This morning I had a bit of a dilemma: what to do, and where to go, for breakfast? I think I’ve mentioned on here before that Serkan currently takes Wednesday mornings off, so I only occasionally have a PA to help me get dressed and breakfasted. It isn’t that much of a problem, as after about half an hour struggling to get my socks and shoes on, I head out in my chair, usually towards Eltham, to get breakfast and coffee in Costa.

The thing is, a few weeks ago, the guys at the Costa on Eltham high street asked me not to go there any more as I apparently made too much mess. I’ve been fine for the last few Wednesday mornings as Dominik or John have been around to help, but this morning I was alone again. That left me with an issue: where to go?

After a while struggling to put my new shoes on (I swear, writing my MA thesis was easier!) I headed out in my powerchair. At first I thought I would head down to Woolwich, as there are plenty of decent cafes there. Then, trundling along, I saw a bus for North Greenwich approaching, and, remembering there was a branch of Costa up on the peninsula, decided to get on it. This was a bit of a gamble, as people who work in and around the O2 aren’t always that cordial towards me, and wherever I went I would need to explain to the staff what I needed them to do to help me, but I thought it was worth a try.

I was, however, very pleasantly surprised. Going into the branch I was made to feel very welcome; I selected what I wanted to eat and found a table. The staff were very helpful. I suppose my experience at the Costa in Eltham had kind of put me off, and made me feel that I shouldn’t go into such cafes alone, but this morning there was no problem. I selected my usual large cappuccino and cheese and ham toastie and ate it without an issue. It might be slightly further than Eltham high street, but it now looks like I have a new place for Wednesday morning breakfasts.

I must admit that I’m becoming quite a big fan of the Elizabeth Line. I use it quite a bit, as it’s the quickest and easiest way up into central London. I don’t think I’m alone in this either: every time I use the Lizzie Line, there seems to be quite a few other people on the train too. I’m no expert, of course, but I would say the line has been quite a success. I was coming home on it this afternoon, and noticed that my fellow Londoners had taken to it as enthusiastically as every other tube line. That makes me wonder, though: if the first crossrail has been so well received, might it be time to start work on the second? I know the mayor effectively kicked the project into the long grass, but I’d be interested to see whether momentum starts to build on it again soon.

Today I’d just like to flag up this very interesting Steve Shives video. I’ve been watching Shives’ vlogs for a while now, and he posts about all kinds of things, particularly Star Trek and American politics. In this video, though, he responds to the criticism he’s obviously received that he doesn’t stick to one subject: that is, when people go to his Youtube channel, expecting to watch something about, say, Deep Space Nine, they find something about the recent antics of Donald Trump. Shives also doesn’t always stick to the same subject within his videos, and a few people have obviously been irritated by that.

I find that interesting, or at least mentioning here. I obviously write blog entries about all sorts of things, from Bond films to bus rides – whatever comes to my attention on a given day, frankly. I think it’s important that, as a disabled guy, I can be concerned about, and my attention can be drawn to, a vast range of subjects, just like anyone else’s can. The same will naturally apply to anyone who vlogs on Youtube.

Yet Shives’ video nonetheless raises some fairly interesting questions about modern online culture. Is there now a growing tendency for compartmentalisation? Do internet users now want to only find certain things in certain places, and object to anything which strays from that? Should people concerned about their weight only produce content about being fat, or musicians just about making music, just so we all know where to go to see or read certain things? and what might the rise of such attitudes tell us about the need for a growing sense of order in contemporary culture, both online and off? Such a stick-to-the-subject approach would certainly lend more structure and rigidity to the web, but I fear it would tie internet users down too much, and take a lot of the variety and diversity out of online discourse. If I were to only write blog entries about being disabled, only talking about my powerchair or the treatment I got in the local shop, I daresay a lot of readers would get very bored very quickly. I’ll continue to blog about whatever I want, then, and assure vloggers like Shives they can do the same.

Now this certainly is a captivating idea. I’d absolutely love it if John Cleese somehow appeared on Star Trek.

The question is, what could he be? A member of the Q Continuum? A stressed-out Ferengi hotel manager? Or – my favourite – a Klingon with a passion for killing parrots.

Yesterday, Serkan advised me to buy a new pair of shoes. The shoes I’m wearing are beginning to get worn out, and he thinks I should take a little pride in myself and get new ones. He’s the type of guy who likes to look good and thinks I should be the same, taking great time to comb my hair, brush my teeth and giving me the best shaves I’ve ever had. The thing is, I’ve always thought that shoes don’t need replacing unless they have holes in them. I grew up wearing piedros: specialist shoes shoes for disabled kids supplied by school. I had no say In what footwear I wore, so it still doesn’t really concern me what gets put on my feet every morning, as long as I can walk in them. The shoes I currently wear seem perfectly fine to me, and don’t need replacing – they don’t have any holes in them, for one. Yet how, then, can I explain that to Serkan?

If, like me, you have heard Project 2025 being mentioned quite a bit in relation to American politics, but are only vaguely aware of what it is, I suggest checking this out. It’s a video summary of what these Republican nutjobs want to implement, but I must warn you: it’s very, very scary. This video isn’t easy viewing for any educated, tolerant person who respects people’s rights; and in fact I would go so far as to say that, if this fascistic project is ever implemented in the US, the rest of the world must take action.

There’s nothing like the blissful relief you feel when you have a vivid nightmare about having to do an exam you know you haven’t revised for, but then you wake up and remember that your last exam was twenty years ago. I had such a dream a few nights ago – they’re apparently quite common.

Coincidentally, today is A-Level results day, and I just watched a big item about it on BBC Breakfast. That made me wonder: what is the current situation for disabled students? A couple of years ago, I blogged about how glad I was to have gone to university when I did, as I probably couldn’t have gone under the current climate of Tory cuts, Brexit and Covid. But that was during the pandemic, so I’m now wondering whether things have changed: are students with disabilities going to university again? Where could I find the figures? I know it’s early days, but might the new Labour government help to restore things to how they were twenty years ago, with more of an emphasis on inclusion? Mind you, the picture is probably muddied by the fact that far more people are identifying as disabled these days, so there might be lots more ‘disabled students’, but that won’t necessarily mean guys like myself. Even so, the questions remain: could I have gone to uni in the current climate? and how many students with physical disabilities like CP are going to uni this year, vs twenty years ago?

Stonehenge during the Perseid meteor shower last night.

This picture, taken by Josh Dury, was simply too incredible for me not to nick!

Shortly after posting my entry earlier, I casually flipped on the news, only to hear that some wanker had defaced the artwork I’d just been blogging about. I know I shouldn’t get so worked up about things like this, but hearing that kind of annoyed me: some barely literate runt had obviously assumed he had a right to put his mark on a piece of art before it could be enjoyed by others. Whoever he was, he obviously thought he was being bold and brave, but had only shown himself to be a mindless chav.

Slightly bothered by this, after breakfast I set off back to charlton to see what was happening down there. To my pleasant surprise, I found that two men were at work, putting a clear plastic sheet over the artwork to protect it. The car the rhinoceros had seemingly been mounting had been moved.

The white graffiti scrawl was, however, clearly visible and to my mind spoiled the image. I went up to the wall and tried to scrape it off with my thumbnail, but without much luck. Soon the picture would be covered by a plastic sheet, inane scrawl and all. It seemed such a shame: as soon as something beautiful or interesting appears, some tosser thinks they have the right to deface it. Oh well. At least the fact that it’s now protected shows how much the wider community values such art.

It isn’t every day that you get to see the work of a famous yet very mysterious artist, but yesterday turned out to be rather cool. It had already been quite a long day, trundling along the canals of North-East London, but at about five last night I got a text from my mum telling me that some kind of artwork by Banksy had appeared in Charlton, up by the Thames Barrier. At the time I was on my way home, feeling rather hungry and slightly hot; I just wanted to head to Tesco for supplies, then come home. Yet, after a bite to eat, my curiosity rekindled, so I set off on the bus to Charlton to see what I could.

That area of Charlton by the Thames is a bit rough; it has yet to see the redevelopment other stretches of the riverside have, although glimpses of it can be found here and there. Getting down there was easy enough for me, but finding the specific road Mum had mentioned took a bit of time. When I did, though, I saw a crowd had formed opposite a wall of an old abandoned warehouse. By the wall was a broken down car which clearly hadn’t moved in ages. On the wall, however, someone had painted a huge rhinoceros, one set of hooves on top of the car to look like it was mounting the vehicle. This was clearly the work of the mysterious Banksy.

I spent a few minutes there, looking at the artwork with the growing crowd around it. What could it mean? What could this Banksy dude be trying to tell us? What would a rhinoceros be doing in Charlton? I had no idea, so after a brief while looking at the artwork, I decided it was time to head home for dinner.

I hadn’t given much thought to Banksy before yesterday evening, but it is pretty weird when you think about it: these murals suddenly appear, seemingly instantaneously, in all kinds of places. Nobody sees them being created apparently, but they just seem to appear. We don’t know who creates them except by a single anonymous name. I find this phenomenon very strange, and will now look into it a bit more. For starters, this morning I’ll go to Charlton again, to check that the rhinoceros is still there.

I’m afraid that all I have to say about last night’s ceremony is: yawn! After getting so excited and intrigued that we might see something incredible, all we got was the rather lame sight of Tom Cruise being lowered into the stadium on a rope and then riding around on a motorbike. This wasn’t the convention-breaking fusion of fiction and reality we got from Danny Boyle twelve years ago. I found it very disappointing: Paris had the opportunity to make our collective jaws drop, not just last night but in their opening ceremony too; instead, I think they just made us all yawn.

Over the last few days I have grown extremely curious about tonight’s closing ceremony in Paris. The rumours that Tom Cruise is somehow going to be involved as his character from Top Gun really intrigued me, I must admit. I read that it has something to do with the handover to LA28. That is fairly logical, although if you ask me it also raises several questions: why select the Top Gun franchise for this role? Whereas James Bond was probably the obvious choice for his inclusion in the opening ceremony of London 2012, American cinema has hundreds of hero and superhero characters the guys behind this could have chosen from. Moreover, whereas Happy and Glorious was special in large part because it drew together one of British cultures most beloved icons with our longest reigning monarch in a way that nobody would ever have thought possible, it is not clear that what we will see this evening is going to make such a surprising juxtaposition. As a result, I suspect it will fall entirely flat: it’s clearly an attempt to steal 007’s thunder and inflate Top Gun onto the same cultural level, but it lacks any understanding of what actually made Bond meeting the queen so awesome.

Of course Farage should take responsibility for the riots. Or rather, it should be divided squarely between him and Stephen Yaxley-Lennon. That such scumbags spend their lives stirring up social animosity, then try to deny all responsibility when such hatred manifests itself in violent riots, is sickening.

I just caught up with the evening news and, as a blogger, I can’t help being more than a little troubled by this story. Three men today received jail sentences for provoking racial hatred on social media. Of course, racism should be shut down wherever it rears it’s ugly head, including online; yet I can’t help worrying that this will open a very troubling floodgate, and pretty soon we’ll all have to watch what we write on the web. Over the years I’ve written some pretty provocative things here on my blog, particularly criticising the Tories – might such criticism now be classed as a kind of cultural hatred? Thus while I’m glad to see racism isn’t being tolerated, as someone who values free speech I’m very worried where today’s news could lead.

I’m very pleased to report that yesterday was a much more positive day than the one before it. After a good night’s sleep and a hearty breakfast, John and I set off to explore Oxford a bit more. It’s an intriguing city, although in these summer months tourists outnumber university students. First we had a short walk through a few parks, then we decided to visit the Ashmolean museum.

To be honest the Ashmolean was a real treat: for starters it’s free to get into, but apart from that I can’t remember the last time I’ve seen so many fascinating objects. There are fragments of history from across Europe, Egypt and the Middle East. Of course, you could say it’s all a result of British imperial pillaging, and that none of the thousands of ancient artefacts we saw yesterday should be in Oxford. Yet, that aside, I can’t remember the last time I was so engrossed. I lost John at least three times, and didn’t really want to leave.

After a couple of hours in the Ashmolean, we went for a lovely long walk through a huge park which the River Cherwell runs through, before heading back to the city centre to catch our train. It had been a lovely couple of days. Finding the Eagle And Child closed was hugely deflating, but I suppose there are still positives to look towards. Just getting out of London once in a while is cool, and it also whets my appetite for more such trips.

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.