I was just coming back home earlier after a nice, long, thoughtful walk to Greenwich when I passed Michael, owner of the park cafe, coming the other  way. Great news! The  cafe is due   to reopen tomorrow morning at eleven, with free coffee and sandwiches all round. He told  me to spread the word, hence this entry, See you there!

I’m really starting  to worry about how angry I’m getting, usually about brexit. I know I’ve mentioned this on here a few times, as well as the fact my emotional control is related to my cp,  but it  really is becoming scary. Whenever I see a Brexiteer on tv or on my computer, I erupt, almost instantly, My heart races and my body tenses up; I lose my grasp of reality so that they become the very epitome  of  evil. For a few moments I want to kill them. Last night, for instance, I came across someone online criticising Sir Patrick Stewart for saying Brexit betrayed Star trek’s vision of the future; they claimed that Star Trek was ‘Brexit to the core’. As you can imagine, reading such a moronic statement had  me enraged; it was a complete misreading of everything Star Trek is about. For a few moments  I could barely control my body, and  got so bad Mitch came in to calm me down.

Thinking about it, it’s completely irrational. Everyone is entitled to their opinions, and it did not harm anyone.  Yet, to me, for a few moments, that statement seemed to insult everything I loved star  trek for. Trek describes a future where humanity comes together to explore  space, whereas brexit, by clinging to petty national divisions, pushes that future further away. How dare anyone make such a moronic statement. The rage and anger I felt in that moment to  the woman who made it was indescribable.

But why? Why do I get so angry  at people who merely have different opinions to me? I’m becoming very embarrassed by it. It’s ridiculous, probably looks infantile, and probably isn’t good for either my heart or my mental health. It’s as if I’ve become so frustrated with Brexit  that anyone who supports it,  no matter  how remotely, momentarily  becomes my bitterest enemy. Once I calm down,  take a deep breath etc I’m  fine, but given these eruptions of rage seem to happen so spontaneously, I’m at a loss to see how to prevent them from happening in the first place. I ought to  be calm and rational, but when something triggers my  rage, I’m anything but.

A couple of days ago, the Google alert I set up for  news about the new Patrick Stewart Star Trek series  cropped  up this Slashfilm.com intriguing article.  Like many others, it explains  how the new series is  going to be quite different from TNG in both content and format. For one, it’s going to be serialised rather than episodic. But the detail which most caught my  attention was Stewart saying it will resonate with the present:  “…it references the present day at times, and that’s all I can say, really. I’m not saying we are in the present day. We’re not. But the world that we find Jean-Luc Picard in is not quite the world that we left him in….” I find that intriguing and tantalising.  Could the references stewart alludes  to be political in nature? Might he  and the producers of this series intend to use it to say something about the contemporary political world?  We know Stewart is a Labour supporter who opposes brexit; is it possible that the new series could  be about a member of the  Federation trying to split away from it? That’s  pure  speculation, of course, but  based on what Sir Patrick has said, I think it is quite a  tantalising possibility. The article notes how Stewart was intending to turn the  proposal down until he saw what the producers had in mind; that implies that it was artistically significant, or resonated with him enough  to make him change his mind. He is as upset as any thinking person at what is  currently going on, so if I was him, the  temptation to use the role for which I’m most famous to say something about the contemporary political climate would be too much.

A few days ago I began to wonder whether cricket was still played in America, so I tapped the terms into Youtube. I didn’t  find much that interested me so I left it at that and forgot about it. However, youtube obviously remembered my  query and today suggested this quite fascinating half hour documentary. As a cricket fan, I find what it  has to say very encouraging: although still nowhere near as popular as Baseball or American football, Cricket is apparently slowly gaining traction there, with teams being established all over the country,  and even a US Cricket Association. There are even plans to set up  a national team which could one day compete against the likes  of  England or Australia. Now that would  be interesting. What I find most intriguing about this doc, though, is hearing cricket being spoken of as if it were something  new or foreign: it explains how cricket was popular there two hundred years ago, but was almost totally forgotten, so it has to be re-learned. With more and more people,  including children, learning and  becoming enthusiastic about  the sport, though, we can  begin to hope that the yanks might one  day become  a proper cricketing nation again.

Has anyone else noticed that Donald Trump is deliberately trying to convince people that the so-called mainstream media is lying about him, and that they shouldn’t listen to it? I’m quite sure others have noted it. Trumps trying to foster the myth that all the news outlets in America are biassed against him, and he’s actually doing a fantastic job. I watched a couple of Young Turks videos recently; one was about a defence report Trump apparently hadn’t read according to the Turks. But it seems to me they missed the point: in his tweets, trump was saying not that he hadn’t read it, but that the report actually praised him and said what a marvellous job he was doing contrary to what  the mainstream media was saying. He wanted people to believe the opposite of what the news outlets were telling them, assuming they hadn’t read the report itself.

The other video was about the arrest of Roger Stone in connection to the Russia election rigging affair. According to the Turks, the republicans were up in arms about the way the FBI had treated stone: how dare they treat this slimey little p’tahk like the criminal he obviously is, they said. But again the turks failed to pick up on a crucial point: they mentioned that, according to stone, after the cameras stopped rolling, the cops had treated him gently and cordially. That is, all the drama of the arrest was just a show put on for the media. He was trying to plant the idea in people’s minds that they were being actively deceived by the news channels, and his arrest wasn’t as harsh as they made it seem. If the FBI in fact treated him civilly, he couldn’t be such a criminal, could he?

In both cases, we see quite an insidious narrative being put forward: Trump and his friends want people to believe that the media is manipulating them, they can’t trust it so they should listen only to them. That strikes me as very dangerous indeed. Of course, one should never trust the media completely, and you should take your information from as many varied sources as you can; but Trump and co. seem to want people to only listen to them – everything else is ‘fake news’. In fact, the way in which Trump demands to be seen as the only reliable source of information, inflating himself above all others, a great man done down by a biassed, hostile media, seems to me quite fascist. At the very least it smacks of the conspiracy theory bullshit increasingly being spewed by the far right both here and in the states.

As an I’m Sorry I haven’t A Clue fan, on the sad day we lost Jeremy Hardy, I think I ought to just direct everyone Here

I was at a film festival meeting last night, the first of the year. We already have some great ideas for what to screen this year, but at the end one of my friends who I also know from the cafe told us what happened there. Apparently the bastards didn’t just rob the place – they totally wrecked  it.  They took the till, but then they smashed everything – the crockery, the fridge, the tables,  everything.  What sort of pathetic bastard would do such a thing, so needlessly. Fortunately the guy told us that the Gofundme  page they set up had already passed three thousand quid, but even so the news was heartbreaking.

Hurrah! We are officially back online. The last 36 to 48 hours or so have actually been surprisingly painful: Late Monday afternoon, I was most of the way through watching a film online when our internet went down. At first we assumed it was the router so  I whizzed down the hill and bought a cheap  replacement. That didn’t  work, and to cut a long story short it turns out L’s contract needed renewing. A  few telephone calls set thing straight, but it took a day for them  to put us back online, so all of yesterday I was left to  twiddle  my thumbs. While I could check my mail and do basic stuff on  my Ipad, I  couldn’t  surf the  web or watch random stuff on Youtube in the leisurely way I usually do, and it  was amazing just  how much I missed it.

I don’t know many details so I can’t write much about it, but the Cafe in the park was apparently burgled yesterday. When I was over there yesterday I  saw it was shut but I didn’t hang around due to the hail. L told me when I got home, having heard about it online. I was just over there again, and the cafe was still not open although a Gofundme page has been set up to help get the place going again. Who would do such a thing? Who would steal from a nice homely place like that? One can joke and say it was the local  stoners with the munchies after a midnight snack, but it really is despicable what people can  stoop to.

The Tories  are now saying they might need  to ban social media firms if they do not censor images of suicide. Of course, suicide is a problem which ought to be addressed, but I must say  that strikes me as a very convenient excuse to get rid of the public forums where the government comes under the most scrutiny.

The Ghostbusters franchise is a complete mess right now. Like most fans, I was  not at all taken with the 2016 all female reboot and thought it did a disservice to the original two films. However, I just came across this Midnight’s edge video: there’s going  to be a new third Ghostbusters film, this time with men. Apparently the 2016 did so appallingly and pissed off so many fans that the producers, Bill Murray included, decided to try again. However the   video goes into all the politics behind that move and  it truly  is a car crash. Because it was given so much of a feminist, ‘girl power’ spin, anyone who disliked the 2016 film was apparently branded a ‘Basement-dwelling  Trump supporter’. To my knowledge, I have never dwelt in a basement or supported Trump, but I thought that film sucked; let’s hope the second reboot is a bit better.

Part of me is a bit worried that I shouldn’t have posted yesterday’s entry, and that incidents like that are best kept private for fear of upsetting the people involved. After all, entries like  that have landed me in quite a bit of trouble in the past. At the same time, I think I have every right  to write about such incidents: disabled people have  to put up with things like that quite regularly. Moreover, by  writing about it on here, I find I can put across my viewpoint far  more articulately than if I took the issue up with  the  person in question face to face; by writing what happened from  my point of view up  as a blog entry, I can explain  precisely why it made me so upset. The disadvantage to that is, it makes public an incident  someone else may not  want publicised, and makes them seem like a bad person when of course  they aren’t. They are a good person, but if anyone speaks to me like I’m five or adopts the  stern, overly-authoritative  tone  she did towards me, I have a right to note it here. Should I blog about things like that? To be honest I could do with some advice.

I think I better write this out simply as a form of catharsis. A few days ago at the park cafe, I was sitting drinking coffee with the guys when one of their various dogs leapt up onto the table and started licking it. That struck me as very unhygienic – people have to eat off those tables, after all – so I started shouting at the mutt to get it off. Instead of getting the dog off the table, though, one of my cafe friends, who I’d rather not name, turned to me and sternly said ‘No!’ as if I was the one at fault for shouting at the dog. The tone of her voice was that of a teacher telling a young child off, and to be honest it really pissed me off.

In fact it made me quite furious, both at the fact that she didn’t care the dog was on the table, and at the fact she assumed she had the authority to speak to me that way. I’m a thirty-five year old man with a master’s degree, not a five year old; and I had a perfect right to object to the dog being allowed to behave like that. Perhaps she didn’t mean to speak to me that way, but it felt like I was being spoken to like a child, and it made my blood boil. I flew into one of my rages. It was just a short, simple ‘No.’ but it felt endowed with an unearned authority which I found infuriating: the past few months have been very hard ones for me for various reasons, and the last thing I need is to be awarded less respect than a fucking dog.

I just got in from a long, fairly chilly walk to Woolwich to find Dom had sent me a link to this video of a 2015 TED talk. By David Steindl, it’s fairly philosophical, but  hit a chord with me. The key to being happy, he says, is gratitude; you must appreciate what  you have. I know what he means: so far in life I’ve been incredibly lucky. I have good, supportive parents and more friends  than I can  shake a stick at. I  know how much harder my life could have been. Moreover, when one is grateful, Steindl says, one is not jealous or envious. If one focusses on what one has rather than does not have, you are, almost  automatically, much happier. While you can watch talks like this  and cynically dismiss them as cliche or twee, or fret about slight religious undertones (the speaker never says whom we should we grateful  to) I nonetheless feel this is a wise, timely message we can all take  a lot from.

I certainly think  this is worth popping on here. Believe me, I’ve lost count of the times I’ve had this problem.

I just saw on the evening news that a funeral has taken  place for six unknown Auschwitz victims. ”The remains of five adults and one child were anonymously donated to the Imperial War Museum in 1997.” At the ceremony, the conducting rabbi spoke of the need for  vigilance against all forms of racism, antisemitism and intolerance. Those words seem very timely indeed: across  the world, all forms of hatred and bigotry are  on the rise. I fear we  are once again mindlessly wandering down paths we promised to never tread again. As the bigots gain more and more power, the question is, how can we stop history repeating itself.

Another lazy blog I admit, but anyone eager for any snippet  of information about the new Star Trek Picard series aught to check this video out. I find it clarifies quite a bit, and IGN is fairly reliable, so perhaps my pessimism a  few months  ago was premature.  According to this  report,  the new Picard show will resolve the timeline issues brought about by the new JJ Abrams films, something which has bugged Trekkies for  years, whereas I’d previously heard that that divergence was down to copyright issues. We can only hope.

I’m  home again, back  in the capital, but I’m afraid this was just too topical not to nick

I just got back from visiting Esther in Crewe. I’m currently in Cheshire, visiting my parents. I’ve been here since Tuesday and return to the capital tomorrow. It’s lovely to see the old family house again, and sleep in my old childhood bedroom. Life in a sprawling, thriving metropolis is all well and good, but every so often you feel the need to return to your roots, eat your mums cooking and visit the people without whom you could never have got as far as you have. Esther is fine, I’m glad to say. Chatting to her this afternoon I could barely believe it is now almost ten years since she and I were stomping around university together. She’s still one of my best friends,though; I should definitely visit her more,, and i think it’s also high time she came to visit me in Charlton.

By now everyone will know the result of this evenings vote: the government had the biggest defeat in eighty years. What everyone predicted would happen has happened. The truth is I don’t think I can say anything on here to add anything to the debate. Brexit is more of a farce than ever, and the sooner the embarrassing mess comes to its inevitable end the better.

Mostly to distract myself from all the bollocks happening in the world right now, I’ve began to think about the Olympics again. With the next games in tokyo, the ’24 games in Paris and the ”28 games in LA, I still think a british city should bid to host the 2032 games. I know that will probably be the last thing on anyone’s mind right now, but I think we could all do with a reprisal of London 2012 to distract us and perhaps bring the country back together a bit. The thing is, I can’t decide whether I would prefer Manchester or London to bid again. I come originally from the North-West, so I had thought it was time to see a Mancunian olympiad; yet, with so much building work going on in London, with Crossrail (hopefully) opening this autumn, part of me reckons it would be awesome to show London off to the world again. The city is thriving, and we could all do with a flashback to London 2012 again; we need another party. By ’32, London will probably have entered another heyday, assuming the entire UK isn’t bankrupt by then. Thus I can’t decide which I’d prefer: London 2032 or Manchester 2032. I’m not so much interested in the sport side of things as the occasion aspect; the chance to show a UK city off to the world, with all the pageantry and spectacle. And of course, I’m dying to see another British Olympic opening ceremony, wondering what we could do to top the one in 2012. Who knows, if I’m the guy who gets another uk olympics going, they may even let me direct it.

Sorry it’s another Guardian article, and quite a long one at that, but I highly recommend reading this piece on populism. Farage and co. have apparently been touring  the country calling for a no-deal Brexit. trying to whip people into an Outist frenzy by claiming some sort  of victimhood. This new fascism, rebranding itself as populism, has to be stopped. The descriptions of Farage’s speeches remind me of Nuremberg. As it becomes ever clearer how damaging brexit will be, Farage tries to portray himself as some  sort  of freedom fighter rebelling against tyranny; yet those listening to  him, so captivated, don’t realise he’s a con-man who  would  see them stripped of their every right. It really is  scary, not to say infuriating, how easily people seem to fall for this xenophobic snakeoil salesman and his scheme to turn the country into a capitalist hell. They haven’t seemed to realise what to the rest of us  is painfully obvious: what Farage pretends is a fight for freedom  and sovereignty, opposed by a   supposed liberal  metropolitan elite, is actually  a   campaign to impose the most perverse form of  neoliberalism on this country by stripping us of our human and consumer rights.

Probably the best thing I can do on here today is flag this piece of Guardian analysis up. It sums up  just how ridiculous things on both sides of the  Atlantic  currently are. Here, the Tories are trying to push through a piece of legislation which they know full well has no chance of getting through, and they know  will  do serious damage to the uk economy. In  the states, the fool they  laughably call their president is determined to nurse his ego by demanding a ridiculous wall be built  on the border with Mexico. The wall would serve no practical purpose,  but cost billions of dollars. Both here and there, things are an utter, utter mess. The piece’s author, Garry Younge writes “The simultaneous unravelling of the Trump agenda and the Brexit process provides a useful lens through which to understand the trajectories of the past few years in both countries. Oppositional in nature, both Trump and Brexiters thrived on galvanising longstanding discontent and prejudice through inflammatory rhetoric and egregious falsehoods, and aspired to make noise not change.” In other words, both Trump and Brexit started life as jokes, never expecting  to reach the absurd position they currently find theirselves  in, and with absolutely no idea what to do next.

Although I have  a strange feeling that I have seen it before somewhere, I just  came across this apparently new John Cleese video on Youtube. It’s good to see that Cleese still has ‘it’ – that he still has the ability and resolve  to make people both laugh and think. This sketch is what people might do in  a traffic  jam, so in a way it’s a comment on modern society; but it’s also quite cleesian in it’s weird, middle class, quite English style. I also think he might be making a statement about the state of society at the moment, and the crazy, logjammed situation we are increasingly finding ourselves in.

For a while now, I’ve known that my cerebral palsy effects my emotions and how I express my emotions. I’ve always been strange in that department: the way I express my emotions has always been quite overt, compared to others. I’ve always squealed with excitement or banged stuff when I’m angry. It wasn’t until fairly recently, though, that I realised that this was something common to people with my type of athetoid cerebral palsy. I have written on here before about my rages – about how table-bangingly, door-slammingly furious I often get when it comes to politics. My brain handles anger and other emotion in a different way to people without cp, so I express it more overtly. It probably looks rather childish, but at least I now know it’s down to my disability.

The problem is, half the country now seems to be getting just as angry. On the news and over the web, I see people getting just as furious, displaying the same white hot anger I feel in myself. It worries me. People all over the place seem to be losing it, especially over Brexit. Everyone seems to be becoming more confrontational and less tolerant; people shout at one another in the street more. Who knows why this came about, but I suspect it has something to do with the depersonalising aspects of the web. Online we’ve become so used to getting furious and arguing with the screen, we forget that venting that anger to someone’s face is not acceptable. It’s apparently happening in America too. It’s quite frightening, and to be honest i’m starting to worry about it: the amount of anger currently flying about cannot be good.

I have to say I don’t agree  at all with what Bryan Cranston says in this article. The American actor has defended his casting as a disabled person in his new TV show, The Upside. While of course I’m always happy to see people with disabilities being represented on television, I think that, where at all possible, they should be  played by an actual disabled person. It’s no longer acceptable for white  people to ‘black  up’ to play black people, so why is is still okay  for  able bodied actors to ‘crip up’, and indeed expect to get plaudits for it? While  Cranston points  out, “If I, as a straight, older person, and I’m wealthy, I’m very fortunate, does that mean I can’t play a person who is not wealthy, does that mean I can’t play a homosexual?”  I just think there are too few acting roles for people with disabilities already, without what there is being taken up by people with no real experience of  disability.

I’ll probably blog about Brexit quite frequently over the next few weeks. I know I’m  supposed to  vary my subjects, reflecting my life as a guy with a disability, but the truth is I’m now becoming very worried indeed about  what is  about to happen in the   UK. The more I read, the more frightening it seems  and he more certain I am that it must be stopped at all costs. I just came across this Guardian article by a Labour MP  spelling out what is going  on. If we leave the Eu,  we’ll have to join another international trade body.  The people pushing brexit ” want to take the UK out of the EU and join us instead to the North American Free Trade Agreement (Nafta) or the Pacific Alliance, offering free trade with these countries but none of the environmental, labour or consumer protection offered by the EU.” Our consumer and human rights stand to be ripped to shreds as  the Outists seek to  transform the country  into  an  ultra capitalist hell; the postwar, communitarian, liberal consensus will be a thing of  the past. I went to university and live pretty independently, but that was only possible due to various state-based support structures – structures which now stand to be thrown out the window as the economy  is  re-oriented to  a much more  commercial, American style one. I do not want that to happen. Brexit must not go ahead, surely we must urgently do something to stop it.

I just came across this video of David Attenborough talking about brexit, and what he says seemed so astute that I instantly knew I needed to look up the original and link to it here. As Attenborough says, he isn’t a political figure, but what is currently going on in this country  and elsewhere is so concerning  and foolish that we have a duty to speak out against it. Attenborough us one of the wisest people alive; he is dismissed at one’s peril.

I know The United States of America to be a nation of bright people, as intelligent and thoughtful as anyone else, so why the zark is it allowing a complete idiot completely out of touch with reality claim to be it’s president? I just turned my computer on to find this news:  Donald Trump is threatening to completely shut down the US government if it does not let him  build a border wall  with Mexico. Such a wall would cost billions and probably be completely redundant as migrants, legal and illegal, would just find a way around it. I know America is the world’s richest nation, but even so, if I was american I’d be  furious that this money  wasn’t going on something more sensible, like social services or health. I’d be completely embarrassed, and wondering why those who know what they are  doing weren’t trying to put someone more qualified into the White  House,, rather then a nonse who thinks appearing on a wrestling show is the height of sophistication. How can any self respecting country allow a complete egotistical moron spend billions on his own  moronic vanity project? Come on, America,  grow up!

I’ve now been using an old-style Neater-Eater  to feed myself for about twenty-five years. My parents got me my first manual one when I was about eleven, and  since then  I’ve never considered anything else. A day or so ago, though,  I had occasion to look up videos about Neater Eaters to demonstrate one to  someone over Facebook, and cam across this amazing pierce. The new  Neater Eater  looks  incredible: I love how the new arm kind of weaves in and out, and  how  you  can now program it with an iphone. It has certainly come a long way from the first versions. It’s  so beautiful and cool that I just had to flag it up.

Apart from for a couple of hours before midnight on new year’s eve, 2018 like 2017 was a completely dry year for me. I’m proud that I managed to keep it up, although I feel bad that  I broke  my abstinence in the end. It  was just a couple of glasses of champagne, but I worry that that one drink will  open the door and I’ll end up getting silly again. On the other hand, I probably shouldn’t beat myself up: in that moment  of celebration with one of my best friends, having won a huge  bottle of bubbly, continuing to resist would have looked churlish. I defy anyone to have said ”No, thanks.” For  various personal reasons, I’ve had a stressful recent few months, and, truth be told, being  able to let go in that moment on Sunday evening felt good.

Thinking about it on  my walk this afternoon, I  decided that I ought not to be too angry about it; nobody begrudges me the odd drink. Problems only arose  when I had too much and too often. Having been a T-Totaler for two and a half years, perhaps  it’s time for a change of rules. Henceforth, I will allow myself the occasional drink, but only with friends or on special occasions, and only if I know I  can get to bed without breaking anything. And of course, the moment things start getting out of hand, I stop again.

What a superb image for London to see in the new year with

Mind you, you should see the hissy fit all the Outists are throwing over this. Tres amusing.

I woke up in Chester this morning. Charlotte invited me up to spend New Year’s Eve with her a few weeks ago and I thought it would make a nice change. I didn’t realise what she had in mind, but, Charlie being Charlie, last night I found myself at a New Year’s Eve burlesque night in a Chester church, complete with burlesque dancers, a gay choir and a magician seemingly capable of producing doves from nowhere. It was quite a way to see in 2019. The most surreal moment, though, was when Charlie and I were crowned joint burlesque queens of the night (not that I was wearing anything particularly queeny).

You know things are going badly politically when the Americans start taking the piss out of you on Saturday Night Live. I know it’s already a couple of weeks old, and the impressions are fairly cringeworthy,  but   it goes to show just how risible the rest of the world is finding the Brexit debacle when the Americans, whose own political situation is fairly ludicrous, decide we’re fair game for a pisstake. It really is getting embarrassing; let’s just hope things start to right theirselves in the new year.

Last night I read that one of my all-time favourite film and tv personalities, Michael Palin, is to get a knighthood in the new year’s honours. Call me silly, but I’m frankly over the moon for him; he really has earned it. Mind you, as he himself points out, he has been a knight  before, but I wonder if he’ll say ‘Ni’ this time.

Ever since I first heard about  Cuba in relation to Hemingway, I’ve been quite curious about it. Cuba looks  very exotic from the pictures, but you don’t hear much about what life is like there. I just came across this quite fascinating bbc  report on it though, and I’m more intrigued than ever. I won’t say much about it, other than it seems fairly thorough and balanced. You have to wonder, with the Castro period now at an end and the fuckwit the Americans now call their president having undone Obama’s good work in restoring relations, what the future holds for the island. Either way, it’s  definitely a place I want to visit soon.

I was just doing a bit of reading to follow up my entry on the Crystal Palace. It was, of course, built in Hyde Park for the famous Great Exhibition of 1851. When  I read that, I naturally looked  up exhibitions, wondering what they were and what became of them. I’d assumed they’d stopped, but they’re still going. That strikes me as odd, I must say: they appear to be quite  regular, so why don’t we hear anything about them? Why doesn’t the media make as much of a song and dance about them  as they do over the Olympics? Surely they are the cultural equivalent of the olympics, in that they both  draw the world’s attention to one specific city. And, more to the point, why hasn’t London hosted a world exhibition since 1862? Surely putting one on would mean the world’s greatest metropolis can show what it can do once more.

Moment of the day: two   people with unclear speech trying to explain to a Polish guy with English as a second language why Elfis would be the best singer at the north pole. Ahh, the joy of Christmas cracker jokes. Merry Christmas everyone!

I don’t want to go into detail on here, but yesterday I received a bit of news concerning a family member which, while not innately bad, was sufficiently ominous to make me worry. Between that and a couple of other unpleasant things recently, it’s safe to say I’m not in a very good place right now. Yet, the way I look at it, there are plenty of worse places to be. I think I’ve written on here before how I grew up with three lads with muscular dystrophy, who, despite knowing their condition would slowly sap away their strength, never once complained about their condition. Lyn has the same fortitude. It’s just a case of keeping your head held high and refusing to give in.

Moreover, I know that every day has the potential for something awesome to happen. I have done so many incredible things over the last few years, from meeting Patrick Stewart and Danny Boyle to watching Monty Python Live, The Cat Empire and Greenday. All those events arose completely by chance: for example, when I wheeled up to the park cafe that day last summer to discover a film crew at work up at Charlton House, I had no idea I would end up meeting Danny Boyle, one of my all-time filmic heroes. You never know what each day will bring; each day has the potential for something incredible to happen.

Mind you, I think another bit of awesomeness is long overdue, not just for me but for the whole country. The uk is torn in two right now; it’s getting worrying. I know I probably don’t help with my accusations of fascism and ’embarrassments to human civilisation’. Half the country loathes the other half. But I keep thinking about the summer of 2012, and how united we were: the country was behind London, cheering us on; and we felt proud to be British, and what we, together, were capable of. I’ll always feel proud of being a Londoner that summer.

That summer now seems a very distant memory. Where we were once united, we are now utterly divided. Putting the politics of Brexit aside for now – and I still think it’s totally, totally moronic – the fact we are all constantly arguing over it, online and off, isn’t good for anyone. We desperately need another huge public event we can all get behind to bring us back together again; something awesome to lift us all out of this quagmire. What that could be I’m not sure, but I think Theresa May was talking about something similar when she suggested a ‘Festival of Britain’ – although I haven’t heard anything more about that.

Both personally and in general, history has taught me that, no matter how crappy things might get, there is always potential for something awesome to happen. At any moment, you can receive news of a new event or new idea, or you could meet a new person, which could lead on eventually to something you’ll never forget. Right now, part of me thinks that it’s high time I had another moment like that. Yet, at the same time, these incredible moments can only happen if you look out for them: when you’re feeling low it’s all too easy to shy away from life. The 2012 olympics only happened because London was brave enough to apply for them, just as I only met Danny Boyle because I had the cheek to wander up to Charlton House and ask.

To do that meant leaving the house and going out into the world. Life can be incredible, but only if you do not shy away from it. You cannot let all the dire, bleak things happening in the world beat you into submission, because then you stop looking for all the special, incredible things which make life so wonderful. After all, who knows what tomorrow may bring: just as I may meet another of my heroes or find another of my favourite bands is doing a gig nearby, the country might be awarded another international event which we’ll all end up uniting behind. While I now have a feeling that my next few years may not be as easy as the last few, experience tells me to never rule out the potential for awesomeness.

Given that Corbyn just committed himself to  pursuing full brexit (thereby relinquishing any right whatsoever to claim to be a socialist), this seems very apt.

The vast majority of the labour party aren’t stupid; they know how   utterly foolish Brexit is. So why is their leader refusing to listen to them? Doesn’t corbyn realise brexit is a plot to set the most  perverse form of neoliberalism loose in the UK?