I put this together this afternoon. I know it may be a bit emotive and controversial, but to be honest I think that was the point. Of course I know nobody’s lives are under direct threat as a consequence of brexit, but the rights of people, especially people with disabilities, now stand to be eroded as British society becomes far more self-centred and neoliberal. I’m now genuinely concerned for my ability to, say, use public transport or even live independently. Sometimes you need to be provocative to make people think.

Maggie Simpson was a baby when I first watched the Simpsons in the mid nineties. I hadn’t watched an episode in years, until earlier today when I decided to try out the subscription to Disney plus Luke got me for Christmas (thanks bro!) by watching the first episode of the latest season. The program was as amusing as I remembered it being, packed with all the contemporary cultural references it has always had. Yet what struck me as strange was the fact that Maggie was still a baby, and none of the characters had aged at all from when I first encountered them, despite the program still feeling very contemporary. As I began to explore a couple of years ago here, this is obviously only possible because program is a cartoon; the cast would have visibly aged had The Simpsons been live action. Yet it is odd to see characters we have known for about thirty years seemingly occupying the perpetual present. In the episode I watched earlier, for instance, there were references to YouTube, a website which didn’t exist when the show first aired; yet the characters speaking about it were the same age they were thirty years ago when they were referencing things like Bill Clinton being president. To put that another way, I find it strange to think that, were the Simpsons a real family, Maggie would have grown up, graduated from university and got her own family by now; yet she still sucks the same red dummy that she did when we first ‘met’ her. Only a program like The Simpsons can constantly comment on the contemporary world, using the same set of unageing characters.

My Christmas day was rather quiet yesterday. It was very different to any I have spent before. I’m glad Serkan was here, or it would have been very lonely indeed. We enjoyed each other’s company, and I think he liked the fluorescent cycle jacket I gave him. I took a roll over to Charlton in the afternoon, just to pay my respects to Lyn’s place. There’s currently no grave I can visit, so passing by the old bungalow every now and again seems a good way to keep my memories alive. The highlight of my day, though, were the group chats I had with my family and extended family over webcam: it was great to speak to everyone all over the world. As pleasant as that was, needless to say I’m already really looking forward to one of my mum’s Christmas dinners next year.

Is it my imagination, or hasn’t her majesty cheered up over the years?

I have now decided upon my New Year’s resolution: learn how to clean my own glasses. For some reason, whenever I try to clean them, they always end up dirtier than when I started. The problem is, poor old Serkan seems to be getting fed up of me asking him to clean them several times a day, so there must be some way for me to clean them myself. After all, how hard can it be compared to, say, doing a Masters or living in one of the world’s greatest metropolises during a global pandemic?

It interests me to read today that the comedian Eddie Izzard has elected to use the pronouns ‘she’ and ‘her’ from now on. On the one hand, this is an incredibly bold move which is to be welcomed and celebrated. I have long thought that society should be more open to and welcoming of this form of gender diversity. Yet another, perhaps more cynical part of me, is just a tad concerned that this might just be another instance of the kind of cultural usurpation I sometimes write about on here. As I know from my former partner, being transgender is a serious psychological process; transpeople often go through severe trauma, including years of hormone replacement, to become who they always believed themselves to be. These days, though, the idea of transitioning between genders seems to be taken more and more flippantly, as if the idea of being trans is fashionable; or that gender is no more fundamental to a person’s identity than a game to be played by swapping pronouns. In the article, I note that there is no mention of Izzard starting to take hormones or having gender reassignment surgery; merely that she wants to use female pronouns from now on. I also note that she still seems happy to be known as Eddie. While that choice has to be respected, it feels to me a long way from the profound life changing decision of transitioning. To be honest there is a kind of flippancy to it, as if it was more motivated by politics than anything more innate. She says she has boy and girl ‘modes’ – well, don’t we all? As I wrote here, I sometimes dress up and have a fascination with womanhood, but I’m perfectly comfortable with my pronouns as they are. It seems to me that surely the politics of gender are too serious to be played around with, yet more and more people seem to be doing so.

On one level, of course, such a decision simply has to be accepted, before we all give ourselves permission to start judging everyone else. Yet on another level, this strikes me as one more example of a hitherto straight, white able bodied person feeling embarrassed of their relatively privileged cultural position and seeking entrance into a minority. That might be fine, but it just seems to me to steal something from those for whom being transgender is far more profound and painful.

Many readers probably won’t find this as interesting or amusing as I do, but anyway…

I just came across this video on Facebook, and it intrigued me enough to want to flag up here. It’s a clip from 1981 of a man doing rhythmic gymnastics dressed as a woman. It’s clearly supposed to be a piss-take, but it soon becomes obvious how much skill the guy actually has. ‘Pauletta’ Hunt is wearing quite a tight purple leotard, and flips and falls like a clown, but beneath that, if you look at the guy’s actions, it is clear he’s a very skilled gymnast. I suspect he was trying to highlight the overt sexuality of rhythmic gymnastics, but I think this warrants looking into a little deeper.

It’s really awesome to know that, even in such mucked up, chaotic times, there are still some constants we can rely upon. Not even a global pandemic, it seems, can hold back the greatest ever broadcaster. Sir David Attenborough will soon be appearing on our TV screens once again with a new series, Perfect Planet, focussing on humanity’s impact on the natural world. Filmed largely using drones, the series promises to transport us all to far flung corners of the globe, but also to give us an idea of the effect we’re all having upon it. To be honest I think it’s a little of what we could do with right now: after a year mostly stuck at home, I reckon we all need a glimpse of the exotic. Attenborough’s programs afford us an insight into life on earth we get from no other broadcaster. Yet what I find most staggering is that Sir David has been supplying us all with such fascinating glimpses for almost seventy years – since before my parents were born – and still shows no sign of stopping.

I just had a pretty pleasant afternoon. After bumping into Charlotte’s sister Poppy in February, we didn’t manage to meet up again, perhaps for obvious reasons. A couple of days ago though, I received a message from her suggesting we meet sometime this week. Of course I gratefully agreed, so this afternoon we had lunch together by the Cutty Sark at Greenwich. It felt good to see her and to just be doing something social again. Pops is doing well, working at an infant school in Eltham. Like me she loves life in the city, but can’t wait for thing to return to normal. Sat by the river, we talked about this and that over a beer and a sandwich. We began to make a few sketchy plans before the tIme came to part; yet sat there, a few glimmers of blue sky breaking through the clouds, it just felt good to meet someone I knew from before the world went haywire.

I certainly think something much more upbeat and positive is in order today, and this fascinating article fits the bill nicely. In it, Srinidhi Raghavan argues that simply viewing access issues as a matter for those with impairments limits our perspective. Better access to things like buildings can benefit everyone, not just disabled people. ”If we began to see access in society as a starting point to build from, it would benefit not just disabled folks but so many of us, both on the margins and at the centre. For instance, though ramps are meant to ease movement for wheelchair users and others, I know that dragging my suitcase through a ramp is much easier for me than carrying it up a flight of stairs.” I think that is a very good point indeed; one which, if acted upon, could make the world generally much more accommodating for everyone.

I suppose it isn’t just politics I get worked up about, although as I wrote a couple of days ago, it often makes me lose control. It has been a long, awful year, the likes of which I hope we never see again. Other than online, I haven’t seen family or friends in months; I have barely been anywhere. Most of all, Lyn’s death this year was a blow like no other. Even thinking about her these days is enough to trigger a maelstrom of emotion: pain, anger, regret, loss. The thought of that empty bungalow will haunt me always. Of course I try to keep my mind on other things, but every so often the fact that I’ll never see or speak to this wonderful, vibrant person, part of my daily life for a decade, again hits me like a pain worse than any other. On top of everything else, that simple fact is for me what is so fucked up about this year, yet it amplifies my fury at all the other things to a point where my frustration goes beyond words. I think that’s why I get so worked up about things like politics. Lyn and people like her put up with so much; if only the self-entitled, arrogant scumbags running the country had a fraction of her patience, humility and wisdom.

I couldn’t agree more.

My rages are currently worse than ever, at least where Brexit is concerned. I have mentioned my rages on here before: momentary spasms of white hot anger when I just seem to loose all control of myself. Apparently such emotional outbursts are common in people with athetoid cerebral palsy, but these days whenever a Brexiteer appears on the news, I just feel an intense, absolute fury the likes of which I have never felt before. These selfish, lying disgraces to humanity would rob me of everything I hold dear, and for a moment I begrudge them every breath they draw into their worthless chests. They stand counter to everything I see as good in the world – peace, unity, equality, tolerance – and seek to establish a world of division and greed, where the few are given free reign to lord it over the many, the strong are allowed to persecute the weak, and people are judged simply by where they come from or what they look like. I loathe their arrogance and selfishness with all my heart, and I seem to loose control for a moment. It got so bad earlier, I was so visibly angry, that it scared Serkan; yet whenever I see any of these selfish scumbags speak all I feel is intense, raw fury. My body shakes with rage, and I just want them to shut the fuck up and keep their baseless, xenophobic opinions to theirselves. I know I shouldn’t get like that, and that it probably looks stupid, but at the moment such arrogant, lying scumbags seem to be getting their moronic way, and there is absolutely nothing I can do about it.

Just how arrogant and self important do you have to be to think that a well-established coalition of twenty-seven other nations would just roll over and give in to the demands of one lone nation? How deluded do you have to be to think that we could leave the European Union, but retain all the advantages of membership? Surely no serious, well-informed person would think that the UK was so important to the EU that it would just give in to all our demands, effectively driving a wrecking ball through the very idea of membership. And yet here we are, about to crash out of the EU without a deal, forced through by people clinging to those very delusions. In the months or years of hardship which will now surely follow, we must never loose sight of the fact that Brexit was started by a Tory trying to silence the Euroscaptics in his own party, and then forced upon us by tories who could see how damaging Brexit will be, but chose to proceed with it rather than ruin their party’s credibility. They alone are to blame for this utter, utter mess.

The European Union is about people across the continent putting aside the divisions of the past and working as one. In an act of colossal stupidity and arrogance, the Tories are about to break the UK off from that peace project in the name of sovereignty and nationalism. How can anyone be so clearly detached from reality, yet still be permitted to govern a country? Brexit ruins all our futures, but these selfish, arrogant disgraces to humanity do not care. While nobody must be hurt or killed, I honestly think Brexit must now be resisted as vehemently as a subjugated country under a force of occupation. Our rights are under direct threat; Brexit cannot be allowed to stand.

Today finds me feeling rather down. Until now, the plan was for me and Serkan to rendezvous with my parents for Christmas at the old family house in Harlesden. We thought that might be wiser than me going up to cheshire or Mum and Dad coming to visit me here, pleasant though both may have been. The news of the rising infection rate in London has, however, now scuppered that: the last thing I want to do after such an awful year is to put my parents at risk, so we agreed this morning to spend Christmas apart. While I’m sure Serkan and I will make the most of it (he’s already started working out how to cook a turkey) it is nonetheless quite a blow. Chatting over the web is all well and good, but truth be told I was looking forward to a good, old fashioned parental cuddle. After such a bleak year, I think that’s what everyone needed after so many month physically apart, but I suppose it will have to wait a bit longer yet.

Just to follow up on this entry about Trump scheduling five executions in his final days in office, I just came across this utterly chilling BBC article. “As President Donald Trump’s days in the White House wane, his administration is racing through a string of federal executions. Five executions are scheduled before President-elect Joe Biden’s 20 January inauguration – breaking with an 130-year-old precedent of pausing executions amid a presidential transition.” To put that another way, Trump is obviously using his last vestiges of power to lash out against what he feels as the injustice of losing the election by sending five people to there deaths. I defy anyone to read that and not feel sickened by such a shallow, childish, horrific act. How can anyone be so spiteful?

To tell you the truth I was planning to post a picture on here today: a lovely photo of my new, freshly decorated christmas tree which I’d have bought earlier and decorated with Serkan this evening. Alas, things didn’t go quite to plan: all I found at my local pound shop was a few measly bits of tinsel and some borbals; and I still haven’t got my hands on a tree. That photo will have to wait. Looking on the bright side though, there’s much more impressive news on the vaccine front, with the role-out beginning today. I may not have an evergreen tree in my living room, but it’s hard to feel too down when such awesome scientific feats are being made.

The notion of decorating my flat for Christmas has crossed my mind a couple of times recently. It’s kind of weird: for the first time in my life, I am living in my own home, where I’m the one who gets to decide whether to put Christmas decorations up or not. While that thought feels rather empowering, it’s not as simple a decision as it sounds. When I was living with Lyn in Charlton, she had a plastic tree which was kept in the loft for the rest of the year, so it was simply a case of getting it down every December. My new place has no loft and not much storage space. More to the point, should I really decorate my home in celebration of a festival I don’t believe in? I’m a confirmed atheist, so wouldn’t decorating for Christmas be rather hypocritical? And do I really want to go and buy glitter and borbals to strew them around my home, just to take them down in a few weeks? After such a horrid year, part of me doesn’t see the point.

And yet, another part of me, the part with fond memories of growing up with dad putting a large live tree in the corner of the front room every year ready for Father Christmas to put his red-wrapped presents under; the part which also remembers decorating the tree with Lyn before watching it twinkle from the old blue sofa; that part of me says things just wouldn’t be the same if I don’t decorate for Christmas. It has been a long, dark, shitty year, ending with a Christmas like no other, but a bit of tinsel might just be what this place needs.

I just heard on the BBC London local news that fans at the Millwall match yesterday were heard booing when players took the knee to protest against racism, and I must say I am appalled. Taking the knee is a gesture of solidarity, a protest against discrimination we must surely all support. To boo it obviously means that you think prejudice should be allowed, and that people are wrong to take a stance against it. I find that utterly disgusting, and would honestly like to see anyone caught booing banned from attending football matches for life. After all, they were bloody lucky to be at that match in the first place; for these moronic thugs to use it as an occasion to display such blatant racism surely means they don’t deserve to be there.

Paul just flagged this up for me. The Unlimited Festival, an arts festival focussing on disability now in it’s fifth year, will be online this year. It’ll run from the 13th to 21st of January, and it looks like they have a pretty interesting lineup. It’s usually held at the Southbank, but hopefully being online will mean more people take a look.

I just came across this, and I’m suddenly surprisingly emotional. The house in Oxford where JRR Tolkien wrote The Hobbit and The Lord Of The Rings is now up for sale, and there is now a campaign to buy and preserve it for future generations. Called Project Northmoor, it is spearheaded by stars like Martin Freeman and Sir Ian McKellen – Mithrandir himself. Tolkien’s work still means a lot to me, so this campaign to preserve the place where he created so many vivid, wondrous tales has my full backing.

It really is quite staggering when you think about it: how can educated, intelligent people elected to govern a country, be so delusional that they think an international body comprised of twenty-seven other states would just roll over and compromise it’s integrity by allowing one state to leave without facing any consequences? How can the Tories even think that the EU would let thee UK leave but retain all the advantages of membership? can they not see that there is no way the EU will let us both have our cake and eat it, because it would make membership meaningless? It would simply cause Outist movements across the continent to spring up with equally ridiculous demands, and pretty soon the future of the entire European project would be under threat. It’s blatantly obvious, even to a naive dunce like me, that there is no way that the EU can let the tories get their way, so why are they persisting in the delusion that they can? Or put another way, why are the Tories continuing to patronise the country by refusing to admit the blindingly obvious: Brexit will ruin the country if it isn’t abandoned and we retake our place in the EU?

Just as a quick update, I couldn’t resist the temptation to go to the pub yesterday afternoon, just for a quick, sneaky pint. It had been too long. I found the answer to my quandary fairly quickly. I explained the situation to one of the bar staff, about not being able to use cutlery. She phoned her boss, who said I needed to eat, but that it could be something like a sandwich; ie it didn’t have to be a full blown meal. So in the end I had a cheese and gammon sandwich: slightly messy because the cheese was grated, but I was getting peckish anyway.

As pleased and amazed as I am about the incredible news that a new covid 19 vaccine could be on it’s way to us as soon as next week, today there’s another question on my mind. If you want to go to the pub, but can’t feed yourself food, can you still go? The new lockdown rules say you must have a substantial meal if you want a drink in a pub, but what if it’s physically impossible for you to feed yourself? I can’t feed myself with cutlery in the usual way – when I eat out, someone has to feed me. But I sometimes like to have a beer or two at my local pub, on my own. If I needed to eat a meal, I would need to take my PA with me, which might make things more complex and less ad hoc, or not go at all.

I defy any thinking, intelligent person to read this or this and not to be utterly, utterly appalled. In his dying days as president, Trump has sanctioned the executions of five people, the first time a lame duck president has done so in over a century. They are all scheduled to take place before Joe Biden’s inauguration. How can anyone be so cruel, callous and spiteful? You know you’re leaving office, so one of the last things you do is use your executive power to send five people to their deaths. I find that sickening. Trump knows Biden, like any rational person with anything resembling a conscience, opposes capital punishment, so he uses the last glimmers of his authority to carry out these acts of pettiness. How can anyone sink so low? When I first saw this earlier it made me feel sick, and has been on my mind ever since. It really shows you what a monstrous, vile person Donald Trump is. He really is an utter disgrace to human civilisation.

Something happened earlier which has me in fits of giggles. I was in Tesco, just picking up a couple of bits. As usually happens, one of the members of staff came up to me to see if I needed help. Today, though, the difference in her attitude from a few days ago couldn’t have been more pronounced: it was like I was suddenly one of her best friends. She was so friendly, kind and polite, she was almost treating me like royalty. I daresay someone has been having words. I know I shouldn’t laugh, but it really did tickle me.

Forgive my temporary regression to adolescence, but I can’t help laughing my head off at this story about a village in Austria which has had to change it’s name. “Residents of an Austrian village will ring in the new year under a new name – Fugging – after ridicule of their signposts, especially on social media, became too much to bear. They finally grew weary of Fucking, its current name, which some experts say dates back to the 11th century.” While you have to feel sorry for the residents of the village having the piss taken out of the place where they live because of it’s name, and also note that this is an obvious case of linguistic imperialism on the part of English speakers given that the name is not a swear word in German, you must say that is pretty hilarious. They grew so tired of tourists stopping to take pictures of the sign posts bearing the village’s name that they decided to change it. I wonder whether this has ever happened anywhere else.

(I hope nobody tells them about the Private Eye or Mohammed Al Fayed)

If Donald Trump is as fabulously wealthy as he claims, why is he apparently sending desperate emails to his supporters, begging them for donations? Surely any billionaire could pay for the ridiculous trials Trump is demanding out of their own extensive funds….Unless, of course, little Donnie isn’t the ultra successful tycoon he claims to be, but is in fact a pathetic little con man who relies on others to bail him out when he fucks up, and who is now sending weaselly emails to anyone he can in a perverse attempt to cling on to power. It would be hilarious if it wasn’t so warped.

He really doesn’t like having the piss taken out of him, does he?

I had never heard of anyone called Sia before. Serkan tells me she’s some kind of singer. A few days ago, on the Disability Arts Facebook Group, I came across a post complaining quite vociferously that she has a new film coming out in the spring called Music: the problem was, while it was about an autistic person, Sia hadn’t cast an autistic actor to play her. That, of course, echoes or perhaps usurps an argument people with physical disabilities have been making for decades. Perhaps the most notable example is My Left Foot (Jim Sheridan, 1989), which famously involved Daniel Day-Lewis playing a man with severe cerebral palsy. Only people with disabilities should be used to play characters who have that disability; only they can convey the lived experience. Otherwise it’s the cultural equivalent of blacking up.

That is an argument I completely agree with, and which I have made many times myself. In this case, however, what I read did not sit comfortably with me. For starters, the articles linked to from Facebook made absolutely no reference to the campaigns preceding it. It read as though they were saying something new, and that only those in the autistic community had been treated that way. Frankly it felt like a form of cultural intrusion. These days, it feels like more and more people are defining theirselves as autistic or neurodiverse, based upon wider and wider criteria. They then define theirselves as disabled, although they have no real knowledge of what it’s like to live a life like mine. They then style theirselves as disability rights campaigners or activists, taking the very language others have used for decades and applying it to theirselves, while seemingly ignoring what went before.

I realise this is controversial, but I find it infuriating. Of course it isn’t my place to cast aspersions on anyone else’s disability. Yet I know from my experiences, both growing up in a special school and now volunteering at one, what autism, particularly severe autism, looks like. It is profoundly disabling: people with autism need constant support; many are unable to communicate, even with a communication aid. From the look of the character in the trailer for Music, she has quite profound autism. There is no way you could get a person with such severe autism to act in a feature film; they simply wouldn’t understand what they were doing and, as Sia herself has said, it would even be cruel.

Yet now there seems to be an abundance of (usually) self-defining autistics on the web up in arms because they didn’t cast a person with autism in the role. Without wanting to generalise, it seems these people often have fairly little first hand knowledge of autism, but have diagnosed theirselves based upon a rapidly expanding set of criteria and what they have seen on programs like the Big Bang Theory. They like to imagine they are different from others (and, let’s face it, who doesn’t like thinking they’re special?) Once they decide they are autistic, they, perhaps unconsciously, seem to adopt the sorts of behaviours they think suit their new identity. Yet, put bluntly, they don’t know what they’re talking about: most fall well within what constitutes normal, healthy and able-bodied; thinking of theirselves as different only causes further upset. Expanding the criteria of what constitutes conditions like autism only encourages people to play such games. To be clear I’m not disputing anyone’s right to claim to be autistic, rather suggesting that the spectrum is becoming so broad that most people have traits which could be termed autistic, and that more and more people are focussing on those traits to differentiate theirselves from those they call neurotypical; an act which is becoming increasingly political. They do not need the constant support those with severe autism do, and not so long ago would have probably just got on with their lives. At the very least, they are capable and aware enough to make things like vlogs. Yet they argue that they are being underrepresented and disenfranchised because an actor like them wasn’t cast.

In other words, this argument is not theirs to make. The irony is, a person with autism as severe as this film seeks to depict wouldn’t have the political awareness to make such arguments. Thus those criticising Sia are not only usurping an argument from the wider disability community, they also presume to speak for others within their own.

After yesterday’s melodrama, it’s time for something a bit more fun. Amusingly, Bill Shatner has apparently stoked the debate over whether Star Wars is science fiction or science fantasy. No doubt he triggered quite a few Star Wars fans, but I see his point: the whole concept of the Force puts the franchise firmly in the fantasy category. Mind you, I must say that the same criticism could be made about contemporary Star Trek. While Warp drives might just be possible if we found some way to bend spacetime by manipulating gravity, the idea of a Spore drive which runs on mushrooms is utter bollocks. This might thus be a case of people in glass houses throwing stones.

Some of the wisest people I have ever known were also the most patient and forgiving. They knew when to fight and when to forgive, and that the latter was by far the wiser course than the former.

I regret to say that yesterday I had the same sort of trouble at Tesco that I experienced last week. Basically the same member of staff had been shirty towards me, and this time yesterday afternoon I was incandescent with rage. I again reported it to my parents, who then phoned the store manager.

This morning was quite busy for me: I had a couple of things I wanted to sort out up in Eltham. On my way back I was getting hungry, so I decided to grab a sandwich from tesco. It was then that I had an idea: enough, I decided, feeling Lyn’s wise old eyes upon me, was enough. After I had payed for my lunch, I asked if I could speak with the girl who had given me so much friction. I was asked to wait as she was busy, but ten minutes or so later she came to talk to me.

I told her that if I had done anything to upset or insult her, then she had my apology. I wasn’t at all sure I had, but surely this course of action was far better than letting resentment and misunderstanding simmer. She said she was sorry too, and hoped we could be friends.

I accepted her apology gratefully. I could tell she wasn’t a bad person: this whole debacle had probably just arisen from misunderstanding and ignorance, and I find the best remedy for both of those is communication. People sometimes act awkwardly around me because they don’t understand me or are afraid, and I find the best cure for that is just to talk to them. It has been a long, dark, shitty year, and people are feeling the strain. Tempers are flaring more and more, but if we just keep talking to each other, if we keep forgiving each other, we’ll get through this all the quicker.

With that, I bade her Live long And Prosper, and made my way home to eat lunch.

No one even vaguely interested in either history or science could fail to be heartbroken by this news that Charles Darwin’s notebooks have been missing, presumed stolen, for twenty years. ‘One of them contains the 19th Century scientist’s famous Tree of Life sketch, exploring the evolutionary relationship between species. Following an “extensive search”, curators have now concluded they have probably been stolen. They are launching a public appeal for help in trying to find them.’ The theory of evolution is one of the most important scientific ideas ever. That the notebooks containing it’s very beginnings could have disappeared is surely tragic.

I’m not sure if this is really blog-worthy, given it’s something anyone else might do fairly regularly, but I’m just pleased how it turned out. Yesterday I had a nice little ride to Greenwich. It isn’t far, and I can easily make it in my powerchair. Coming back, it was getting dark and I knew I needed to buy something to eat. I thought I would have to go all the way up to Tesco, but, passing a friendly looking takeaway, I popped in.

Using my Ipad of course, I asked for two portions of fish and chips. This, I was told, they didn’t sell – would chicken be okay instead? That sounded fine, so I agreed. But then I asked for them to deliver it to my place at seven, about two hours later, when I knew Serkan would be here. The guy said that would be fine, so with that I set off home.

By seven, Serkan was here and I was watching television. I was starting to eye the clock apprehensively, wondering if my idea to take the initiative and sort out my own dinner was such a great one after all: had I told the guy the right address? A few minutes later though, halfway through Countryfile, to my great relief the doorbell rang – dinner had arrived.

I know it’s not much in the grand scheme of things, but it’s another of those small achievements which let me know what I’m capable of. Now I know it works, I can do it again; and it only cost four quid. The only problem was, I forgot fried chicken has bones in, making it a pain to eat. Next time I’ll get fish.

While I might have got slightly excited about the queen’s platinum jubilee in two years time, I’m not so keen about the fact it coincides with the much-derided Festival UK 2022. Artists and comedians are apparently distancing theirselves from it left, right and centre, on the grounds that it’ll essentially be an orgy of jingoistic nationalism. It’s blatantly obvious that the Tories just want to set the clock back to the golden summer of 2012, to a time when everyone felt good about the country and weren’t irreparably divided into two bitterly opposed camps. They’re using the platinum jubilee, combined with the ten year anniversary of the London Olympics, to try to paper over the horrendous damage they’ve done to the country over the last decade.

The tories have got Martin Green, former Head of Ceremonies for London 2012, to organise this charade, giving him a budget of £120m. He said it will be about ‘bringing people together’ and celebrating our nation’s diversity and talent, and that details of the ten planned events will be announced in a few months time. But you have to ask: what sort of perverse mentality thinks about organising a festival like that in the midst of a global pandemic, massive recession, and when the country is about to commit economic and geopolitical suicide? The UK is suffering, and rather than healing wounds this ‘Festival of Brexit’ will add insult to injury.

It should be quite obvious to anyone even vaguely interested in politics that the country is now being governed by arrogant bullies. I have just watched the lunchtime news: Who the smeg does Boris Johnson think he is? His Home Secretary was indicted for bullying in a report by the civil service, and he just lets her off as though he believes that, as Tories and members of the supposed upper class, they have the right to look down upon and bully everyone else. Patel was found to have broken the ministerial code; she should be out of a job, but to Johnson that doesn’t matter. It’s as if he thinks he and his government have a right to look trample over the rest of us like some eighteenth century plantation owner, born to rule over slaves kidnapped from Africa. For all his pretence to be affable, roguish and likeable, it ought to be quite clear that Johnson is nothing but a bully who defends bullies. He doesn’t care what anyone else, including the civil service, thinks. Are we really going to let this bastard or Patel, get away with it?

For the second time this week, I find myself incandescent with rage. This time, though, it’s not with my local supermarket but the BBC. I usually like the documentaries the Beeb airs, but last night they screened something I found utterly, utterly disgraceful. It is my honest opinion that, in terms of the representation of disability in the media, The Disability Paradox by Chris Lynch sent us back decades.

For a long time I have known that I am capable of anything I put my mind to. I may have a disability, but with the right equipment and support, I’m just as capable as anyone else. Let’s put it this way: I may use a special contraption to feed myself, but the food tastes just as good. Most of my friends with disabilities, including and especially Lyn, had the same attitude. Yet to hear Lynch talk, I should be feeling sorry for myself, bemoaning the fact I can’t do things others can; and the fact that I don’t wallow in my own self pity was some kind of paradox.

Why should I feel so sorry for myself? Here I am, living independently in one of the greatest cities on earth. So what if I need a bit more assistance to do things others may find easy? Other people may be unable to climb mountains, so they use a bloody helicopter! I also know that there are people who need far more support than I do. Thus what right have I to be any more happy or sad than anyone else, just because I have a disability? Further, my friends with Muscular Dystrophy, for instance, had a condition which slowly sapped all the strength out of their bodies, leaving them paralysed and eventually suffocating them, in most cases before they reached twenty. I never heard them spew the type of cloying, whiny bullshit we were treated to last night; they just got on with their lives. That’s why to hear it coming from someone so relatively capable pisses me off so much.

I fear that for the BBC to allow this program to be aired, to frame disability as something one could feel miserable about and to problematise how someone like me could feel happy, does a great disservice to the representation of disability. Granted, lynch could well have body dysmorphia, depression or other psychological issues, but truth be told part of me wants to find the lachrymose twat and slap him. In presenting disability so negatively, he invites others to feel sorry for us. For zark’s sake the dude was shown driving, bombing around in an awesome new powerchair, and doing things I can only dream of; yet he gives himself the right to pity himself because he can’t, or thinks he can’t, do everything others can. There’s no denying that we sometimes need to fight for the support and equipment we need, or to stand up for ourselves against discrimination; yet that is no reason not to be proud of yourself or question your right to ever be happy – indeed, it’s quite the opposite. My fear is, people might see this bald fool and assume all of us crips think like he does.

Just to update everyone about my entry a couple of days ago, after posting a formal complaint to the Tesco website, and after getting Dad to phone their customer services (Dad’s good at that sort of thing), I have now received an apology and an assurance from Tesco that the matter will be addressed. I now consider the issue more or less closed. Of course, one or two of my friends have suggested that I find another store to shop at, but given that that particular shop is my nearest and most convenient moderately sized source of daily essentials, I’m reluctant to change my shopping habits just yet. Mind you, that could change if I get any more trouble there.

The subject of Scottish independence is in the news again, and once again I find myself torn in two. I suppose it’s a question of which is more noble: is it better for a fixed group of people to govern theirselves and decide their own fate, or for everyone to work together as one? If everyone united we risk becoming one big grey homogenous whole; divided we risk separating into smaller and smaller groups forever bickering over fewer and fewer resources. Unification would eventually lead to the erosion of diversity and probably democracy, as states become too big and unwieldy to properly represent all it’s citizens; yet separation would lead to nationalism, animosity and xenophobia.

Which, then, is the more noble aim? As a liberal socialist, which should I support? In the case of Scotland, should I see the independence movement as the understandable urge of the Scots to free theirselves from a UK sinking under a catastrophic Brexit; or read in the SNP’s calls for a second independence referendum the same petty, power-hungry nationalism that I see in the Outists I despise? I could dismiss Sturgeon’s call for a second Scottish referendum as childish pettiness provoked simply because she didn’t like the result of the first; but would that not render my own desire for a second Brexit referendum hypocritical?

Don’t both Scottish Nationalism and Brexit boil down to the same basic nationalist drive? If the scots have a right to free theirselves from the UK because the Tories do not represent them, could the same be said of London, which is more left leaning and pro-European, with an even bigger population. If Scotland wants to be it’s own state, shouldn’t London? Why is one idea absurd and not the other? At the end of the day, isn’t it better to remain as one? Then again, where would that leave democracy?

Oh what a mess.