When one has cerebral palsy or any disability, patience kinda comes as a  prerequisite; but the question I’m mulling today is: how long should I be patient with people who talk down to me, behave as though they have an automatic superiority or authority over me,  and seem  to want to perpetuate issues which should have blown over weeks ago? I know I must make allowances  and accept people as they are, but no matter what I do to mend fences with this person, they won’t let things return to normal, and frankly, my patience is wearing thin.. Where with any other person, I’d expect trivial upsets to have been long forgotten, they seem to have blown things out of all sensible proportions and made some quite hurtful accusations about  me. The thing is, they may or may not have mental health  issues (I’m not sure) so the question becomes, do I make allowances for their mental health condition, or do I treat them as I would anyone else?  I expect  people to make allowances for my (physical) disability, of course, but when people go too far in that I see it as patronising. Hence, where do I draw the line in holding this person up to the same standard I expect of anyone else? I know I’m physically not able to do things people without CP can do easily, so I need  help with things. In the local shop,  for instance, staff members now  come and help me get my things automatically. However, in other situations if people assume I need help or do things for me without me  asking them, I’m prone to feel patronised or get annoyed. They are treating me as different. Isn’t assuming this  person’s behaviour is related to their potential mental illness and thus  ignoring it not a similar conundrum? If treating  someone differently due to their disability is being patronising, then surely I should react to this person and what I perceive  to be their patronising, childish behaviour as I would to anyone else.

I just came across this trailer for the new Tolkien biopic, and I have to say it has me intrigued. Dramatising the life of a fairly dry, conservative Oxford academic is always going to be a challenge; I  just hope they do it justice. Mind you, with rumours rife on the internet of a new amazon series set in the second age of Middle-Earth, I have to wonder what Tolkien would have made of his life’s story and work being adapted, used and popularised like this.

At long  last, it would seem the mainstream is beginning to champion the idea of including disabled characters in film. According to this bbc article,   “Oscar winner Rachel Shenton has urged authors to feature more characters with disabilities in their stories.” It quotes her as saying  “I’ve learnt just how important it is for…[disabled] children to see themselves in the programmes and movies they watch and in the books they read.

“Never seeing themselves can be so demoralising, and makes their experiences seem invisible.” Too damn right if you ask me.  Hearing someone speak out about this is long overdue.

The strangest thing kept happening with my powerchair chargers: they would work perfectly well for  ages then suddenly stop, The fans in them  would stop working  and they would stop giving charge. Over the years I’ve collected five or six chargers, and this happened to every one of them. Last night my last working charger gave up the ghost, leaving me with six broken chargers.

That was a bit stressful: no   chargers meant I’d better be conservative with how I used my chairs; it also meant I needed to get them fixed asap. Dom kindly took  the charger which had just broken home with him to see if he could find the problem, and this afternoon I asked Serkan to drive  me  to Welling mobility, the other broken chargers in  hand, to try to get a replacement.

Welling kindly leant me a  spare charger, taking  the broken ones to see  if anything could  be  done. Powerchair chargers are ninety quid each, so I was grateful for the loan. Getting home I plugged my main chair in and took my spare for a  short spin. Upon my return Dom had arrived to PA for Lyn, bringing  with him the charger he   had taken. We just plugged it in, and it whirred into life  just as it should. Dom had spent several hours on the problem,  only to  find a small wire had just burned out. When I heard the charger fan come on, I gave  him a huge, huge hug.  Issue resolved, then, and I’m now back to full power.

I still like to believe that mankind’s destiny is to one day explore space, but perhaps one of the lesser considered effects of Brexit is it’s impact on Britain’s space industry.. This BBC article goes into that a bit, and things don’t look  good. ”

One of the UK’s most successful space entrepreneurs has launched a withering attack on Brexit, labelling it ‘galactic scale stupidity’.

Will Marshall’s Planet company operates the world’s largest satellite imaging network, with 150 spacecraft able to fully picture Earth on a daily basis.

He warns EU withdrawal will do immense harm to Britain’s space industry. The UK will be ‘lost in space’, he says.”

Yet another reason out of now an overwhelming number to stop the stupidity of brexit.

I’m not sure why it just appeared on Youtube, but I just came across this interesting short film written by Michael Palin and Terry Jones. The Box was  made in 1981; I’d never heard of it before. The style is very unusual and very Monty Python. I like how the sound and audio are unlinked, yet tell the same story: we just see pictures  of a large box, but hear what is going on inside it. That strikes me as very innovative. Of course, Palin and Jones derive a  lot off comedy out of it, but it makes me wonder how else such a device could be used.