This photo was just too incredible for me not to nick. It was apparently taken by Athena Tucker in Arches National Park, Utah.

I might well be imagining it, but I’m pretty sure I have started to see a lot more people using powerchairs when I’m out and about. Over the last few weeks especially, the number of people using powerchairs seems to have quadrupled. Not long ago, I would be lucky to encounter one or two fellow powerchair users a week on my trundles around London. All of a sudden, though, they seem to be everywhere. I’m not talking about mobility scooters used mostly by old people, but the type of electric wheelchair I first encountered back at school. I was just in Lewisham, and I must have passed eight or nine other people in powerchairs at least. Of course, I’m not saying this is necessarily a bad thing; it just strikes me as an odd trend, and if it is real, rather than me just imagining things, it makes me wonder what is behind it. Has anyone else noticed anything similar?

Being me is pretty cool sometimes. I love how random people who I don’t remember ever meeting, seem to recognise me out of nowhere.

It has been a bit of a rough day, to be honest. A few weeks ago, Dom got in touch about finally organising a funeral for Lyn. Of course I thought it was a good idea, although I knew it would be difficult. We were just talking about it at first, but today we finally got going, selecting a few pictures of Lyn to use. Dom then suggested going to Lewisham to get them printed.

Dom could cycle there, but of course for me it meant taking the bus. It was an easy enough journey, but I was just approaching the bus stop at the end of my road when all of a sudden I heard someone exclaiming my name.

“Matt! MATT!” I looked up to see a heavily set Jamaican man coming the other way. I didn’t recognise him at first, but as he came closer I realised who he was.

When I first moved to London, there used to be a small pub between Charlton and Woolwich which I took to drinking in called The Kings Arms. It was an odd little place, famous for once being bombed by the IRA. It was a quiet place where I rarely saw anyone else, so over time the owner, Cox, kind of got to know me. He even began to help me drink my beer, memorably repeating “Cold and nice! Cold and nice!” in his rich Jamaican accent as I sucked my straw. It was more or less the first pub I came across on my own after moving in with Lyn, so it briefly became kind of a personal retreat for me.

That was well over twelve years ago. The Kings Arms has long been closed and demolished. I only really went there for a month or two, and soon forgot about it after that. This afternoon, however, who do you think I should bump into but Cox, the pub owner, who I hadn’t seen for so long. He obviously recognised me and greeted me like an old friend. Sadly we didn’t have time to catch up as my bus was soon approaching, but little occurrences like this only serve to remind us what a small world it really is, and that we’re never really very far from friends.

Just for the record, this morning I filled in and posted my postal vote. In fact it was pretty much the first thing I did today, second only to drinking my morning coffee. I better not say who I voted for, but any long-term readers can probably guess anyway. I wanted to get it done, out of the way, box crossed and into the post box, just so that I knew it was done. With so much riding on this election, with so much at stake, I’d encourage everyone to be similarly conscientious.

As a writer, and particularly a screenwriter, I really don’t know what to make of this story. “A central London cinema has cancelled a private screening of a film which was entirely written using artificial intelligence (AI) following a public backlash.” The film, called The Last Screenwriter, had been ‘written’ entirely by ChatGBT, but was apparently axed after an audience backlash. Frankly, I’m not surprised: surely film, like all art, is by definition a human creation; the stories film is used to tell are human stories. Like my blog entries, I write scripts in an effort to tell others about my thoughts, feelings and experiences. A computer program cannot do that, so is it any wonder that an audience will reject such emotionally void pap?

I have just watched something which I found utterly, utterly sickening. Last night’s Panorama program was discussed on this morning’s BBC Breakfast show, and what I saw earlier compelled me to watch it. It was an expose of a special school up in Liverpool, where pupils with autism and ADHD were shown to be regularly bullied and abused. I don’t want to say too much about it because the program speaks perfectly well for itself, other than it sickens me that things like this are still going on today. From the footage we see, it was clear that the halfwitted scumbags who were supposed to be teaching and looking after these young people had just assumed that they would be immune from any sort of repercussions, and so took perverse pleasure in bullying and belittling them. It obviously helped them to feel better about their selves, but you have to wonder how such vile, inferior cretins came to be employed in such schools in the first place.

Mind you, I think more could be said about the type of school it is. The program mentioned but did not emphasise the fact that it was a ‘free school’, part of David CaMoron’s pet project to create essentially more private schools. As such, it would have had to go through much less regulation than state schools do, which may well explain why it could employ such sickeningly unqualified and inappropriate members of staff. I seriously doubt that we would see behaviour like this in any ‘ordinary’ special school – I certainly hope not anyway – so I think this is, at least in part, a repercussion of the Tory quest to turn education over to private hands. In doing so they opened schools, especially special schools, up to abuse like this. It really worries me how much more of this disgusting behaviour could be going on; with more and more young people being diagnosed as having SEN these days, this could be just the tip of an utterly repugnant iceberg.

I know I have touched upon this before, and I don’t really want to repeat myself, but to be honest QR Codes are really starting to annoy me. We see them everywhere these days, from bus stops to political party leaflets, but because I can’t use the camera on my Ipad to scan them, I have no idea what they do. To be fair, there is usually a website address beneath them which I can just type into a web browser, but their increasing ubiquity is bothering me more and more. This is a form of technology and information distribution which I, as a disabled man, have absolutely no way of accessing. Of course, I’m not unhinged enough to think that this is all due to some kind of anti-cripple conspiracy, or that those of us without the manual dexterity to use our Iphone or Ipad cameras are being deliberately left behind. But now that these codes are being used as a way to access quite important information, and are starting to appear on things like political leaflets, this is really starting to bother me. It’s really starting to feel like I’m being left behind or excluded.

I’m presently seeing so many things on social media taking the piss out of Rishi Sunak for his comments this week about not having Sky TV as a kid, I almost feel sorry for him…almost. It’s pretty intense. My favourite of course are the memes based on Monty Python’s* Four Yorkshiremen sketch, with Sunak’s head placed over one of the character’s (“You were lucky!” etc”). It interests me how such a classic piece of British comedy can be reused/referenced like that to make such a witty comment about contemporary politics. The memes are getting funnier by the day. But there’s no denying that he brought it upon himself, and only has himself to blame. Did he really think he would get away with sounding so whiney and spoiled? Frankly I think it tells us all we need to know about not just Sunak’s sense of entitlement, but that of virtually every member of the Tory party. Oh how I relish seeing those tossers being ravaged!

*Or was it originally from the 1948 Show?

You may have noticed that I haven’t been writing much about the election recently. To be honest, politics just winds me up, and you probably know which party I want everyone to vote for anyway, so I’ve just been avoiding the subject. However, I really think I should flag this Led By Donkeys video up. It’s a short profile of Rishi Sunak, and really gives you an idea of what a privileged, arrogant p’tahk he is. He’s the type of guy who seems to think that everything should just be given to him simply because he was born into a certain family, that contributing to society via tax is some kind of evil, and that those less fortunate than he happens to be don’t deserve any state help. So, he’s a typical Tory then. More to the point, this short film really gives you an idea of what a vile person Sunak is, making it seem all the more urgent that he isn’t re-elected.

To be honest I’m pretty proud of my weblog. I see it as my primary output as a writer, and my way of telling the world what life is like for a disabled man. You may have noticed that I like to keep it updated pretty much daily: that’s just to make sure I don’t fall out of the habit and start to neglect it. Recently though, I’ve been wondering, how many blogs are on the web like mine? How many other bloggers have kept their pages going for over twenty years, updating it as regularly as I have? I know my posts aren’t often very long, and probably vary in quality hugely, but if what I’m doing here is as rare as I’m beginning to suspect, then I reckon I deserve at least some credit. Indeed, I’ve heard that many personal blogs are only active for a few months, and only tend to be updated once or twice a week. If anyone can point me to another weblog which has been going for so long and which has been added to so regularly, I would like to see it.

After I made and posted my entry earlier I decided to go out again, this time to Woolwich. I think I’ve described here before how Woolwich is quite an up and coming area: it has a reputation for being a bit rough, but it has a lot going for it, such as an Elizabeth Line station and a large public square with a big screen, where people can gather and watch sports and state events. When I was going through the square today though, I was rather bemused to encounter not one but three street preachers, all standing separately and reading different parts of the bible. I couldn’t help reflecting on how stupid it seemed: they were talking over one another, so all that was audible was a garbled nonsense. Needless to say nobody was listening to any of them. Part of me really wanted to stay and tell all three of them to shut up, but I knew it was pointless. It just struck me as a brilliant illustration of the idiocy of such behaviour: perhaps if they worked together and coordinated what they were trying to tell people, some might listen. But because all three wanted to do his own thing and be the centre of attention, the one to deliver the message which they apparently thought was oh-so-important, the only thing anyone passing by could hear was three voices of garbled, competing nonsense.

This came to me as I was rolling through nearby Kidbrooke earlier. The flats there seem to multiply by the week!

I am, of course, still a huge James Bond fan, and I’m sure like many Bond fans I’m beginning to wonder more and more when we’ll see the return of our favourite spy. I know I’ve written about this before, but it has now been three years since Daniel Craig’s final Bond outing, No Time To Die, so isn’t it time to see the resumption of cinema’s greatest franchise? After all, Craig was first announced as the sixth actor to play Bond in October 2005, three years after Pierce Brosnan’s final, Die Another Day. We’ve recently seen a bit of a Bond drought, possibly due to events like the pandemic, so I’m pretty sure the guys at EON productions will be eager to resume services.

Then again, Craig’s innings was such a success, and he made such a mark on the series and character, that recasting it will be harder than ever. Whoever they choose will have bigger shoes to fill than any of his predecessors, particularly given the scrutiny and negativity Craig himself received when he was first selected. Yet that is what will make the choice so interesting, and for my money I suspect we’ll hear something about it quite soon, possibly this autumn. After all the trouble the world has seen in the past few years, I think we could do with some more martini-fuelled escapism.

Earlier today I heard that Farage has caused quite a stir over the weekend with the sickening statement that Rishi Sunak left the D-Day commemorations early last week because he didn’t understand ‘our culture’. Of course I’m not a Sunak fan, but surely we were past crap like this. The ridiculous statement has apparently made many people extremely uncomfortable, probably not least because of the sheer arrogance of it: what gives Farage the right to say what constitutes ‘our culture’ and what doesn’t? More to the point and probably more dangerously, he seems to think he has the authority to determine what constitutes ‘us’, and who does not belong in that group. That is exactly the type of thing we saw the Nazis do. While I suspect the embarrassment to humanity is just spouting such shit to stir up far right support and cause controversy, he is undeniably trying to take UK politics down a very dark, dangerous path.

Just as an addendum to yesterday’s entry, if you can I would thoroughly recommend checking out Baby Reindeer on Netflix. I can’t really comment upon whether it’s based on fiction or reality of course, but either way just two episodes in and I’m engrossed. It’s very psychological and very very dark: it’s clearly about a woman with some extremely deep psychological issues. To a certain extent the program strikes me as a commentary on the modern world, where everyone is constantly in touch with one another via social media to the extent that it can become obsessive, or at least unhealthy. The picture the series is beginning to paint just two episodes in, of a clearly disturbed woman stalking the main protagonist both in reality and online, is extremely disconcerting. Either way I’ll continue to watch in the hope of getting to the bottom of what I heard about yesterday.

Above all, though, one thing is certain: we never see stuff like this on conventional TV.

I just saw something on the evening news which I found genuinely, genuinely baffling: either there’s something about it which I haven’t understood, or it’s one of the most stupid things I’ve ever heard. According to this story, a woman is suing Netflix for making a drama series which she says is about her, but which alleges she did things she says she didn’t do. “A Scottish woman who allegedly inspired the stalker character Martha in hit Netflix drama Baby Reindeer is suing the streamer for defamation, negligence and privacy violations. Fiona Harvey – who has identified herself as the woman on whom Martha is based – argued in a lawsuit that Netflix told “brutal lies” about her to over 50 million viewers around the world.” Both Netflix and the show’s writer, Richard Gadd, deny that it is about her.

Am I missing something here? If the series is supposed to be fiction, and it’s creators claim it isn’t about any real person, then how the smeg can this woman sue it’s creators for making stuff up about her? It’s like me claiming the Hobbit is about me, then suing Peter Jackson because I never went on a quest with a bunch of dwarfs; or claiming to be the inspiration for James Bond, then suing EON productions because I never met Pussey Galore! The program is supposed to be fiction, and Harvey only seems to have met Gad a few times in a pub. Either there’s something I haven’t picked up upon about this, or it’s one of the most stupid, idiotic thing’s I have ever heard.

I know I shouldn’t just flag up videos which I think everyone should watch without commenting much on them, but I came across this video detailing Donald Trump’s history of interfering with young women yesterday, and it made me wretch. I know most of the stuff the video goes over is already public knowledge, but I don’t think it has ever been made clearer to me how utterly disgusting Trump is. The guy is a pervert who boasts openly about fiddling around with girls as young as thirteen. He thinks he can get away with it because of who he supposedly is. I wouldn’t ordinarily just flag up such things, but it baffles me that Americans are even considering letting this complete and utter disgrace to human civilisation anywhere near the White House again.

I watched some of the D Day commemorations this morning. It was all rather somber and dull, and not the sort of thing I usually like to write about. I know I shouldn’t get too political about such occasions. I couldn’t help reflecting, though, that if I caught sight of someone like Nigel Farage there, I would have gone berserk. The fact that Sunak was there was bad enough. After all, the whole point of the European Union was to prevent conflicts like World War Two ever happening again: it was created to make sure that the continent never saw the return of the kind of tyranny those men were fighting to overthrow. Isn’t the fact that the uk has now left the Union thus an insult to all those men who died to free Europe from such tyranny? And isn’t it largely due to Brexit and mistakes like it that we’re now seeing the return of such nationalist tyranny? Or do outists like Sunak just want us to conveniently forget that?

Is this not the very definition of double standards? The country has every right to, and indeed obviously has, changed it’s mind on brexit.

I was just watching the breakfast news, and a lot, of course, is currently being made of the eightieth anniversary of D-Day and the liberation of Normandy. It will probably be the last time such commemorations are held involving people who were actually there. It got me thinking: the Paris Olympics are in only a few weeks, so could the anniversary be marked there too, and if so how? After all, the liberation of Paris in August 1944 was a highly significant event in the end of the Second World War, so will the French want to take the opportunity to say something about it? Of course, the Olympics are supposed to be about peace and cooperation, so they may well just ignore the coincidence; yet, with so much currently being said about the anniversary of D-Day, and after so many Parisiens died to free their city, it would be strange if they didn’t allude to it somehow.

I know that I haven’t mentioned him on here before, and that I’m not really into rugby, but I think I should say something about Rob Burrow, who has died today aged 41. Like Stephen Hawking, Burrow was a celebrity who drew our attention to Motor Neurone Disease, and disability in general. While you can criticise the press for emphasising the ‘tragic’ element of the story, figures like Burrow nonetheless did a great deal to heighten awareness of such conditions. In doing so, they make sure those of us with physical disabilities aren’t forgotten about. I thus think it’s right that I note this sad loss: I know Rob Burrow will be greatly missed.

To be honest I feel a bit dirty this morning, and I don’t just mean that I need a shower. Yesterday was one of those days which will probably stay in my memory for quite some time, but not in a good way: it’s fair to say it was a big eye opener. A few days ago, a friend of mine asked me to go with him to some kind of nationalist march in central London, involving Tommy Robinson. Of course, I wasn’t at all sure about it – I vehemently oppose nationalism in all it’s acrid forms. Yet my mate seemed to really want me to come, using the arguments that it would open my eyes to other ways of thinking, and that if I didn’t come I would be being narrow-minded.

So I went with him, catching the train yesterday morning from Kidbrooke to Victoria. I almost instantly regretted it. As soon as we left the train station, we walked into a crowd of nationalists, waving flags and shouting all sorts of vile crap of the kind I usually detest. I wouldn’t say there was that many of them – two hundred or so – but it was enough to wind me up. At first I tried to stay calm, but after about twenty minutes I felt ready to argue. My mate realised this and took me back into the station, giving me time to calm down. Truth be told, part of me really wanted to come home; yet another part of me – the anthropologist in me – was curious to see what would happen and what made the marchers tick.

A few minutes later we went back out. The crowd had grown quite significantly, but I still wouldn’t call it huge. Frankly, I’ve been to bigger disability rights protests. Not that I want to play into stereotypes, but it was clear that this march would be made up of a certain type of people: mostly elderly, very working class; the type of people who read the Sun, Mail or Express and accept their baseless spewings without question. I could tell from the way they spoke and the words they used that these were the type of people whom the education system and welfare state had left behind. Nonetheless, although a few were a bit loud, the people around me seemed peaceful and kindly, if extremely misguided.

The march soon got going. I followed, staying close to my mate. Frankly my biggest concern was that my presence there would be seen as some kind of support: I still felt extremely uncomfortable with some of what I was hearing the people around me say, and part of me begged to be let loose and tell these idiots to shut the fuck up. Yet mostly out of respect for my friend I told myself to keep quiet and stay calm, looking at it as kind of an exercise in tolerance. After all, the last thing I wanted to do was cause some sort of incident or get beaten up. Thus I kept telling myself that I didn’t agree with what those around me were saying, but I would defend their right to say it.

The march didn’t seem to last very long, finishing on college green outside the Houses of Parliament. By my reckoning there weren’t very many people there: my mate boasted there were about a quarter of a million, but I would say it was five thousand at most. Upon the green, surrounded by statues of great people like Mandela, Lincoln and Churchill, a screen and stage had been set up, from which various right wing figures soon began to speak. I did my best to listen, but from where we were sat it wasn’t easy. From what I could make out, though, tract of bile after tract of bile was being spouted, each as unsubstantiated and baseless as the last.

However, what was soon obvious about what the crowd was being shown was how much it boiled down to paranoia and feelings of victimisation: the world, the mainstream, the elites or whatever were out to get them, and they were being silenced for telling the truth. For instance, one video screened alleged that the UK had some sort of two tier police system, in which right-wing activists were being arrested and silenced while islamic protesters were allowed to go free. The film itself was barely more than a set of loosely linked news clips accompanied by some ominous, melodramatic music, and not one iota of real evidence was offered to back up the preposterous claim; yet the crowd around me seemed to lap it up, yelling and clapping like seals in a zoo.

The most ridiculous, laughable part was yet to come, though. When Tommy Robinson, whose real name is Stephen Christopher Yaxley-Lennon, began to speak, I couldn’t help but be reminded of Donald Trump. I have never heard a more pitiful, wretched, self-pitying stream of nonsense. It was frankly laughable that anyone was listening to the wanker! The world was out to get him, and he was being silenced; but he was the one fighting to protect British rights and culture. Alongside that there was all kinds of Islamophobic idiocy about muslims engaging in child abuse and rape, although to be fair I couldn’t really make that part out. Either way, it staggered me that anyone was listening to the barely literate moron, not least because he was claiming to be silenced while speaking from a stage outside parliament. He was playing upon the fears and naivite of the people in front of him to draw attention to himself, trying to become some kind of cult hero just like Trump does. It would have struck any thinking person as either laughable or sickening.

Mercifully we didn’t stay until the end. I think we had both had enough and I needed a beer more than at any other time in my life. A quick pint in a nearby LGBTQ-friendly pub was enough to steady my nerves, and then we were on the train home. The afternoon had been an eye-opener: it had, it must be said, simply confirmed and entrenched many of the ideas I had already about the political far right. It is reactionary, crude and unthinking, reliant on baseless notions of oppression, as well as people’s fears of things they may not understand, to perpetuate itself. People are being used and manipulated by charlatans like Robinson, and they don’t even realise it. Notions like patriotism are being used and usurped in order to set one community against another in a way which will only make the current cultural crisis even more dangerous.

On the whole I’m glad I went yesterday; I learned a great deal, and, as I say, it was a real eye-opener. Yet it was also a real effort to stay calm among so many fools and thugs, so I don’t think I’ll ever go to anything like it again.

I think I ought to draw everyone’s attention to something rather cool which I noticed last night, which I thought was fairly significant. On this weeks edition of Have I Got News For You, Paul Merton’s teammate was comedian Chris McCausland. McCausland is blind, so I noticed Merton describing things to him when he needed to, such as pictures. He did so casually and matter-of-fact-ly, and not much attention was drawn to it. I just think this was quite cool because it’s a clear example of a person with a disability being included in a mainstream, primetime TV show, as well as an example of how people with disabilities can be included without the issue becoming too overt.

It’s one of those days when, as a blogger, I feel obliged to pass comment on something that everyone remotely interested is aware of. Trump’s conviction was as inevitable as the Titanic hitting the iceberg, or brexit obliterating the UK economy: something which every intelligent person knew would happen has happened. The only worrying thing is, where this will take America culturally: we know that it is already a frighteningly divided nation, and it only remains to be seen how the MAGA fanatics, for whom Trump can do no wrong, will react.

Not that I have the faintest idea who Harry Styles is, but I think I’ll flag this story up, simply because it concerns Holmes Chapel. Holmes Chapel is a (very) small village in Cheshire, about seven miles from Congleton, where I grew up. I know it because I used to get driven through it twice a day, on my way to and from school. Now, it seems that a company is offering fans of Harry Styles walking tours of Holmes Chapel because he spent his childhood there. “Fans of Harry Styles have long obsessed over every detail of his life, his romances and his childhood. Now, Harries – as they’re known – are being offered guided walking tours of the Cheshire village where the pop sensation grew up.” Of course, I realise this won’t matter much to most readers (not that anything I write here ever matters that much) but at least it’s good to see Holmes Chapel finally getting put on the map.

I probably ought to admit that, when I first came across it twenty minutes or so ago, my gut reaction was to comment “Surely by the twenty-forth century, humanity will have outgrown such bullshit.” It was a Steve Shives video, purportedly about the presence of chaplains in Starfleet. Groggy as I was, the notion that religion could have any place in the future presented to us in Star Trek, or that any fan could be arrogant enough to try to insert their religion into it, was enough to send me into spasms of fury. But then I actually clicked on the link, and what I found myself watching was an outstanding piece of satire: funny, witty, yet perceptive. In it, Shives is essentially pointing out that, if religious figures existed in Starfleet, they would be defunct to the point that they would be aware of their total irrelevance, yet would probably be acting as if they still had something to contribute to society. It’s a great, well acted, well written monologue, definitely worth a watch. It’s also another example of how sophisticated this type of fan art is becoming.

In a strange way, hearing about the weird tradition detailed here earlier triggered a few memories. It’s about the traditional annual cheese rolling race in Gloucestershire, where people hurtle down a very steep hill in pursuit of a round piece of cheese. Utterly insane, but it looks like fun.

Behind my old special school, just beyond the playground, used to be two moderately-sized mounds made from all the soil excavated when the school was being built in the seventies. They were only a few metres high, but were once a major feature of the surrounding school landscape. When I was at school, before I was ten or eleven, I used to use a rollator: a walking frame with four wheels which I used to stabilise myself when I was walking. Rather than pushing it like the kind of zimmer-frames which you see elderly people using, I used to pull it as it had a bar which crossed at the back connecting it’s two sides. When I first started using it, it didn’t take my young self long to realise that, if I got going fast enough, I could then push myself up to sit on the bar and glide along on the momentum. I never went more than two or three metres, but it was great fun, rattling down the school corridors.

The problem came when I realised that it was even more fun to climb to the top of the mounds and whizz down on the back of my rollaor. As a youngster I thought it was awesome: every break time or lunch time, I used to clime the mound and glide down endlessly, like I was on a rollercoaster or a Ghostbuster aboard Ecto-1. The thing is, some sides of the small hills were steeper than others, so to begin with I just stuck to the less steep sides. When I eventually mustered up the courage, however, I decided it would be cool to try to ride down the steepest slope of them all.

The first couple of times, if memory serves, I was perfectly okay; but then I wanted to go faster and faster, until, quite inevitably, BANG. I remember tumbling off the walking frame, and the next thing I know I was opening my eyes with one of my fellow students standing over me. I had obviously fallen off the back of my walker and knocked myself briefly unconscious. Needless to say, that was the last time I ever played that game; yet watching all these guys in Gloucestershire rush down a hill after a rolling cheese strikes me as similarly foolish. Their hill might be larger and steeper, and my childhood game had nothing to do with dairy products, but I daresay they get the same thrill from doing something most people would deem utterly crazy.

Damn this saturated little island. One moment I can be trundling happily along the Thames path, starting to feel warm enough to wonder whether wearing a jumper today was a good idea. The next, the skies open and it’s raining so hard that I’m desperately looking for cover, trying my best not to let my powerchair control get too wet! It’s enough to make you think we were in the midst of a climate change crisis or something.

I just got in from my daily trundle (I got slightly lost in Thamesmead) and came across something fascinating. People can apparently now play some kind of James Bond-based roleplaying game where they walk about central London responding to text messages and answering clues. Calvin Dyson goes into detail about it here. It sounds like fun, and I might give it a try one day, although for the time being I’ll probably just stick to following my nose.

I just got home from the cinema. John suggested we watch the new Mad Max film, Furiosa, and I happily obliged. The thing is, I knew absolutely nothing about the Mad Max films. I had heard the name of course, but apart from that I hadn’t seen a centimetre of film. I had no idea what to expect.

What I found myself watching a couple of hours ago, then, was utterly bizarre, yet intriguing. Guys drove motorbikes like cowboys riding horses across some kind of dystopian Australian landscape; people fought twenty minute long battles involving giant lorries and pick-up trucks; characters were shown driving powerful vehicles almost constantly, without a petrol station in sight. Frankly, I didn’t have a clue what was going on, yet I found it strangely fascinating.

I left the cinema wondering what on Earth it was all about, but in a good way. I had just come into contact with some kind of strange, dystopian reality for the very first time, and I wanted to know more. How had that world come about? How could you explain such weird characters and creatures? Above all, what were the filmmakers trying to say? I now find myself itching to know more, as well as to watch the other Mad Max films. But then, isn’t that what all good art is supposed to do?

Needless to say, I’m already starting to get rather agitated about the election. I always get worked up over politics: whenever somebody I don’t agree with appears on TV, I often end up shouting at the screen or wanting to throw things at it. I’m told it’s connected with my emotional regulation being effected by my CP. It happened last night: I was watching the evening news when the leader of the group of vermin known as Reform suddenly appeared. I instantly found the sight so repugnant that I had to turn it off – I mean, why is the BBC giving airtime to such lying, xenophobic scum?

Last night, however, I found a decent solution. A few entries ago, I mentioned that I had started work on re-inserting all the missing links into my old blog entries. It’s a long, slow process: finding, copying and pasting a month’s worth of links takes me an hour or two, depending upon how many I used. I must admit, though, that it’s rather therapeutic and relaxing. Monotonous, yes, but I soon get the sense that I’m making progress; it also means I refresh my memory about all the things I’ve written here in the past. If I do a month or two a day, I know I’ll get there eventually. And at least it distracts me from all the bollocks currently in the news.

I suppose I don’t have to worry about selecting something to blog about today: the subject is obvious. Mind you, just as obvious is what I’m going to say about it. Long term readers will surely know what I feel about politics and how much I loathe the current Tory government. I just got back from a trip up to Westminster to see if I could find anything interesting there, but apart from a small parade by UN troops, I was quite disappointed. I can thus only say that I think the country needs to change its government more urgently than ever, and ask everyone reading this to do their best to ensure that happens in July.

To tell the truth, this morning was quite a difficult one.

As I mentioned yesterday, it would have been Lyn’s birthday. Dominik knew this too, so earlier today he asked me to take him to Eltham Cemetery, where Lyn’s ashes are. He had never been, and wanted to pay his respects. Of course I was happy to do so, so after breakfast this morning we went together along the footpaths next to the A2 to the cemetery. It had been a while since I had been, and to be honest I wanted to know what, if anything, had happened with Lyn’s remains, and whether her brother Paul had ever got in contact. When we reached the cemetery, however, we were told that they had not heard anything, and so had scattered Lyn’s ashes in the small woodland area there; Lyn never had any form of ceremony or funeral.

I think this saddened both me and Dom. We went to the area, and stayed there among the trees for a few minutes. It was deeply emotional – Lyn deserved so much more. I thought it appropriate to play this song I wrote for Lyn on my Ipad, and Dominik took this photo.

Naturally, we agreed that the best thing to do now would be to organise some kind of get-together or remembrance event, where we can invite all of Lyn’s old friends and give her the send-off she deserved. I suppose things like the pandemic have got in the way of such events over the last few years, but Lyn was such an incredible person who struck everyone she met with her zest for life, that I think everyone would agree that to deny her such an event would be something of a betrayal. After all, I think L would have wanted everyone to come together and listen to some great music.

I went for a trundle yesterday: a nice, long roll up towards Woolwich and then over the river to explore the regeneration around Silvertown. I think I’ve described before how such nose-following helps me to think and contemplate all kinds of issues. On and off recently, I have found myself captivated by gender again. As I wrote here a couple of years ago, although I still think and dream about it from time to time, I haven”t actually cross-dressed in quite a while. However, a couple of times recently I have found a single question quite intriguing: what if I had taken my dressing even further? What if, at the height of my cross-dressing ‘phase’ ten or fifteen years or so ago, I had acted upon my curiosity and chosen to transition? What would life be like now? How would I feel? What would my chest feel like if I had started to take hormones? What would getting dressed in mornings feel like? What would my relationship with my family be like? Would I have taken comfortably to my new role, or might I now regret it? I find such questions strangely intriguing, but I suppose I’ll now never know the answers.

Today would have been Lyn’s sixty-fourth birthday: I still miss her a great, great deal, and think about her daily. Lyn, of course, transitioned in the year 2000, when she was forty. Thinking about her yesterday, I realised something quite profound: Lyn probably had roughly the same desires and curiosities I do, but she acted on hers when I did not. Lyn chose to take the step into the unknown where I found it safer and more reassuring to stay put. What, then, is the difference? Were Lyn’s feelings stronger and more compelling than mine? Or could it just be that Lyn was braver than I am.

That is the conclusion I came to on my trundle yesterday. Lyn was a truly remarkable person; she had a kind of strength and wisdom I haven’t come across in anyone else. She chose to explore an aspect of her personality which I now seem to repress, the difference being that she had a fortitude I do not. Where I probably felt various social and cultural pressures to remain as I am, Lyn chose to ignore them, step into the unknown and smash down the very barrier I feared. That is, at least in part, why Lyn was such an incredible person; and why I’ll never stop missing her.

Imagine the scene: it’s late afternoon, and a man in his early forties is at home alone in his flat, working quietly. Suddenly he hears the doorbell ring, so he gets up and answers it. He opens his front door, only to see a salesman who immediately asks him “Are your parents at home?” Then, before the man can reply that his parents aren’t anywhere near, and that this was his flat, the salesman turns his back and walks off. Now, if that happened to you, wouldn’t you be irritated, or would it at least strike you as very, very weird?

Today is my Dad’s birthday, so first and foremost I want to wish him the best of days. My parents are currently away in Germany, obviously very much enjoying their retirement. Dad has always been a big fan of Dune; I remember seeing a VHS of the original film adaptations in the family video collection, before I had any idea what it was about. Now that I do though, I think Dad may appreciate this:

I have had a quiet, pleasant day: a peaceful walk around Canary Wharf, and then a beer in nearby Kidbrooke with my neighbour Eddy. Not much to blog about, really. However, part of me thinks that perhaps I should have gone up to the massive demonstration noted here. “Thousands of pro-Palestinian protesters marched through central London on Saturday, reiterating calls for a ceasefire in Gaza.” All in all, though, I was probably right to stay away.

It’s not that I’m not deeply concerned about what is currently happening in the Middle-East, or not appalled that so many people are dying unjustly; yet the conflict there has become so muddied, and opinions on either side have become so heated, that perhaps it’s best that I stay clear of such demonstrations altogether. I would only have wound myself up if I had joined such a demonstration; while most people on the march will be concerned by what is happening in Gaza, I also get the impression that there are rather disturbing anti-semitic components to them too. The world is becoming so fractured and divided that perhaps the best idea is to step back, go for a quiet trundle, and have a beer with your mate. Nonetheless, it worries me how angry and antagonistic people are becoming about this issue.

The massive news which I just came across this morning is that Red Dwarf is making (yet another) comeback. According to this Radio Times article, the old crew is making one feature length episode which will be cut into three. As a Red Dwarf fan, I certainly think it will be great to see Lister, Rimmer, Kryten and the Cat back; my brothers and I grew up watching this wonderfully anarchic sci-fi comedy, both contrasting with and complementing more serious stuff like Star Trek. Yet I can’t help thinking that we’ve seen so many reunions and comeback shows these days, from Picard to The Lord of the Rings, that this is just another attempt to scrape the bottom of the nostalgia barrel. After all, guys like Craig Charles and Chris Barrie are now so much older than when they first played Lister and Rimmer – surely they won’t have the same dynamic.

Further, towards the end of the article, there’s mention of some kind of Red Dwarf spin off show, set just before the beginning of the original series and involving entirely new characters. If that is indeed in the works, then I am very concerned indeed: Red Dwarf is about the last human alive, marooned millions of years into deep space, whose only company is a hologram of the bunkmate he hated, a strange being which evolved from his pet cat and a neurotic android. Making a show about anything other than that would not be Red Dwarf. This sounds to me like just another attempt to exploit a much loved franchise, while inadvertently yet inevitably ripping the heart out of it.