I have to say that, after yesterday, I cannot respect the USA. How can any society let anyone walk free after he walked into a town, armed and looking for trouble, and killed two people? Yesterday’s news that Kyle Rittenhouse was let off scot free is surely a travesty; it will only encourage more vigilantes to go looking for trouble. This verdict just about gives the green light to any hot headed American kid to pick up a gun and shoot whoever they like, safe in the knowledge that if they play their cards right (and have the right skin colour) they can get away with it. It plays straight into the hands of far-right American gun culture, which more or less holds that you should have the right to shoot whoever you want. You really must despair that a nation which prides itself on being so advanced and noble can sink to such depravities.

Today I would just like to suggest a new rule for London public transport, which I thought of a couple of days ago. If someone is running for the bus just as it’s about to set off, the driver should only reopen the door to let them on if they are wearing a mask. Sat in the wheelchair space, I have lost count of the times I’ve seen people run up to a bus just as it’s about to leave a stop, and practically beg the driver to reopen the door. At least this rule might encourage them to mask up.

This might not be particularly fashionable, but I must admit I’m a bit of a fan of the BBC. Like the NHS, it is a UK institution funded by the public which we can all access equally, free of adverts. Among other things, I trust it the most as the source of my daily news. I think it is worth cherishing and defending. I just read that next year it will be celebrating it’s centenary with a range of programs including documentaries and comedies, including a three-part series titled David Dimbleby’s BBC: A Very British History. If you ask me, it will be an occasion to support: we are lucky to have a broadcast institution as highly respected as the Beeb in the UK. For one thing, the greatest natural history broadcaster ever, Sir David Attenborough, will be marking seventy years since he started working for the Beeb and sixty since his first documentaries aired: that in itself is quite incredible and worth celebrating. Thus I think the Beeb has every right to mark it’s centenary, and I’m looking forward to seeing how it does so.

I don’t read enough these days. Well, let me put that another way: I probably read loads, but all of it on my computer or Ipad. It has been ages – years, possibly – since I last sat down and read from a book. The truth is, it is’t that comfortable for me to do so any more: I struggle to hold the book still, and turning pages seems to be much harder than it once was. I find it generally a lot easier to just sit at my desk and read from my screen, or have the computer read it to me. The problem with that is, I then only consume the short, direct, largely artless prose one finds on the web. I suppose that’s okay, if you only want to read news articles and facebook updates; yet part of me misses the more involved, elaborate writing you only find on printed pages. Surely that is what proper reading is.

While I have my excuses, however, I worry that this problem is much more general. Nobody seems to be reading anymore. A combination of the Web and celebrity culture means that most people seem to have the attention spans of five year olds. Everyone wants everything delivered in snippets or clips. If it isn’t happening at that very moment, people loose all interest. You only have to look at Saturday evening television and the editing of programs like Strictly Come Dancing to see this MSG-type entertainment. While that might be just as well – who am I to judge what other people watch? – I fear it turns us all into shallow, uncritical consumers as opposed to analysts aware that we are being shown something for an underlying reason. To read anything properly you must engage with and think about what you are consuming; in this sense reading is, by definition, an active process.

I suppose that’s why I miss books: sitting down with a text written by a single author allows you to truly engage with a subject; thinking is actively encouraged. Browsing the web might be far easier, but on it you can only glance at a subject rather than read about it. I fear that superficiality is the direction we’re all heading in.

I suspect it will now be a long, long while before we hear anything more about James Bond. Now that No Time To Die has come out and Daniel Craig has left, I think EON will give the franchise a rest before doing anything more. By that I mean three or four years. Craig has left such a mark on the character, the producers will want to let the dust settle – that, at least, is what I would do.

Or so I thought. En route to bed last night I had another small but notewothy idea: next year marks the queen’s platinum jubilee; seventy years on the throne and all that. Whether you’re a monarchist or not, it will be a huge cultural occasion for the UK. What if EON used the event to announce the next Bond actor? After all, the franchise already has firmly established royal links. It would be the perfect opportunity to announce the next incarnation of Britain’s favourite secret agent. By then, it would have been more or less a year since the release of No Time To Die, which is probably a big enough gap for things to be reset.

That, at least, is what I would do. Whether it happens or not remains to be seen; I’m just noting an idea. Exactly how they could go about it and what sort of grand entrance the new 007 would get is anyone’s guess. I don’t think the queen would be up for anything on the scale of her Olympic entrance. Nonetheless, it could be interesting to see whether the pairing of the Queen and James Bond could be picked up again.

I’m not sure how true this is, but if it is true, we need more bus drivers like this!

My floor was badly in need of a mop earlier, and when that happens I find it’s better if I get out of the house for a couple of hours. I just had a nice long trundle through Kidbrooke, over to Lewisham and back through Blackheath. Not much really, but I need to report one thing: on my way there, I saw the very bus I wrote about a couple of days ago – bus 007! When I saw it, I couldn’t help letting out a squeal of excitement, and this music instantly popped into my mind. (All right, I know this is a blog entry just about the fact I saw a bus with a certain number, but it’s my blog, okay?)

Not that I want to endorse the right wing rag, but when the Express reports that public opinion is turning against Brexit, surely it’s a sign that the tide is beginning to turn against the crime of 2016.

All I have to say this evening is, for my next wheelchair I want one of these! Basically a quadcopter, according to the blurb, “Jetson ONE is an ultralight and extremely fun to fly recreational all-electric personal vertical take-off and landing (VTOL) aircraft.” Judging from the video, it is highly stable and manoeuvrable. It would certainly make getting around town far easier, quicker and more fun, although I just wish they hadn’t named it after an old kids sci fi cartoon.

I have just come across a little tidbit of information which made my day, week and month. I was just mucking around on facebook, when on a James Bond fan page I noticed an interesting piece of trivia: someone had asked where Fleming got the number 007 from, and someone else had replied that it was the number of the bus he used to take to get into London. The original poster had responded that this was the correct answer, so naturally I decided to check it.

Sure enough I found a web page confirming it, but then came the cool bit: I looked up the route, only to find it runs through Eltham, along a road just a stone’s throw from my place! The bus route, from Kent into Central London, is now run by National Express, but still uses the number 007. To think that Ian Fleming himself used to travel into work through Eltham, and to have this link with one of my all time cinematic heroes, really is awesome. Now that I come to think about it, I think I’ve actually seen the bus, but dismissed the number as just a coincidence.

I know why people are wearing poppies today: it is to commemorate a war, now over a century ago, in which hundreds of thousands of people died. People wear poppies this time of year to make sure we remember that brutal conflict, because if we forget it, we risk repeating it; and that must never happen. That’s why I have no problem with wearing poppies. Yet more and more these days I fear that poppy wearing has become interwoven with nationalism, and that some people, especially outists, are trying to usurp remembrance. They would whip us all up into a nationalist fever, so that Europe is perceived as the enemy and old rivalries with states on the continent are revived. Or, worse still, they would frame the goal of European Unity as the betrayal of all those who died, when in fact the EU was created to make sure we never have to see such bloodshed again. That’s the problem with poppy wearing: as a symbol it is being usurped, and used by some to say precisely the opposite of what it was intended to.

I have just got back from Eltham Palace, but disappointingly I don’t have anything cool to report. When I got there, filming had obviously wrapped and men were sweeping up the fake snow I saw being sprayed around yesterday. I’d set off feeling so optimistic – who might I meet and what might I see today? – but it just goes to show awesomeness can’t happen every day.

Up until around a couple of hours ago it had been shaping up to be a pretty lame day: I didn’t sleep at all well last night, and it had been grey and drizzly all day. At about three I thought I’d try to cheer myself up by going on one of my usual, shorter trundles. I set off for nearby Kidbrooke first to see how the construction work there is coming along, then up Middle Park Avenue, intending to pass Eltham Palace en route to Tesco before returning home. As I was rolling up to the Palace, though, I began to notice something was happening there: it was lit up with powerful light, and there were lots of people outside the main gate. As I got closer, I came across two pristine vintage cars from the nineteen twenties.

This was certainly worth interrupting my trundle for. Turning back, I rolled up to one of the people and asked him what was going on, and what do you Know? I’d stumbled upon another film shoot.

This got me instantly excited. After all, the last time this happened, I got to meet Danny Boyle. I couldn’t see much of the film equipment as it was through the gate near the palace, but the road outside the palace grounds was obviously being used as a back drop. Old, expensive-looking cars were parked on either side of the road and fake fog was being sprayed into the air as it grew darker. It looked wonderfully evocative. I got talking to the lady spraying the fog, and she told me they were shooting a film called Wonka, obviously a remake of Charlie And The Chocolate Factory. I was also told the name of the director, but I didn’t recognise it this time. Apparently, though, Matt Lucas is in it.

I stayed for a while, watching them do a take before continuing to Tesco. However, they’ll be shooting there tomorrow, I was told, so that’s where I’ll be heading after breakfast. This is why I adore London: you never know when you’ll bump into a film crew next.

I had another of my random little ideas last night which, short of much else to blog about, I think I’ll note here. I was watching a tv program about a painting created in Paris in the 1920s. It was a wonderfully evocative image of some ladies sitting in a cafe or bar by post-Impressionist painter Edouard Vuillard, instantly transporting viewers back to Jazz Age Paris. Of course, the twenties was when Paris was arguably at its coolest: writers like Hemingway and F. Scott Fitzgerald drank in the bars with jazz musicians and philosophers. If I had a time machine, that is the time and place that I would probably choose to go back to.  Now we are in the twenties again, I can’t help wondering, when the french capital hosts the Olympic Games in three years, will it reference that era in the opening ceremony? After all, 2024 marks the centenary of the last time Paris hosted the games; wouldn’t it be cool if they referred back to the last time Paris became the world’s heady, hedonistic playground? Not that I want to preempt our french friends, or indeed get into the habit of speculating about an event which is still three years away, but I think it would be very interesting if that was the way they chose to go.

The oddest thing just happened, although I’m not talking about what is going on in parliament. Long-term readers – if I have any – may remember me mentioning going up Giantswood lane in my powerchair when I lived with my parents in Congleton. It’s an old country lane backed onto by the housing estate where I grew up: I used to take my chair down it, trundling along it for hours trying to get to the Swettenham Arms. I haven’t been that way in well over a decade.

However, since I moved to London, a new bypass has been built around the north of my old home town. Not having been up there in two or three years (at least), I haven’t seen anything of it, and only know what my parents told me about it. Being quite a fan of Google streetview though, a few minutes ago I thought I’d see whether they had driven their famous camera-car along the new road: they hadn’t the last time I checked, but it was worth another look.

I think what I found was kind of uncanny, but worth noting. The new bypass is marked on the map, and came up blue when I selected streetview; so Google had obviously ‘done’ the new road. But when I selected the view from Giantswood Lane, it showed the lane as I remember it, with green, unspoiled fields on either side. It was only when I selected the view from the new road that I finally saw the bypass, with Giantswood Lane now running over it via a brand new bridge. Obviously Google have yet to send their car along the old road since it changed, so you can only see how it looked twelve years ago. It strikes me as strange to now be able to glimpse the same spot of land, divided by a decade and radically changed. It’s also strange to now explore roads on Google which I’ve never actually been down, yet which run under lanes I once knew quite well.

I just turned my computer on, but I already think this will be the best thing I’ll be able to flag up today. I know I said I’d be steering clear of the COP conference, but the news that the largest body of delegates attending it represent the interests of the fossil fuel industry is just too stupid to ignore. “There are more delegates at COP26 associated with the fossil fuel industry than from any single country, analysis shared with the BBC shows….They found that 503 people with links to fossil fuel interests had been accredited for the climate summit. These delegates are said to lobby for oil and gas industries, and campaigners say they should be banned.” I wholeheartedly agree. How can we expect any progress on any issue, when people advocating the very activity we’re trying to curb are there trying to get in the way? Of course they’ll say they’re there to help, and try to present alternative solutions which won’t hurt the petrochemical industry quite so badly, but at the end of the day they just want to make sure they can continue to make fortunes by pumping harmful gasses into the atmosphere. Ultimately they’ll do whatever they can to hinder progress. The only way any conference like this will ever be able to move forward is if such lobbyists simply weren’t there. After all, as the article points out, “the World Health Organization didn’t get serious about banning tobacco until all the lobbyists for the industry were banned from WHO meetings.”

A lot is currently being said on Facebook about fireworks scaring pets. I don’t know about dogs and cats, but this evening I’m jumping out of my skin every few seconds. I’m just trying to browse the web a bit, when I suddenly hear a colossal boom! from outside. Either I send my rollerball spinning or I completely screw up what I’m trying to type. Stupid startle reflex!

All I have to say today is, what kind of contemptible sleazeball is found guilty of corruption, then tries to use his wife’s suicide to make us feel sorry for him, as if her suicide was because of what was happening to him? The suicide of anyone is tragic, of course, but for Owen Patterson to attempt to leverage his wife’s death for sympathy, portraying himself as some sort of victim when the only thing we ought to be hearing from the outist p’tahk is a grovelling apology, is despicable.

Here is a man who was paid hundreds of thousands of pounds by private companies to lobby on their behalf in parliament, then acts as if he has a right to do so, as if government should turn a blind eye to such blatant corruption just because he’s a Tory. He only resigns after the press rightly turns on him and his Tory mates when they try to let him off the hook, preferring to save face than face the consequences of their corruption. Even then, Patterson acts as if he’s been hard done by, claiming that the press is portraying him unjustly simply because he’s a Brexiteer.

The behaviour of the people currently running the country really is sickening: surely we are better than this.

If you want to see just how technically advanced Star Trek fan films are becoming, check this out. Obviously, the guys who made this short film don’t have the budget of Paramount Studios, so the CGI etc isn’t quite up to spec; but I have to say, given it was produced by amateurs during lockdown, A Long Way From Home is pretty impressive, If this is a glimpse of the production values of fan art these days, as well as a taster of where the movement is heading, I think it has an exciting future ahead of it.

Changing the tone after getting so heavy yesterday, this is just a quick housekeeping entry. A couple of times now, I’ve found entries in the wrong place; that is, my blog randomly changes the date of old entries so that they suddenly appear where they shouldn’t be. You might have noticed, a couple of days ago, an entry from about four years ago randomly appeared as my latest entry. I’m not sure why it happens, although it is easy enough for me to put right. If you come across an entry in my archive which seems to be out of step, please let me know.

I think we can agree that there are attributes that are inherent to people, and those we can consciously choose. I am right handed and always will be; there is nothing I can do to change that. On the other hand, I wear a blue baseball cap: I wear it every day, but I could change it if wished. What you choose to wear comes and goes with fashion; the hand you prefer to use does not. Thus there are things about ourselves which we can change and those we can’t, sitting at either end of a continuum.

Yet where does gender exist on that line? We are usually either men or women, and I think most people are comfortable with that distinction. Sometimes, however, there are people who feel that they were born into the wrong body, or assigned the wrong gender at birth. They feel so uncomfortable with their assigned gender that they need to transition from one gender to another, often taking hormones and/or undergoing surgery to do so. In many cases it is a choice between that or committing suicide, the dysphoria is so intense.

Nobody has any right to claim such experiences are not genuine. In recent years, though, people have begun to view gender as more and more interchangeable: less an inherent attribute of people and more like a fashion to be selected as and when social trends dictate. These days we hear people describing their selves as gender fluid or non conforming, but apparently without having experienced the intense dysphoria transgender people describe. It seems to have become trendy not to conform, recalling the kind of cultural intrusion I wrote about here. Gender identity arises from a complex interweaving of biology and psychology, not politics or the conscious, socially motivated desire to break social barriers.

There’s no doubt gender is a continuum: people can be male, female or a bit of both. The problem is, people have started to treat that line more and more flippantly, like something they can play with or politicise at will. It has become politically fashionable not to conform, or claim that you don’t. Rather than being an inherent attribute of one’s personality, gender is becoming a political plaything which can be changed or subverted as fashion demands. People seem ever more eager to distance theirselves from positions of social privilege as if being white, straight and able-bodied disqualifies you from political activism: activists need something to rebel against, so they place theirselves into social categories they might not previously have done. That, however, seems to me to make a mockery of the experiences of those for whom this is not so flippant, but far more vital.

Truth be told I’m at a loss over what to write about what is happening in Glasgow. As a half-assed political blogger, the conference there is the obvious subject for blog entries at the moment. Yet I have no special perspective on environmental issues: I’m just as concerned about it as anyone else, of course, and wholeheartedly support the efforts to cut emissions and save the environment. Yet, as much as I love nature and natural history programs, conferences like this don’t really get my juices going as a blogger. I don’t feel there’s all that much I can contribute to the debates. So if I tend to veer away from the Cop conference over the next two weeks, forgive me: it isn’t that I’m not interested or don’t care; more a matter of just letting the politicians in Glasgow get on with it.

To be fair this must have occurred to a lot of people: for all their talk of cutting emissions, our leaders seem all too happy to fly around in air fuel burning planes.

I had intended to just post a picture on here today to keep things simple, but something just happened in my local Tesco which I think ought to be noted. I was just there getting a few bits and pieces: when I need more than two or three bits of shopping, when I enter the shop I roll up to the counter and wait for a member of staff to become free. They know me in there now, and are used to the routine. Most staff members there seem happy enough to give me a hand, following me around the shop so I can select what I need. However, this afternoon something happened which I felt was quite hurtful: as usual, I rolled up to the check-outs and waited. I wasn’t in a hurry so that wasn’t a problem. Yet when one of the staff became free, she began talking to one of her colleagues in a language which wasn’t english, clearly trying to get someone else to assist me. I don’t know why, but she obviously didn’t want to help. Of course, I realise helping disabled customers might not be in their job description, but it felt like I was being shunned; like I was something dirty which she didn’t want to go near. In the end, another member of staff helped me get my shopping; yet in front of four or five other customers the incident was hurtful nonetheless, and I’m seriously considering taking it up with the shop’s manager.

ADDENDUM: I better add that, a short while after posting this entry, I needed to go back to the shop having realised I’d forgotten to buy cheese. The person who assisted me to pay then was the lady who had apparently refused to help me the first time, oddly enough. It could have just been a misunderstanding on my part, although this afternoon wasn’t the first time the member of staff in question has acted so abrasively.

I’m seriously considering starting a campaign to make all lifts on the London Underground legally wheelchair only. I’m fed up of having to wait for people who are perfectly able use the escalators, using the lifts. It pisses me off almost as much as prams taking up the wheelchair space on busses, and the mums refusing to move them. Of course there will have to be exceptions such as crutch users (actual crutch users mind, not people who just carry a single crutch around for show while being perfectly ambulant), but people who can use stairs or escalators should be made to do so. Now, I don’t want to generalise or resort to stereotype, but certain types of people seem more likely to use lifts – doing so as if they owned them – than others. How such a law would be enforced is another question, although personally I think fitting wheelchairs with tasers might be the way forward.

Rather cooly, today I got wind of a drama to be shown on BBC2 over christmas which will tell the story of how disabled people campaigned for and won their rights in the UK, culminating in the passing of the Disability Discrimination Act. As described here, the film will be “based on the remarkable true story of the people behind an irrepressible campaign of direct action that lead to significant steps forward in the battle for disabled civil rights in Britain”. I better not say how I came to learn about it, other than that it involved coffee, but I certainly think this hour long drama, whose working title is ‘Independence Day? How Disabled Rights Were Won’, is something to look out for.

I couple of days ago, coming back from my usual trundle, I bumped into someone I knew in Charlton. We hadn’t seen one another in a while, but we used to hang around quite a bit, especially in the early days when I was still settling in to life in London. Back then, he addressed me as The Northerner. It was kind of his nickname for me, and having moved down from Cheshire so recently, I suppose it suited me. The other day, though, he referred to me as a northerner again, yet this time something about it didn’t feel quite right: I’ve now lived in London for well over a decade, and I know London, particularly South-East London, far better than I ever knew any northern city or town. I now feel at home here, among the red busses and black cabs, skyscrapers and intoxicating cultural vibrancy of the metropolis, so if anything I’d call myself more of a Londoner than a Northerner these days. Mind you, that is not to say that I don’t still occasionally yearn for the fields, streams and oatcakes of the place where I was born.

If anyone can somehow still be in any doubt over how catastrophic Brexit will be for the UK economy, just direct them here. “The impact of Brexit on the UK economy will be worse in the long run compared to the coronavirus pandemic, the chairman of the Office for Budget Responsibility has said.” It was the first thing to greet my eyes when I turned my computer on just now, and really puts the bullshit spewed by Rishi Sunak and the Tories yesterday into perspective. Apparently, inflation could hit almost 5% and the cost of living could be at it’s highest point in thirty years. I’m no economist, but things certainly aren’t looking good: institutions are starting to tell the truth about Brexit; reality is beginning to bite. The sooner we stop this stupidity the Tories are making us go through and rejoin our neighbours in Europe, the better.

I couldn’t watch Sunak deliver his budget today. Any time I try to watch him or any other Tory speak these days, I fly into a white hot fury. Whatever comes out of their mouths can be assumed to be a tract of self-serving, self-congratulatory bullshit which I simply can’t watch. To listen to them would mean respecting them, and I simply cannot respect a group of people whose policies I know have intentionally caused so much suffering, inequality and division. However, I just turned on the beeb’s six o’clock news, and I think I need to point out the first thing I noticed: after all the furore over that arrogant scumbag Jacob Rees-Mogg trying to tell us that the Tories didn’t need to wear masks, almost everyone sitting on the Tory benches had a mask on their face. Obviously someone had given the hypocritical scumbags a speaking to and decreed that it would be better for the party’s image if everyone wore a mask. The one exception to this, of course, was Rees-Mogg, who still thinks himself too superior to the rest of us to wear a mask; why should he care if everyone else has to breathe in his contaminated breath? Does not his life take precedence over everyone else’s? Thus, instead of having to listen to all the lies and guff, all the misleading half truths about a recovering economy and fiscal responsibility, all you had to do was take one look at the tory front bench to grasp the depths of the hypocritical vermin currently governing the country,

Before today I knew next to nothing about Dune. I vaguely remember, when I was very little, a VHS video marked Dune on the family video shelf next to the Disney ones. It was Dad’s: I think he put it on for me and my brother’s once, and I remember finding it scary and not liking it at all. However, a few days ago I came across Mark Kermode’s review of the new Dune adaptation: Kermode seemed so enthusiastic about it, saying it was the type of film which simply has to be viewed in a cinema, that I resolved to go watch it as soon as I could.

Kermode wasn’t wrong by any means. I just got back from my local cinema, and I was simply blown away. Denis Villeneuve’s adaptation of Frank Herbert’s novel is incredible. As I say, I know nothing about the original text, but this is the type of film which really draws you in. I couldn’t help becoming engrossed in the politics and drama of what was going on, even from the start. And, as Kermode says, the film looks incredible, from it’s desert landscapes to it’s huge, majestic space ships. It really felt as if there was a totally new fictional universe before me all of a sudden, waiting for me to explore. I left the cinema thinking ”Giant worms and mechanical insects which people fly around in rule!”

I don’t wan’t to say much more: I want to get on with exploring this fictional universe I just came across, so fresh and enticing. I can’t wait for the next instalment of this trilogy. I will say, though, that now I know where George Lucas got so many of his ideas from, including the idea for the Force. Seriously, watching Dune this afternoon, I could see so much Lucas blatantly ripped off: galactic empires, imperial politics, rebellions, controlling people with your voice. Frankly, Dune makes Star Wars look like a cheap, childish rip-off. What I saw this afternoon was far more engrossing, textured and enticing.

As a powerchair user so keen on travel and flying, I really need to send everyone here today. Someone has, at last, designed a wheelchair accessible aeroplane. “Last month, a report released by the National Academy of Sciences concluded that the securement of wheelchairs on commercial aircraft is technically feasible, and that many wheelchairs already meet or exceed the minimum horizontal crash standards used by the FAA to certify airplane seats….The system is designed so that different powered wheelchair types can be certified for flying and will be able to interface with a wide range of airline seats.” Until now, of course, I’ve only been able to take my manual wheelchair abroad with me, and needed to get out and walk onto the plane, but this development means that I’ll be able to roll onto planes without getting out, and take my chair all over the world with me. Mind you, rather strangely, the article says the adaptation is currently only for powerchairs, not manual wheelchairs, but assures us that that will follow soon. Nonetheless, this is a great step forward in making travel accessible for all.

I have a serious issue with street preachers. For the second time this weekend, this afternoon I encountered some in Eltham high street. I’ve blogged about my problems with religion before, but to me it seems perversely arrogant to stand in a street, disrupting everyone’s day demanding we all believe what they do. Were these people shouting so loudly about anything else – some other fictional narrative perhaps, rather than one recognised as an organised religion – no doubt they would be sectioned or at least told to move on for disturbing the peace. Yet because they are ‘preaching’, and they have the correct license, they stand there insisting that the only way to be ‘saved’ – whatever that means – is to believe what they believe. Frankly I find that perverse: the concept of a loving, omnipotent god is laughable enough, without having it hurled at me on my way to the shops.

I’m starting to worry we’re going to have another Christmas in lockdown, all because the Tories refuse to admit their failures.

I’m not quite sure how I came across it now, but a couple of weeks ago I found myself attending a small music group for people with special/additional needs at Greenwich Carers Centre in charlton. It was a social event really, where everyone sat round a lady using a laptop, taking it in turns to suggest music for her to find on Youtube. The whole group would then sing to the requested song. I was quite taken with it: I can’t sing for toffee of course, but here was a chance to make friends, chat, listen to music and participate in the community. Who knows, one day I could even make a film about it.

The group meets every Friday afternoon, so today I rolled along there curious to see what would happen or who I would meet. To be honest I didn’t really expect to stay very long before continuing my daily trundle. I got there a bit early, so I bought myself a cappuccino while I waited for the participants to arrive. As they were slowly filtering in, though, I had an idea: I asked to talk to the lady who used the computer, only to be told I was already talking to her (silly me). Through my Ipad communication aid, I told her about Lyn, about how I’d been her partner and how she had passed away; I then told her about Lyn’s Song, and asked her to play it. She looked it up on her mobile phone, and agreed to play it.

I’m not really sure why I thought of the song Charlotte and I wrote about Lyn in that moment. There, in Charlton, among other disabled people, it somehow felt appropriate: I wanted to see what everyone would think. It was the first piece that she played, and I’m very pleased to say it went down a treat; everyone in the room seemed quite taken by it. To be honest it was quite a profound moment for me which brought a tear to my eye.

The rest of the afternoon was spent listening to music, suggesting the occasional rock anthem (as well as a bit of Cat Empire), before trundling home. To my knowledge, that was the first public playing of Lyn’s Song. It feels appropriate that it happened in Charlton, not far from Lyn’s home, at an event focussing on the social benefits of music for disabled people.

Time for a bit of archaeology/history. This is far too interesting for me not to flag up. A viking settlement in Canada has been dated to 1021AD, exactly 1000 years ago. “Long before Columbus crossed the Atlantic, eight timber-framed buildings covered in sod stood on a terrace above a peat bog and stream at the northern tip of Canada’s island of Newfoundland, evidence that the Vikings had reached the New World first.” That means it predates Columbus’ voyage by 471 years, and is evidence of European interaction with Native Americans far earlier than previously thought. The article goes on to say the settlement could be dated due to a rare solar storm affecting the tree rings from the wood used in the settlement, but the buildings themselves match the design and construction of Viking buildings from that period. I find that utterly fascinating, I must say: the settlement was probably only inhabited for ten years by about a hundred people; but imagine what life was like there, out on the edge of what was, for them, the known world.

I think I need to flag this fascinating blog entry by Beth Moulam up. In it, Beth discusses disability, AAC and identity, going into quite a bit of depth about the relationship between the three. I don’t really want to say much about it here: identity – what constitutes us as individuals – is an extraordinarily complex subject which, once you begin to analyse in any detail, you find requires entire thesises to explore properly. It’s a subject which touches upon the ideas of thinkers ranging from Marx (class) to Benjamin (subjectivity) to Lacan (mirrors). Instead of getting into all that though, I would rather let Beth’s work speak for itself than try to offer any commentary upon it, especially given how vibrantly her own personality and ideas come through in this piece of writing.

There is something sickeningly, perversely ironic in supposedly being lectured on disability rights and inclusion by a woman who treats her disabled sister so patronisingly. I just came across this video from Hannah and Becky Cheetham. On the face of it, it’s a follow-up vlog relating to a previous video the sisters made about their mistreatment at Alton Towers: they had visited the theme park, and had been treated so appallingly – denied access to rides, facilities – that they felt they had to complain. This visit, it would seem, things are much better.

Yet I still have the same reservations about their dynamic that I had back in January. Watching the video, it’s still apparent that the older, able bodied sister, Becky, is speaking for her sister, no matter how much she tries to claim otherwise: she talks down to Becky, cuing her to speak, asking her patronising questions. The infuriating thing is, this is in a video claiming to be about disability rights, trying to highlight the discriminatory treatment Hannah got at Alton Towers. Yet from the very beginning of the film Becky Cheetham talks to her sister like she’s addressing a five year old, who is just shown squealing a bit and speaking only when cued. It is clear that the able-bodied sister is in charge: in fact, I’d go even further and say that she clearly wants the video to be about her and how she looks after her disabled sister. Hannah’s mistreatment by the theme park is a good way to attract viewers, striking back against discrimination of minorities being all the rage on Youtube. Yet for all that, the video is clearly being made by and about Becky. Note, for example, the couple of half-second cut-away close-ups of Becky making ironic/sarcastic comments. It is clear she is the one in the editorial driving seat, and is merely using her disabled sister to play off.

Perhaps I should just keep out of it; perhaps I should just let these sisters make their videos in peace. Hannah seems quite content participating with them, although, having not been able to communicate with her directly, I can’t be sure. Yet, were someone to try to treat me like this, expecting me to sit there and squeal, pushing buttons on my communication aid when cued while someone else does all the talking for me, I think I would like to be told that there are other options, and ways in which I could describe my experiences for myself.

This evening we mourn another great man. I’d just like to flag this sad news up: “Tributes are being paid to former US Secretary of State Colin Powell, who has died of Covid-19 complications aged 84.” I have a lot of respect for Powell. He was a good, decent man who did his best to hold the Bush administration in check, and had the decency to admit his mistakes. I’m sure he will be missed.

Last night I watched Venom on Channel Four. It was after dinner, and I was settling down to watch a serious film. I had never heard of it before, but from the adverts I had seen the previous evening it looked like a fairly good action/sci-fi/horror film – something along the lines of Alien. I still need something new to get my analytical teeth into, so I thought I’d give it a watch.

My hopes were raised even further when, just before the film, the Channel Four announcer told us that Venom was connected to the Marvel film franchise, although it needed no prior knowledge of it. Perhaps this would be an opportunity to break my Marvel duck and start to explore comic book films. However, about half an hour into the film, I realised it was not what I had been expecting: Blobs of CGI goo, supposedly from space, were entering people’s bodies, communicating with them (in American accents) and going around killing people. To call it infantile is to put it mildly. Yet, the weird thing is, the film seemed to take itself seriously; it seemed to still think it was a high budget, action/sci-fi film deserving of attention and respect. It sought to be frightening and comic, serious and playful, at the same time, as if the film couldn’t decide what it was.Combined with the fact that the ‘science’ component of the film was utter hogwash even by Hollywood’s standards, that left me aghast that such poor drivel could have been made. If this is the way the American film industry is going, then I fear for it’s future. Frankly it felt like I was watching a children’s film, yet it was being aired at nine on a Saturday evening. Thus as I headed to bed once the closing credits rolled, I could only wonder what on Earth I had just watched.

Last night we learned of the murder of Tory MP Sir David Amess. No murder is acceptable, of course, and I know I shouldn’t feel this way, but my gut reaction was to note that I struggle to feel pity for people who champion greed and selfishness; who campaign to ensure the rich dominate the poor, and that the weak remain subservient to the strong; who find it just that historic inequalities remain unchallenged, in order that they and their wealthy friends can live as they always have, while so many others are left to suffer. The fact remains, however, that a man was murdered just for doing his job. Whatever your political beliefs, surely that cannot be tolerated. A man who had a family, who are now left to mourn.

Of course I feel pity for them – what human wouldn’t? Yet I struggle to divorce this man from his party, and the political from the human. The problem is, I’m not alone: since 2016 and since the advent of social media, people are becoming more and more furious politically, more and more partisan. People are increasingly forgetting that politicians are people, and reducing them down to what they and their party advocate – beliefs they may vehemently disagree with. When that happens, we see horrors like the one last night.

Upon hearing of this crime, my reaction was to see Amess as a tory more than a man. I could not forget, even for a moment, what he and his political party are doing and stand for and the suffering they have caused. I am ashamed to admit that, but it’s true. The problem is, when we are bombarded day after day with news that gets us ever more furious, how can one not feel that way?