema will always be different: even as someone for whom going out to a cinema is especially difficult, I’ll always relish going out to watch the latest Bond or Star Trek film. Where watching a film on my computer can be something casual which I can take or leave on the spur of a moment, going to watch a film in a cinema, even one just a twenty minute powerchair ride away, is something which requires intent, purpose, and is something to be relished. Thus I seriously doubt that, even with so many people predicting their imminent demise both online and off, physical cinemas will ever lose their place in contemporary culture.

There was an item on the news today about a new way to control epilepsy. A new device implanted into a boys brain has reduced his seizures dramatically. The report showed viewers what his seizures looked like, and to be honest it wasn’t pleasant. To tell the truth, though, it just made me reflect on how lucky I am: I have hardly had any absences in the last few months, and when they have happened they have only been mild. They just last a few seconds, and I never loose consciousness. As a form of epilepsy I know that they could be far, far worse. Things like the item on the news I saw earlier thus just make me feel incredibly lucky: they remind me how fortunate I am. I still sometimes fret about my absences, especially when I can’t remember what happened immediately after them, but it’s clear how much worse they could be. I find it reassuring to know that I can go about my day to day life, safe in the knowledge that I won’t suddenly loose consciousness and wake up hours later in hospital.