I think my christmas wish list is the same as Charlie Brown’s…

And indeed, a great many other people’s.

I’d just like to note that my hitcount just passed pi, ie I have 3141568 hits, at time of writing. Okayy, I know it’s not actually pi (3.1415…) but it’s close enough and cool enough to blog about.

I had a fantastic evening yesterday at the powerchair football Christmas party. While I’m not an official player, I’m now considered a member of the team, so they invited me along. We had a great time: it started at about four, and we all tucked into either fish and chips or pizza while chatting merrily. I sat next to Dan, an old school friend; he told me that he was going up to visit Hebden today. I asked him to give the old place my regards. Personally I doubt I could ever go to our old school again, as it holds too many memories for me, too many ghosts.

After we had eaten we were divided into small teams to do a quiz. It was fairly basic, but there was a round where we had to match pictures of Mr. Men to their names. Instinctively I started to google it on my Ipad, only to be told sternly that that was cheating. Nonetheless, at the end of the quiz, it turned out the team I was on won. Yay!

It was a great evening. Those guys are fast becoming good friends. My plan to do a film about powerchair football is slowly materialising, and I’m gradually getting better at playing, too. The players are cool guys, and the staff are friendly and warm. I drove home from Shooters Hill having had a wonderful time, feeling like I was now definitely a member of the team.

This morning finds me feeling rather positive. Brexit may not be dead yet, but yesterday’s vote was surely the firmest sign yet that it is essentially doomed to collapse. Members of parliament did the right thing for once, and did something they knew to be the only sensible course of action. My hunch is this will now continue, and we’ll hopefully see the end of this farce sooner rather than later.

The same goes for Trump. His loss in Alabama is being seen as a major blow to him over there. People are seeing him for the dick he is and deciding they want a proper politician running their country. Mind you, it would have been sickening if Alabama had elected that child-molesting nutcase Roy Moore. It was hilarious to see trump try to distance himself from moore immediately after the election, saying he never supported him despite the fact he backed him to the hilt.

Thus we got two bits of good news in one day yesterday. I can’t help feeling that, at last, things may be going in the right direction. Things aren’t over yet of course, and Brexit still has a way to go yet, but yesterday we got the surest sign yet that both stupidities will eventually resolve theirselves for the better.

How about some of this!

If I can just go back to what I began to talk about yesterday, I think people are being manipulated more and more these days. After I blogged I watched the news, and noticed the sickening amount of political manipulation there is, especially in America. People listen to all these (far) right-wing reactionary twits spouting the most absurd nonsense about things they barely understand, and somehow believe them. Politicians and broadcasters use simplistic but highly emotive rhetoric to actively distort the truth. It’s happening here to, with so-called conspiracy theorists concocting all kinds of elaborate stories in order to make people vote Leave last year, for example. A five minute Google can usually debunk most of what they say, but the worrying thing is, people are letting theirselves be manipulated; people allow their perception of reality to be distorted. The simplification of the political discourse I noted yesterday allows people to access their listeners’ emotions and to turn them into a reactionary, fearful, easily lead horde, ready to vote for something manifestly outside of their best interests. People are being told not to listen to the big, bad mainstream, allowing speakers to demonise other sources of information; it also gives the speakers the air of heroic rebels, when in truth they are nothing more than reactionary morons spouting shit about things they barely understand.

As the realities of Brexit become clearer and clearer, the debates around it, especially online, seem to be becoming more and more heated. It is now obvious that Brexit is an absurd impossibility, and that even holding the referendum last year was a tragic mistake; yet that hasn’t stopped those who voted for it and support it sticking to their guns. Rather than admitting they were wrong, the worrying thing is they are becoming less and less rational. Online I’m seeing outists lashing out and becoming angrier and angrier, their arguments losing any sort of coherence. For example, last week I came across one trying to tell us that the Irish border issue was actually very simple to resolve, but the ‘powers that be’ were exaggerating it to stop Brexit.

As it becomes clear that they were fooled into voting for something they didn’t understand, and wouldn’t have voted for had they understood, what worries me is that such people will become desperate not to be portrayed as idiots. Fury will rise. The level of discourse will regress to the level of an infant school playground, with insults being hurled and people refusing to admit obvious, inarguable facts. We are already seeing this happening, not only with Brexit but across the Atlantic with Trump supporters. In both cases it’s becoming absurd: people have started to deny things they must surely know to be correct, simply in order not to be proved wrong. It’s becoming more and more extreme, and going all the way to the top, with figures such as David Davies starting to flagrantly deny reality. While in a way it’s quite funny, and the good old Parrot Sketch springs to mind, culturally speaking I think this is very, very worrying. After all, isn’t this how fascism started in the thirties?

Blue Planet II came to it’s conclusion last night in an awe-inspiring episode where Sir David Attenborough looked at the possible damage we humans are doing to the seas. It was a nice, if a little scary, way to round off yet another truly great series from Attenborough and the bbc Natural History Unit. As I wrote when the series started, it was awesome to see the greatest of all tv presenters once again doing what he does best.

I love how Attenborough, a bit like our current queen, has been in the background of all our lives: when I was little I remember him being on the tv at home, the floor in front of it strewn with toys; when I was at university, I used to go round to my friend Steve and Chris’s rented house on wednesday evenings to watch Life of Mammals, missing the disco; and now I live with Lyn in London, he is still on TV. I’m sure it’s a similar story for most people. Attenborough has been a part of our cultural lives for over sixty years. He has taught us things and shown us places we never knew about. The entire country surely owes him a huge debt.

I can’t help suspecting, though, that last night we saw his final show. At 95, with a career like Attenborough’s, who would blame the great man for wanting to slip into a well-earned retirement? If that is the case, though, it would be the end of a long and quite magnificent era in this country, for who could replace a gem such as Sir David Attenborough?

As I noted a couple of entries ago, I spend a lot of time online these days, especially when the weather is as rotten as it is today. I spend a lot of that time on Youtube, watching whatever takes my fancy, perpetually looking for that new fascination to get into. I just came across something interesting on there though. It seems to me that the quality of discourse I’m encountering on Youtube is getting better and better, especially when it comes to film criticism and reactions to film. Where most online video reactions to film were once decidedly fannish, what I’m finding nowadays is becoming ever more articulate and cine-literate.

I just came across a great example of this. I clicked on Lindsay Ellis’s video about Jackson’s Lord of the Rings adaptations thinking it would be just another kid talking about and reacting to a film in the most basic way, but what I found was something perceptive, articulate and well informed. Ellis clearly had a knowledge of film of at least bachelor level, yet had chosen to express her thoughts via short online videos rather than prose. She gives her viewers a lot of information about the history of film and the creative process behind specific films. At the same time, her videos incorporated much of the humour and textual play one finds in fandom; there is even a certain cheekiness to them. I found my admiration growing by the moment.

This is a great example of what I call in my master’s the hybrid of cinephilia and fandom. That third discourse has emerged even more strongly than I imagined since I graduated in 2014. I still keep en eye on it, and it seems to be flourishing. Online people are having fun with film, yet that fun is becoming more and more cerebral as it takes on elements of analysis. It would thus seem that people like Ellis are proving me right.

Brexit is reaching the point where it is just too silly to believe it is actually happening. The tories signed up to a deal yesterday where, while the UK will officially be no longer a member of the EU, we’ll still have to abide by it’s trade rules. What the smeg is the point? We’re effectively just paying umpteen billion – money badly needed elsewhere – to give up our seat in the European Parliament. Things are just getting too stupid to go on much longer. I’ve started to look at it this way: the more farcical this gets, the more likely it is to collapse. Brexit is reaching a point where it’s so absurd and self contradictory that, sooner or later, the country will just pack it in and try to forget it ever happened. People will rise up and say they have had enough. To me, that is now inevitable, and can’t come soon enough.

From time to time I mention how much I like going out for walks in my chair on here. I love the feeling of freedom it brings me, even when it’s just a quick stroll through some of the local parks. I think Lyn gets the same kick out of it too, now she has her powerchair. We often drive down to the river together, or over to Greenwich. Now the nights are drawing in and it’s getting cold though, there isn’t as much of an incentive to go out: strolling for the sake of it – following your nose just to see where you end up – holds less of an appeal, especially when given a choice between that and staying in the warm in front of a computer screen.

However, I have found something of a replacement. I don’t know whether anyone else does this, but I can spend hours on google streetview. It has become one of my favourite websites; I just follow my nose on it, as I would in my powerchair. I keep it open in a tab, ready to return to whenever the mood takes me. I find, like physical walks, it gives me a space to think; my mind can wander as I follow road after road. Of course there are differences: there’s less danger of getting lost or your battery running low, but on the other hand you can take your walk anywhere on earth you like. While you might not get so much fresh air, and you can only go where the Google car has gone, I find it’s a perfectly adequate substitute for when I feel the urge to roam. How wonderful it is to be able to explore here, here or here. Also, as I once wrote here, I log onto it whenever I fancy a walk around my old home town. Does anyone else do this, or is it just me?

I just found this posted on the Micheal Palin fan facebook page. The beeb has commissioned a program looking at Palin’s life and work, to be broadcast early next year. It certainly sounds interesting: it will trace his career from his early days at the beeb, Monty Python, through his awesome travel documentaries to his recent film work. Big Palin fan that I am, this is one I’ll be looking forward to.

I would like to repeat what I wrote here a week or so ago. Donald Trump is a joke and needs to be removed from office. Action needs to be taken to effect regime change in america, before that jackass does any more damage to the world. Yesterday the moron shredded long standing middle-eastern policy, clearly completely ignorant of the consequences it would have. The spoiled little embarrassment to human civilisation has no idea what he’s doing, and no right to be where he is. Now, thanks to him, any prospect of long term peace in Israel lies in ruins; I’d be surprised if we don’t start hearing of increased violence over there very soon, all because this egotistical moron thought himself qualified to make a judgement on a subject clearly far beyond him.

The world needs better: the United States needs a proper president, and the rest of the world needs someone who knows what they’re doing running it’s only superpower. Surely there’s something we could do to encourage them to get serious, grow up a bit and boot the moron out of office. He’s no more than a preening primadonna from a silly reality tv show, for zark’s sake – any authority he ever had was an illusion. This embarrassing joke cannot continue.

It may be a day or so old, but as a fan of both cricket and the BBC, I think it essential I direct everyone here. The campaign to get the greatest of sports, especially it’s major events like the ashes, back onto the beeb is gaining momentum. Cricket hasn’t been on terrestrial telly since 2005; since then you’ve had to pay the p’tahks at Sky to watch it. ”While Henry Blofeld, aka Blowers, who has just retired from cricketing commentating, said he wanted to see daily highlights on terrestrial TV, but the big money from television rights meant it was likely the full games would remain on subscription.” Nonetheless like Blowers I think this is worth campaigning for. How lovely would it be to be able to just tune in and watch some cricket again – England’s current performance aside, of course!

I watched the second episode of Employable Me last night, eager to see whether it continued to be a positive portrayal of employment issues for people with disabilities. As I wrote in my entry about the first episode, it struck me as quite fair and balanced. Yet this time I couldn’t escape the feeling that I was being addressed personally: was this program, at least in part, intended specifically to be watched by disabled people to try to encourage us to get jobs? Frankly, it felt like I was being lectured.

That is not to say that I wouldn’t love a job, or that I would turn one down if I was offered one. Yet what the program did not explore is the big catch at the centre of this issue for many people like me. If I – somehow – got a job and started earning over a certain amount, I would lose all rights todisability benefits. That means that I would lose the safety net, so if the job ended or fell through – and, let’s face it, there’s quite a good chance of that happening – I would be left with nothing. No wage, no benefits. This issue puts a major barrier up for me even trying to get a job, as I’m sure it does for many people like me, even though I know I’m more than capable of having one. It’s why I only volunteer at school. This is the elephant in the room last night’s program did not address, but until this catch is ironed out, all the tv lectures the beeb can throw at me won’t help me find payed employment.

Whenever I queue up to pay for my groceries in the Co-Op, I glance at the newspaper front pages, where I am regularly enraged at what I see spewed out by rags like the Daily Mail and The Express. I don’t see how they have any right whatsoever to print the garbage they spew. I don’t think I’m alone in that though: I just came across this short lecture by Jon Danzig, and old though it may be, certainly thought it worth flagging up. Danzig frames the issue well, describing how those papers frequently distort the truth but are allowed to get away with this because – get this – their editors are members of the press complaints commission. Either that or they find a way around the rules to spread their xenophobic bullshit. It really is a sickening state of affairs, but as Danzig points out, it was through such lies that 52% of us were manipulated into voting for Brexit. By the same token, it is only through work such as Danzig’s, only through pointing out how people are being manipulated by such right wing rags, that we can ever hope to undo the increasingly catastrophic damage done last year. The truth, surely must out; dominance of the symbolic must be seized back from these lying, manipulative outists.

Apologies to any francophiles or French speakers reading this (hi aunty Dinah) but I must say I find the ambitions described here quite laughable and a tad arrogant, albeit in a typically French way. French president Emmanuel Macron recently said that he thinks French might soon replace English as the Lingua Franca of the world, noting it’s rise in Africa. I detect a note of jealousy there: french people seem to envy the fact that English is spoken so widely; it is the language of science, diplomacy, business and increasingly of art. Of course, the writers of [i]Cahiers du Cinema[/i], which had a major influence on writing about film, wrote in French; but English is now increasingly taking hold as the primary language of film criticism, with American writers like Ebert, Keathley and Pomerance becoming quite central. As the article points out, they seem to think it’s a sign of a country’s importance internationally. Well, I’m sorry, but I can’t see french ever overtaking english on the world stage. Don’t get me wrong: french is a wonderful language which I should have taken more trouble to learn, but as it stands, with the world’s only current superpower speaking english, I can’t see it losing it’s dominance. In fact, with international communications over the web becoming faster and faster, I can only see english becoming ever more central. I don’t think french people will like that at all, and still think their language should be the dominant one, but they will have to swallow their grandiose pretentions and accept modern reality.

This evening finds me in a calm, contented mood. My parents came for one of their occasional visits earlier, bringing presents and news of the family. We chatted at home for a while, then went to the park for a coffee. It was great to see them, while at the same time it struck me as being quite a normal, regular afternoon. After all, what is abnormal about a man and his partner having his mum and dad come to visit? Such things presumably happen every day in this vast metropolis. That, though, is why I feel so content: there is a happiness to be found in knowing that one leads just a regular life, yet also that one is loved by so many. It’s funny how people so often call me things like ‘inspirational’ and look at me like I’m some kind of outsider, but at the end of the day I’m just another member of the vast family which is humanity. Afternoons like this remind me of that. At the same time, I’m lucky to have so many lovely family members and friends behind me.

I can tell December is upon us. L and I were in Greenwich this afternoon, and every single shop and coffee house we went into was piping Christmas songs, usually of the cheesiest kind. It’s as if the moment the month began, all the playlists changed automatically to the nauseating filth which I remember being played every year at school Christmas discos. I wouldn’t complain, but it was so sudden and so obvious that it almost took ones breath. Had someone flipped a switch? To think we have another month listening to such cheese being played everywhere makes me thankful that I have a decent DJ to come home to. I think Lyn was as nausiated as I was.

There is a point at which the world has to stand up to America and say ”enough’s enough”. When the egocentric moron they currently call their president starts to retweet bullshit posted by far-right bitches, surely a line has been crossed. This has now gone far beyond funny, to a point which, only a few years ago, would have been unthinkable. Trump is a joke, and the longer the United States calls him president, the more ridiculous it looks; but when that joke starts putting racist, islamophobic propaganda created by the morons of Britain First on his twitter feed, then surely the world must call that joke a day. The man has no idea what he’s doing, or the consequences of his actions, yet somehow this egotistical little p’tahk has been put in charge of the most powerful nation on earth. Surely there’s something the rest of the world can do to remove him from power, so that america can elect someone more qualified. This joke cannot continue.

As a person who usually doesn’t have a lot of choice in how he pronounces words – I just tap things into my speech app and have to live with what comes out – I find this quite amusing. There is a debate boiling up over the correct way to pronounce the word ”Brexit”. Is it Breggsit or Brecksit? While some may point out it is a silly thing to think about, I think it goes directly to the hub of the issue. An absurd question to ask of an increasingly absurd subject. After all, as the old song goes: ”You say tomayto, I say tomarto / let’s call the whole thing off!”

An interesting new show aired on the beeb last night. Employable Me looks at the employment prospects for people with disabilities, following several as they struggle to find work. It is a problem I know quite a lot about: like most disabled people, I’d love to have a job, but my physical impairments make that virtually impossible. The same goes for Lyn. It isn’t as though I’d be incapable of having one. After all, my first class degree and Master’s demonstrate I can do anything I put my mind to. It’s more a question of, what employer would ever hire me with all the specialist provision I need? Very similar problems were demonstrated by people on last night’s program: the chap with severe Tourette’s, for example, was obviously very capable at what he wanted to do, looking after animals, but his tics were so bad that most pet shop managers would have second thoughts about hiring him. At the same time, there’s a lot of accusatory nonsense going around, particularly in the right-wing press, that we’re all workshy slackers. This is a program I’ll be watching quite keenly, then, making sure it portrays the issues at hand fairly, and hoping it shows the country just how severe the employment problems ‘we’ face are.

Late last night I listened to the fourth and final part of Michael Palin’s diaries. I had started listening to them a few days ago, and had been happily dipping in and out of the four hour-long recordings ever since. In the last part, Palin tells of the rise of Python, the writing of The Life of Brian and the reception it got once it was made. I found it rather fascinating, and it made me want to get my as-yet-unopened copy of the book off the bookshelf. You can argue that Python played quite an important role in British cultural history, clearing the way for so much that followed. Without Python, would we have had Blackadder, the fast show, or so many other things which were clearly influenced by messres Cleese, Chapman, Palin, Jones, Idle and Gilliam?

I also found Palin’s diary entries rather poignant; there is a sort of dramatic irony to them. Reading or listening to them these days is somewhat bittersweet, as we know now what was to follow. For instance, Palin regularly notes, especially towards the end, Graham Chapman’s failing health and slow drift into alcoholism, unaware of the tragedy which that heralded. On the other hand, he also speculates about what was ahead: he mentions travelling once or twice, which I found quite amusing. I also liked hearing him wonder about ‘the death of Python’, noting how he thought that it was time to put an end to that period of his life, not knowing that Python wouldn’t die (if indeed it has) until 20 July, 2014.

Thus one gets pleasure from knowing more than the writer, but that is surely the irony of reading any diary, journal, or indeed blog. You know the next part of the story, so you both pity their naivite and envy their innocence. Most of all, though, you find pleasure in being afforded a glimpse of another person’s life, and to glimpse a life as interesting as Palin’s is a treat indeed.

Yesterday was quite a wonderful day. Dominik had been talking about me having a massage for a while, and yesterday we finally got around to it. He took me in my manual chair up to Camden, where one of his friends works as a masseuse at a spa called Triyoga. I was a little apprehensive at first, but as soon as I lay down on the bed and the massage started, I knew this would be the first trip there of many. The feel of her hands somehow made me relax instantly, as well as giving me a strange new energy, like coffee only less sudden, agressive and more natural.

She worked on me for about fifty minutes, before we called Dom back in. We both then went into the sauna, from where Dominik had just come. Sitting there in the baking heat (although Dom insisted it was just mild) I could barely have been more content. As D had promised it would, this treatment was doing wonders for me. I was relaxing more by the moment. I didn’t want to stay there for too long, fearing that the heat might damage my Ipad, so a short while later I asked to come out.

Dom and I both had showers and we got dressed. It had been a wonderful afternoon. As Dom had promised, the massage had done wonders for me – I was so relaxed.As I wrote here, Camden is a part of London which I love. On the way home we took a walk through the market and along Regent’s canal, before taking the tube back. By then, it was getting late; it was quite dark. Yet it’s such an awesome part of the city, and now that I know yo can get such great treatment up there, I think we will be going back quite soon.

If anyone is looking for yet more evidence that Donald Trump is nothing but an egotistical little slimeball, just head here. The p’tahk is now claiming that he turned down being named Time Man of the Year, even though the famous magazine deny he was up for consideration. This is just what we have come to expect from Trump: he seems to think we should all regard him as a great man, and that he should be the centre of attention, on every magazine cover. And when he isn’t, he comes out with bullshit like this, insisting that he was offered the accolade but valiantly turned it down. How could any respectable nation persist on calling such an immature jackass it’s leader?

Just to make this absolutely clear, I have no doubt that the earth is a sphere. However, a couple of times recently I’ve come across the startling news that belief that the Earth is a flat disk is rising. That astonishes me – how can anyone believe something so absurd these days? I just found this video exploring the phenomenon. Like conspiracism, belief that the earth is flat stems largely from disenfranchisement with the status quo: people like to believe in a big, bad centralised power which they can blame for all their woes. This power hides the truth from them. Thus, everyone who says that the world is spherical is under their control, and anyone who tries to cast doubt on that is rebelling against this big bad authority. The thing is, like other conspiracy theorists, flat earthers often happen to be selling something – usually books or tickets for their shows. They give often disenfranchised, poorly educated people the promise of hidden knowledge which only they can bestow, offering a sense of power and advantage to the often powerless and disadvantaged. It’s a sickening scam which relies on peoples ignorance and naivete to sell them bullshit, and I think it’s reaching a point where it has to be stopped.

Lyn broadcast the interview I wrote about here last night. She has a show on Revival Internet Radio at ten on Wednesdays, so I turned the TV down and went into her studio to listen. It was an awesome piece; Moat was an excellent interviewee, and L asked many interesting questions. She deserves a lot of good feedback for it. I wish I could link to it from here, but listening to such a great piece of music journalism by Lyn last night made me feel very proud indeed.

I think I’ll just flag this review of Justice League by Mark Kermode up today. I haven’t seen the film, so I can’t comment on it’s veracity; but I must say it echoes my own recent musings about film. I finally got around to watching one of the Marvel films last week. I bunged Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer into my DVD drive, intending to watch all four and then pen a lengthy review. The film was such godawful crap however, that that idea went out the window. It was just one CGI sequence after another, with very little plot in between. What narrative there was reminded me of the crappy American soaps I used to watch in the summer holidays in my early teens like California Dreams: nauseatingly cliche and sickeningly melodramatic. By the end I could barely wait for the credits to roll.

The cinema seems to be becoming saturated with these comic book films. If Kermode’s review is anything to go by, I think it’s fair to assume that they are all as dire as the one I saw – all just as derivative, assuming a gravitas but actually being childish pap churned out by a studio for easy money. When I recall how magnificent film can be as an art form, these comic book offerings seem to insult it. My fear is that this is what the cinematic art is increasingly becoming: rather than being used to say something about the human condition, like Star Wars films, comic book films ply the viewer with the visual equivalent of monosodium glutamate, hurling computer generated images at us justified with the minimum of plots and poorest of acting.

Just as an update to this entry, Robert Mugabe has resigned as President of Zimbabwe this evening. I must admit that I’m both surprised and relieved: I had visions of that stupid old man trying to cling on to power to the bitter end. He seemed to have the air of the despot too him, the kind that thinks a country is their property to rule, and any attempt remove them from power, or even criticise them in any way, is an attack on the state itself. (I get the same feeling from Trump, frankly). Now that he’s gone, hopefully Zimbabwe can begin a bright fresh chapter in it’s life. We should all be happy to see the back of such a brutal despot.

I must admit to being a monarchist, sort of. I know I shouldn’t be. I know the monarchy is an outdated, undemocratic institution which, as a leftist, I should want rid of. Yet at the same time, I feel the monarchy is one of the things which makes the UK what it is; a constant in a world of constant change. I admire the Queen: she didn’t choose her role, but has stuck with it for sixty-five years.* And yes, I also admire the fact that today marks her seventieth wedding anniversary with prince Philip. These days, people tend to move about, picking and choosing what they want from relationship; the idea that you should remain committed and loyal to one person seems not to be fashionable. Some people seem to regard partners like shoes or coats, to be just discarded when you fancy something new. Of course I know that such notions of loyalty could be seen as rather conservative and that they aren’t without their problems, particularly when it comes to people becoming trapped in abusive relationships; but I like the idea of staying with someone through thick and thin, of choosing someone and sticking with them. Thus I congratulate the Queen and Prince Philip on their anniversary, and thank them for setting such a wonderful example for us all.

*I also still have a big soft spot for this film.

According to this BBC video, some gamers think their sport has a real chance of one day becoming more popular than football. As much as I like computer games, and as intrigued as I am by the rise of so-called e-sports, my initial reaction was that he was utterly deluded. How could any sport ever eclipse the multi-billion pound industry that is world football? But then I thought: fifty-two percent of the voting public think the UK could survive out of the EU – is he so deluded in comparison? Absurd delusions seem to be becoming more and more popular these days. Framed like that, this chap may well turn out to be right; who needs to go to footie matches when you can watch someone play Quake? Mind you, by the same token, I have a chance of one day becoming President of America, or winning the Formula One world championship.

This might be slightly lazy blogging on my part, but if you want to chill out listening to something quite fascinating, just head here. Michael Palin reads his diaries in such a relaxing tone that you can’t help but be drawn in; but the things he tells us about in this audiobook give us a glimpse of the creative process behind Monty Python. As a writer, I am intrigued by his references to the script writing process, and his description of how that became the now legendary shows. He is convivial, but behind that conviviality lies a fascinating insight into an era of British social history, now long past. I really think this is well worth a listen.

The utter stupidity of Brexit becomes clearer every day, to the extent that I’m now as certain as I can be that, sooner or later, it will collapse and we’ll remain in the EU. But I think this is a perfect illustration of just how absurd things are now becoming:

[img description=”undefined image” align=”centre”]/images/border paradox.jpg[/img]

I recently came across word that a tory MP had suggested the rather bizarre notion that we could persuade Ireland to leave the EU too so they could join us in our own customs union. Seriously, how could any intelligent person let this utter foolishness continue?

Not that I ever watched it when I was little, but it would seem that Spitting Image is going to make a comeback. According to this BBC report, the guy who did the show in the eighties, Roger Law, has been approached by NBC about rebooting the series. It will be interesting to see how it turns out. It will be written in America, but Law will be making the puppets, and he’s apparently already made the one for Trump. Truth be told, the thought of seeing that buffoon done up as one of those famous character marionettes is enough to make me really want to see how they handle this. I’m no expert, but I suspect Trump would be quite perfect for it.

I’m watching events unfold down in Zimbabwe quite intently. The ruling party there are still trying to deny that what is happening there is a coup, but if it walks like a coup, swims like a coup and quacks like a coup, what else can you call it? But I don’t mean that in a bad sense: Robert Mugabe is – or was – a tyrant by anyone’s standards; they should have booted him out long ago. My only concern is, what will now replace him? It’s one thing to get rid of a despotic crackpot, quite another to replace him with something even worse. Thus while Zimbabwe might be miles away, and it isn’t as if we don’t have enough to be worried about here at home; but I think we all will be keeping an eye on how events unfold out there in the coming days and weeks, I fear with growing concern.

I was witness to something which I found utterly remarkable yesterday afternoon. Lyn has recently been doing a slot on Revival Internet Radio. She usually just selects the music and triggers some jingles for her shows, but yesterday she conducted an interview with Garry Moat, the lead singer of Burnt Out Wreck. It was fascinating to watch: L had been preparing for days, typing questions into her Ipad ready to play when she contacted Moat on Skype. She had also found software which lets you record Skype conversations. Then, at about five yesterday with everything set up, I watched her ring Moat on her computer and hold a very successful, rather fascinating interview.

I felt very proud as I watched Lyn. More and more communication aid users are doing stuff like this and L is one of the people leading the way. She spent the rest of the day editing the audio she got, ready to broadcast on Friday. She played the final piece last night for me though, and I was struck by how professional it sounded and the quality of the conversation – it really was quite fascinating. Let’s hope this is the first interview Lyn does of many.

Just as an update to this entry I posted last week, The Guardian reports that the new TV series based in Tolkien’s Middle Earth has been confirmed and will be set before the events of Lord of the Rings, but after the Hobbit. That is, it’s not going to be a retelling of either story. They say it will be based on Tolkien’s work, but as far as I know, he didn’t write much about that period – not enough to flesh out a multi-season television series, that’s for sure – so it looks to me like the writers will be making their own stories up.

I still feel quite strongly against that idea. Tolkien’s work is Tolkien’s work: it should not be meddled with or added to. I’ve loved those stories ever since dad started reading them to me and my brothers when I was about eight or nine. They are now set to be tampered with by some American hack who I doubt would know what they are doing. No doubt they would write some sort of romance into it; they would also force their American, nationalistic interpretation onto it, with power and combat always shown to be the right way. They would have looked at Jackson’s adaptations, seen all the epic battles, and thought that that was what Middle Earth is all about. Forgive my gross pessimism, but I can’t see this turning out to be anything but a total mess and a betrayal of Tolkien’s work.

After watching the latest episode of Star Trek Discovery this morning, I had to pop to the shop for a few bits. I’m still in two minds about Discovery, although I think I’m slowly warming to it. This week’s episode featured the Klingons quite heavily, and going around co-op I began to wonder: What would a Klingon shop look like? If you think about it, even a warrior culture must have basic commerce. Klingons need food, and how else do you distribute food than through shops? To become a warp capable, space-faring civilisation, they presumably must at some point have been an advanced society, with cities, commerce and shops. That would mean that their society would have needed builders, technicians and shop-keepers. Therefore, not every Klingon could have been a warrior.

Of course, such things are never addressed in Trek: Klingons are a warrior race, and that’s it. Yet the second you start to think about how such a quazi-feudal, militaristic society could have come about, questions like this crop up. I assume Klingons would see no honour in shop keeping; no fighting is involved. But how could they have ever built ships capable of flying faster than light if they did not at some point have their own version of our local Co-op? And if they did, were there Klingon versions of me tootling around them, buying their lunch? What would a Klingon supermarket look like? Would it have a newspaper stand? Magazines? The same flower rack? Oh, the weird things I ponder when I go to buy milk.

As I trundled down to woolwich yesterday I was in two minds over whether to participate in powerchair football practice. My shoulder feels back to normal, the pain almost completely gone; but I was concerned that it would flair up again as soon as I got into one of those awesome wheelchairs. I told myself that I would just do half an hour’s practice or so, and see how I felt.

However, my fretting turned out to be moot. As soon as I got to the sports hall, I was greeted by the quite impressive sight of two powerchair football teams warming up to play a full march. I’m not yet a proper member of the team so I couldn’t play, but I was warmly invited to stay and watch. The match was set to begin about half an hour later, giving me time to nip for a coffee in Woolwich high street.

When I got back, they were about to kick off. I made my way to the touchline and got ready to watch. I was quite surprised by how close to normal football it was, complete with referee and linesmen. They first held a minutes silence because it was November the Eleventh, and then got going with two halves of twenty minutes.

The action was fast and exciting. Unfortunately, the visiting team, whose name I never caught, clearly dominated the game. Yet I was easily able to get into the exciting game, cheering the guys on while trying to avoid anyone accidentally ramming into me. It ended two goals to none to the visiting team, but it was still a great game to watch. In fact it was quite a nail-biter as it drew towards it’s close.

Rolling home last night, I felt as if I had just experienced something new and great. Watching that game made me eager to see more; maybe I will take Lyn next time, and I really must tell my cricketing friend James about it. Powerchair football is a great new sport not many people will know about, but from what I saw yesterday afternoon, it has as much power to draw people in as any other. The film I want to make about it is going quite slowly at the moment, but I know it will get there eventually: I want to help give the world a taste of what I saw yesterday; to help others feel the excitement I felt as I sat in that sportshall. I’m not sure whether I will ever be able to play at any decent level, but I now really want to help give others a glimpse of that great game.

We all know that the usual method of evaluating a city’s size and importance is by population. Rather than looking at a satellite image to see how big a city is physically, the cultural relevance of any given city is judged by how many people live in it. But recently another method occurred to me: I was looking at a map of the London underground and, noticing how elaborate it looked, wondered how it compared with the tube maps of other cities. I looked a couple up – New York’s and Sydney’s – but they didn’t look anything near as complex as London’s. Paris‘ tube system is slightly more elaborate, but I still think London has the edge. I think this method gives you an idea of how advanced a city is; how built up and used it is. In a way an underground rail system is metonymic of a city’s character: each has it’s own distinct personality; and each grows organically, growing naturally through it’s use by thousands upon thousands of people. Thus this is a way to compare the great cities of the world; a way to make an essentially meaningless comparison through an integral yet often overlooked and forgotten aspect of a city. After all, all these cities are awesome and unique, so if you need to weigh one against the other, why not go by something which they all have and every citizen in the city uses, yet which embodies a city’s personality and aura: the tube network.

I challenge anyone to read this and not be instantly enraged that such arrogant, self-important scumbags are currently governing the country. The Evening Standard reports that Tory MP Roger Gale is now trying to blame female journalists for the current sex scandal. He seems to think that these women are making stories up or suddenly remembering long past experiences. It’s as if he thinks men like him should have a right to harass whoever they want, and their victims have no right to complain. How disgusting. Surely something needs to be done to get lecherous old twats like him out of power and into homes, where they can’t hurt anyone else.