All I have to say about this is, ‘I want one!’ Engineers in Germany have created a Volocopter – a small helicopter with 18 rotors, so stable that anyone can fly it. Imagine whizzing around London in one. It would certainly beat my wheelchair, especially given it’s currently being repaired. If my experience of helicopters is anything to go by, it would be awesome. Mind you, the problem is it currently only has a 25 minute battery life, and besides, where would we keep it?

Predictably, the snivelling neofascist Farage has been caught red handed trying to weasel out of paying his fair share of tax. The Mirror is reporting that he set up a trust fund in the isle of Man. Of course he makes excuses for himself: he claims he was advised to do it, and that he ”set it up on behalf of somebody else.” Bull! There is only one reason why anyone would set up such a trust: to avoid contributing to society. Farage is a greedy, manipulative, power-hungry dissembler who should be ignored as the xenophobe he is.

Mind you, as predictable as it was, I’m glad this story came out. P’tahk though he is, pressure was mounting on CaMoron over his taxes, particularly from the outist papers. Those wanting to leave the EU saw an opportunity to discredit the leader of the in campaign; the hypocrisy being that the paper doing that most, the express, is owned by two of the biggest tax dodgers of them all (or so I’m told). At least now we have a counterpoint: the chief outist is a tax-dodger too.

The strangest thing about yesterday’s protest was the lack of cameras. I went up to whitehall yesterday afternoon: I had seen talk of a protest up there online on friday, and yesterday the reports on the web looked promising. The odd thing was, though, that there was absolutely nothing about it on the bbc; the only news channel covering it was RT. That made me wonder just how big the protest really was, so I decided to go there myself. After all, I’m always up for an anti-tory action.

When I got there I must admit I felt mildly disappointed. I was expecting – hoping – to see thousands of angry men and women beying for CaMoron’s blood; instead, two to three hundred people were gathered quite peacefully and merrily, singing and dancing, obeying the rules while the police looked on like parents watching toddlers. It was all very British and civilised.

There was no doubting the protesters’ anger, of course, but I couldn’t help wondering what, if anything, it would achieve. Sooner or later it would disperse, everyone would go home and the cops would reopen whitehall. Given the lack of media coverage the whole thing would go largely unnoticed, and CaMoron would remain in office. In other words, it had absolutely no chance of achieving it’s aim: it was a load of sound and fury signifying nothing, and I didn’t see the point. It allowed people to release their anger in a peaceful, harmless way, but at the end of the day, the cause of that anger would still be there. The protesters would tell themselves that they have done something, and contentedly go back to accepting the rule of a party now responsible for crimes against humanity.

If you ask me, we need to be a lot more angry and a lot more direct. Of course, I’m not advocating violence, but we need to do something bigger and bolder to get noticed – how else can we get these insults to humanity booted from office? For a start, that protest yesterday should have been much much bigger: thousands, not hundreds. We then need a general strike: bring the country to it’s knees; halt production and public transport at least. That is the only way for them to register how angry we are.

But of course we all know that none of that will happen. We’ll just tell ourselves to calm down and accept it, and wait for the next election – a task made all the more easy when the media keep telling us everything is okay. In the meantime, disabled people will continue to die, public services will continue to be sold off, and the tories will continue to remake the country in their greed-driven image. But hey, that’ll be okay as long as a few of us can go wave banners around in whitehall every now and then.

The New Cross Inn in New Cross is an awesome place. I was there last night with my mates from the cricket team, celebrating Wightie’s birthday. I’d been invited to it on Facebook, so on thursday made arrangements to go there with James. Last night he popped round at six, and together we got the bus to New Cross.

I was instantly taken with the place: it’s a rocker’s pub, full of big guys in leather jackets and beards. It had a good array of real ales, and had a nice, friendly vibe. Pretty soon things got going; nearly all the cricket team – most of whom I hadn’t seen since last summer – were there. There were also one or two guys I hadn’t met yet, including one chap I got talking about Hemingway with. About an hour later, a band started to warm up, and I could tell it was going to be an awesome night.

When they started to play, however, things took a turn for the worse. They were a rock band – okay, but nothing special. I was sat in the corner talking to my friends, when suddenly out of the blue between songs the lead singer decided to make a sneering comment about ”the Stephen Hawkings guy over there”, meaning me. In a room full of people, I had been singled out and made fun of. It was a totally uncalled for barely coherent rant, totally unnecessary for and very insulting. I felt utterly humiliated – it seemed unfair. I hadn’t come to be the butt of some morons joke. Furious, I started to head for the door intending to go home, but James calmed me down and talked me into staying. Nevertheless, it put a dampner on an otherwise quite cool evening. The arsehole later apologised (I think he was asked to) but it still hurt. I have no idea why he said it: maybe he thought he was being funny or cool or provocative or edgy; but in truth, he was just being a dick.

Fortunately the second band were much better, and worth staying for. The rest of the evening went without a hitch. We talked, drank and listened, and generally had a good time. I got home about one, reasonably compos mentis, fairly tired, and on the whole happy that I went, although part of me was still furious at having been singled out like that.

People currently seem to be linking two news stories which seem to me to be totally unrelated. They say the scandal over CaMoron’s taxes will effect how people vote in the EU referendum, because it impacts the leader of the In campaign’s credibility. But, frankly, I don’t see what the two stories have to do with each other: I loathe CaMoron, but I’ll still be voting to remain in the union. In voters at least will understand that this is about more than the personality of one man. It’s about something higher and nobler: about people across europe working together under a single framework. Indeed, one of the reasons we need to stay in the eu is because it’s rules try to clamp down on tax avoidance – rules which, I hasten to add, CaMoron tried to block. Thus while the outist morons will try to make political capital out of this, I don’t see that the two have anything to do with each other. After all, we already knew that CaMoron is a greedy, toffee nosed p’tahk – how do these revelations effect one’s attitude to Europe?

Lyn and I were out last night. We were up at the o2 watching the Buena Vista Social Club. Truth be told, I’d never heard of them, but Dom seemed keen to watch them and Lyn agreed, so a few weeks ago I rolled up to north Greenwich to get tickets. It turned out to be an awesome night: they are a Cuban group from Havana, with about twenty members, who have been going about forty years. While nearly all the songs were not in english, I loved their latin rhythms and salsa. At one sage, one performer produced one of the greatest drum solos I have ever heard; at another point a quite elderly singer sang a beautiful, energetic love song – Dominik said her rather mischievous energy reminded him of my Yaiya. I was captivated – it felt exotic and made me fancy a mojito, although I thought I’d better not. It was a great night out, and by about half eleven we were coming home, the Cuban rhythms still running through our heads

Last night, Newsnight did a piece on cultural appropriation. It would seem Justin Bieber has grown dreadlocks, leading some to accuse the nauseating, talentless canadian of stealing from black culture. That made me wonder, why? What’s wrong with mixing it up culturally in this postmodern age? I still like, from time to time, to dress in women’s clothes while still defining myself as a man: is that appropriating women’s culture, or playing with gender denominators? The argument goes that there is a long history of white people appropriating black culture and taking ownership of it; for instance Rock and Roll, now widely attributed to Elvis Presley, was actually a black peoples’ creation apparently. I’m not sure how true that is, but I get the gist: there is certainly a long history of dominant cultures assimilating subservient ones and taking the iconography as their own. On the other hand, it seems to me that the only way to draw cultures and thus peoples together, to make people realise that all cultures are equal and one, is for them to borrow from one another. Mixing things up is the best way for things to evolve, for new hybrids to emerge. It can often be fascinating, and I see no harm in it.

How the hell is David CaMoron still prime minister this morning? Leaving aside the fact that he didn’t deserve to be pm in the first place, he should have come clean about his father’s tax dodging last night and offered his resignation. I know he might not be personally culpable – and I stress ‘might’ – but the way he tried to swat questions away as ‘a personal matter’ tells us all we need to know about the man. He sees himself as above the rest of us; to him, members of the aristocracy don’t have to pay tax because they are of superior breeding. They don’t use state schools or the NHS, so why should they contribute to them? And why should they have to tell us plebs about their financial affairs? It’s an arrogant, elitist frame of mind which I’d hoped had been dying out, but was there to behold in CaMoron last night, as it is in most tories. We deserve better than this bunch of toffs looking down on us, destroying the welfare state, letting their rich friends evade tax while people who need help stave.

I’m not alone in my anger, of course. More and more people, I sense, have had enough: the rage and fury is growing; it’s becoming almost palpable. We can see what the tories are doing, and hate it. The problem is, we have no way of channeling or releasing that anger, no way of getting together and forcing the tories out. This leaves us susceptible to being manipulated: they distract us with things like the EU referendum, diverting our anger, leaving them free to get away with murder.

There is a similar level of anger in America: there it has found it’s voice in Trump. People are fed up with politics, fed up of being spoken down to by the elite, so they support a man who purports to be outside of politics. Trump panders to people’s gut instinct and urge to scapegoat; his boisterous, hate-filled shouting gives vent to their frustration. Nigel farage is doing something similar here by presenting himself as an outsider and giving people scapegoats to blame. This divides us and distracts us. There are now huge amounts of poverty in the uk; the tories are destroying the nhs and welfare state. We are suffering, but instead of getting together and dealing with our real oppressors, many are fooled into hating other things, such as immigration. This diverts the anger, allowing the real sources of our discontent to carry on. We are all getting angrier, but that anger is meaningless if we cannot focus it, as one people, onto the real sources of our problems. That’s why the tories want this referendum: they knew it would split opinion, turning us against one another so we’re too busy bickering between ourselves to be able to stop their crimes.

A blog is no place for a personal attack. This morning I wrote an entry on here venting my anger and frustration at someone I’ve recently become very very upset with. I needed to let it out, but I went too far. That’s not what my blog is for. I better just concentrate on other things. Besides, the government gives me more than enough to rant about.

Just to post a quick update on this entry, Guns and Roses are back, officially. They performed yesterday at a small venue in LA. According to this BBC report, it was only in front of 500 people, but comes ahead of a tour next month. That spurs my hopes that they might play in london one day in the next few years. If they do, I’ll be there.

I must admit I got into Guns and Roses rather late: the guys with Muscular Dystrophy, moody and adolescent, were into them, but it was only after they had grown out of them that I started listening to tracks like Paradise City. Thus I came to them quite late, although once I did, Guns and Roses quickly became one of my favourite groups. They still are, and the growing possibility of seeing them live has me very excited. After all, while part of me knows I shouldn’t get my hopes up, my experience has taught me never to dismiss any possibility. As I see it, if I can watch Monty Python perform or shake hands with sir Patrick Stewart, anything else is possible, including watching one of the most awesome bands ever.

I’m homeward bound on the Thames, having gone on one of my longer walks today. This morning I suddenly felt a hankering to go up to the south bank: I was feeling rather dramatic, and thought I’d check out the Globe. I took the tube to Southwark and made for the river. But I then turned left there instead of right, so I went in the opposite direction to the globe. Nonetheless, apart from the crowds, it was still a great walk. The city, it’s life and variety, still captivates me: I love how places like the south bank and Stratford are only tube rides away, waiting for me to explore. It is a world city, and world of a city; a vast maelstrom spread organically out, pockets of awesome like the dome or the globe just waiting for one to find. To me, London is an endless adventure, the broad river running through it, waiting to ferry me home.

I just go in from quite an interesting trip. A few days ago, Alan at GAD emailed me asking if I could attend a meeting in Woolwich – he’d have liked to have one himself but couldn’t. It seemed some guys from Greenwich council needed a wheelchair user to assess what improvements need to be made to the pavements down by Maryon park. I said I would gladly help, so today, having been emailed a rendezvous point yesterday, I headed down there.

It was a pretty simple task: all they wanted me to do was point out what might be improved from my perspective. We met at Samuel Street and walked to the park, the gentlemen noting what might be improved along the way, such as things that needed repairing or where they could put drop curbs. They didn’t need me long about half an hour – then I was making my way home, glad to have made a small contribution to accessibility in the borough.

I have just come across a bit of monumental breaking news. According to this Huffington post video,* Nigel Farage has made one of the biggest U-turns in political history. He has changed his mind, and will now campaign to stay in the EU. It has to be seen to be believed. I also heard that he will now support Labour, start campaigning for women’s rights and would like people to call him Mandy.

*Sorry I could only find it on their facebook page.

I suppose it was inevitable that such a film would be made. Tonight, I think I will just flag this curious short up. It asks the question: could bond meet bourne? Could they fall in love? For my part, I’m not sure they would – they have entirely different personalities, for one – but the film was still worth linking to, if just as an editorial tour de force. Franky, it captures a homoeroticism which I cannot help but find intriguing.

Lyn went out this morning, so I was just browsing Youtube where I found this 2007 Channel Four documentary about the controversy surrounding the Life Of Brian. I thought it worth flagging up because it’s interesting to watch the contrast and conflict between two groups of people, both absolutely convinced that they are right. On the one hand, the guys who made the film, the Pythons, defending their right to make a film poking fun at religion; on the other, all the narrow-minded religious nutters trying their hardest to get the film banned. Watching the footage, I found it infuriating to see zealots like Mary Whitehouse and Malcolm Muggeridge decry this film, condemning it as though they had a right to control what people said, saw and thought. Such critics were dismissing the film as something childish or puerile, assuming an authority which they had absolutely no right to, especially given many of them had not even seen it.

Yet it occurs to me that the problem there is, when we condemn them for trying to get this film banned, do we become as bad as they are? If the pythons have a right to free speech, so should they; when we defend films on the grounds of free speech, we must also tolerate the intolerant. I still struggle with that paradox: as much as I want to call for narrow-minded morons like Whitehouse to shut up, I know i have no right to do so. After all, what if the tables were turned? As an atheist, I agree with a lot of what Life of Brian has to say; but what if someone made a film poking fun at left-wing liberals, or disabled people? Would I not be up in arms calling for it to be banned?

In the end, it’s clear who won: Life of Brian is one of the funniest films ever; it had such a cultural impact that it was referenced at the 2012 olympic closing ceremony. I wonder what those who fought against this film thought about that.

I still wonder, from time to time, how the tories won the 2015 general election. According to this Canary article, they cheated: ”In the weeks before the 2015 general election, the Conservatives’ ‘RoadTrip 2015’ campaign buses criss-crossed the country, helping Conservative candidates in marginal seats to win their election campaigns. Those buses have since been credited with winning the general election for the Conservatives …Now an investigation by The Mirror suggests that the 24 Conservative candidates who were helped to victory by the buses failed to declare the cost of the buses, along with associated food and hotel expenses, in their election campaign spending.” There are strict rules governing how much parties can spend on things like battle busses. Such rules are intended to ensure a level playing field, but CaMoron and co. obviously don’t think they apply to them. If you view yourself as born to rule, you can simply disregard the rules us plebs have to abide by. They just went about the country, lying and fooling people into voting for them. As a result, we now have a group of people, utterly unfit to govern, inflicting their innately unfair, selfish policies on us.

I’ve just about mastered the principal of looking where I’m going when out and about in my chair, harsh experience having taught me the folly of not doing so. It would, however, seem that looking where I’m not going – ie when I’m reversing – is a skill I have yet to master. I was just out on my daily stroll, by the hospital tho other side of the park. Thinking absently about this and that, I came to a crossroads. I was briefly tempted to head straight across when the man turned red: I stopped, and, realising my front wheels were on the road, reversed.

That was when everything suddenly turned upside down and my chair tilted upwards. I had reversed into a ditch (as shown here). I was dazed but fine. Looking back, I was damn lucky my wheelchair didn’t fall on me. I didn’t have time to think though, as moments later several people came rushing to help, including motorists at the lights. As usual I got the ”is he okay?” routine. It was not until I was back in my chair, Ipad on my lap, that I could explain that I was fine – the plants in the ditch had cushioned my fall – by which time the police had been called and there was talk of taking me to the nearby hospital. Quite a hubbub ensued; I was a mixture of embarrassed and amused, but eventually they let me on my way. Looking back, I feel humble that so many people stopped to help, and relieved it didn’t turn out far, far worse.

I just saw on the news that CaMoron has used his easter message to give us all a lecture on ‘christian values’ and ‘compassion’. I find it galling that that insult to humanity would dare to claim to be compassionate, or that he cares about anyone but himself. His ideology, conservatism, is about greed; it’s about working only for yourself and resenting contributing to society through tax. That’s why, under the tories, thousands of the most vulnerable people in society have had their only source of income slashed; many more have lost their homes. How that abhorrent little scumbag can stand there and claim to have any human value resembling kindness, using a patronising, condescending ‘I’m better than you’ tone, boils my blood. He should be apologising for the suffering he has caused, not giving lectures on kindness.

I just came across this rather interesting Guardian article speculating about the possible future of the Bond franchise. If you ask me, it’s fine as it is – EON should just keep churning them our as they have done for the last fifty-odd years. But might it be time for Bond to diversify? Could there be room, this article asks, for a cinematic universe. On the face of it, the possibilities seem endless: after all, there are presumably many other double-O agents to tell stories about; and how about a film about Q branch? Yet, while I have nothing against spin-offs (after all, I’ve always preferred Picard to Kirk), the Bond films are about Bond; they focus on one central character and his adventures. Unlike, say, Star Trek, they are set in the real, contemporary world; there are few specialised conventions or words – ‘warp drive’, ‘transporter beam’ etc – which other narratives could use to enter into Bond’s world. A bond film without Bond would just be a film, albeit one with the odd reference to things like Q-branch. It would have to set up it’s own characters completely afresh – what would be the point? On the other hand, the article also suggests the creation of a secondary series of bond films, based more faithfully on Fleming’s novels and set in the era in which they were written. Personally I find that idea much more intriguing.

I suppose one of the better things about recent political matters, if I can look briefly on the bright side, is that disabled people are at last being spoken about. Before the budget, we were a side issue, rarely considered in the mainstream. The fleeting glow we enjoyed in 2012 quickly faded away, and people with disabilities once again became sidelined. We still don’t get the media representation we need if we are ever to be seen as equal, productive members of society. There is the odd exception, of course – lost voice guy, the Last Leg etc – but what little representation we have is still heavily reliant on stereotype. At least the recent political furore has brought people with disabilities front and centre, albeit for entirely the wrong reasons: Osbourne’s budget unambiguously persecuted us; it cut the benefit we need to survive to fund a tax cut for the rich. It was an unfair, inhumane attack, and it got the media attention it deserved. I suppose we should be thankful it did – we could have easily been sidelined once again, and had we been, we could have expected more, even deeper cuts. If it was the negative media attention which forced the tories to rethink, then the lesson is clear: the more crips there are in the public eye, the better. We must remain in the public view – on tv, in film, in theatre, wherever as active, productive members of society deserving of it’s support. We must not allow ourselves to become sidelined; the moment we do so, we become easy pickings for tory cuts.

One of the advantages of using a device like an Ipad as your communication aid is that, when it goes wrong, help is readily available. Mine was malfunctioning yesterday. It had been quite bad for a while – random letters kept pressing themselves as I was typing, and for some reason my messages on the instant messaging app had stopped getting through. It reached a peak yesterday, in a rather embarrassing session at school, so I decided it needed to be sorted. When I used a Lightwriter, that meant packing it and sending it to the guys at toby Churchill; yesterday it meant a trip to Woolwich.

I assumed the issue with random letters pressing was due to the screen being damaged, so, going into the small laptop and phone repair store on the square, I asked the guy, as best I could, to replace the screen, before explaining about the secondary issue with the messages. After a quick examination, he told me that the latter was probably due to my Sim needing topping up. The screen would take about two hours, he said, and after that he offered to go with me to the O2 store to sort the sim. That struck me as very kind.

I returned home, where I explained the situation to Lyn, then in the bath. She said the problem was nothing to do with the sim, and the guy was talking bollocks. To be honest, it struck me as odd that I could use email and the web browser perfectly well but not the Instant Messaging app, given that they all used the sim, but the guy seemed to know what he was doing. Nevertheless, I went to my computer and waited for two hours to pass.

I went back a little early and waited for the guy to bring my Ipad. It eventually materialised, shiny new screen and all, and I strapped it to my lap. I thanked him, paid him, and was about to invite him to look at my blog, when letters started pressing themselves – it had not solved the problem at all. Puzzled, the guy looked at it, then told me to come back tomorrow when he would have a special part in. I said okay, and then we set off for the o2 shop, just around the corner.

He explained the issue, but when the guy from O2 asked me a question, the keyboard problem had become so bad that I couldn’t answer. It was then, I think, that the Ipad repair man took pity on me: we went back to his store, took my Ipad, and told me to wait half an hour. Puzzled, I nipped into a nearby pub for a quick beer what else is a guy to do with no internet and impaired communication? I had no idea what the guy had in mind. Half an hour later, though, I went back to find, to my great astonishment, that not only was the issue with the screen fixed but the instant messaging app was working perfectly too. I have no idea what he did, but he had obviously done something, as my Ipad was right as rain.

I thanked him heartily, and offered to pay. He refused – I had already paid for the new screen, that would be enough. I sent a quick message to Lyn, updating her on the situation. Happy to see that it at last got through, and that I could now type without anything springing randomly onto the screen, I set off home rather content. After all, that was a vast improvement on the week or two it used to take for my Lightwriter to e repaired.

Another attack, another atrocity, and yet I feel nothing. All I felt yesterday morning when the bombings in Belgium were being announced was a sense of ambivalence. I know how I should feel, of course: one should feel outraged. But instead I felt as if I was watching a story I had already seen; a sense of sameness and familiarity, as if I’d seen it all before. In a way I have – we all have. Such attacks have become so regular, so familiar, that they have lost their impact. The news coverage was the same as the last time: the same type of shots, the same type of scenery, the same tone in the newsreader’s voice. It made no impact on me, and left me unfazed – I just ignored it and continued with what I was doing. Yet that, now I come to reflect on it, is truly frightening: are these attacks becoming so regular that we are now starting to just accept them?

It might be lazy blogging on my part, but I’ll just direct you to this great little interview of Sir Ian McKellen by Owen Jones. McKellen is, of course, one of my favourite actors, but he is also a great advocate of gay rights. Here he talks about the past, and about being a homosexual actor when it was still illegal. People like him have had to overcome so much. Towards the end of the interview he also touches upon his friendship with Sir Patrick Stewart, another of my favourites. In all, well worth a watch; there is much to learn from such civil rights champions.

I was probably too bitchy in my entry attacking Paula Peters yesterday. I was concerned that the rather shouty video I had seen of her would give the wrong impression. However, this one is far, far better. It’s a DPAC interview with Miss Peters in which she gives a calm, reasoned assessment of the situation, pointing out that IDS may be gone but the problems the tories have caused for people with disabilities are far from over. She comes across as eloquent and knowledgable – a good person to have on our side.

While I wouldn’t go quite so far, as it’s author does in her closing paragraph, as to muse over whether Duncan-Smith will now join Labour, I’d just like to flag up this rather impressive piece in Welfare Weekly. It examines the possible motives IDS had to resign. While I would not accuse him of dishonesty in what he has been saying since Friday, one gets the impression we’re not getting the whole story. Until now, IDS has been a staunch Thatcherite; he has defended welfare cuts to the hilt, refuting any connection between cuts and suicides. For him to suddenly grow a conscious, own up, and say that what the Tories are doing to disabled people is morally indefensible, seems a bit odd. It would be great if he has had a change of heart, and he’s certainly supplying Labour with plenty of ammo to attack the Tories with; but I just feel there’s more behind this than IDS admits. What that could be – Europe? personal issues with George Osbourne? the desire to abandon a sinking ship – I suppose we can only speculate.

I would just like to direct you here, to a clip of Lyn Jamming on the dockside in Paphos. As I described here, it truly was a beautiful moment as spontaneous melodies drifted into the blue Cypriot sky.

I just came across a video from Channel Four News showing a group of disabled people cheering and glorifying IDS’s resignation, and I must say it left a bad taste in my mouth. While his resignation is a piece of good news, to carry on like these so-called ‘activists’ were doing, saying things like ”We got you IDS, and now we’re gonna get the other tories”, is not the way to conduct ourselves. It frankly made ‘us’ look immature. It was fronted by Paula Peters. I know her: she is a relative newcomer, but seems to be becoming one of these pushy types who thinks she can speak for everyone. The venom in what she was saying did not fit the situation, and made the whole disability community look childish, especially with her rather shallow rhetoric; we should not be talking about ‘getting’ people, like children in a playground. Nor should we be grandstanding right now, but welcoming this news with civility. While this resignation is to be welcomed, to welcome it so childishly gives everyone the wrong impression.

I was just out in my chair. Lyn was still in bed, so I thought I’d leave her be and pop up to Stratford for a walk around the park. I wanted to ponder what to make of IDS’s resignation. On my way there, though, something strange happened. I shared the lift down to the tube with a mother and a pram. The baby in it could not have been more than a year old, but my eyes met with his, and suddenly I felt a strong desire to interact with him, care for him, look after him. There was a deep curiosity in those eyes: I got the feeling that I was the first wheelchair user he’d ever seen, and that he was wondering why this grown up needed a pram too. I felt the need to explain to him, play with him, be a father to him. I don’t think I’d ever felt such a strong paternal pull before; it was a wonderful, soft tender feeling – like snuggling up to Lyn under the duvet and feeling nothing but contentment. Yet the feeling was also tinged with sadness: I know I’ll probably never be a father – how could clumsy old me ever look after something so precious and delicate. That’s why the memory of what I felt in that moment troubles me, because I know that that desire, as strong and tender as it was, can probably never be realised.

Not that I believe in any biblical claptrap, but my friend Helen just made me aware of this. According to medieval scholars working in the twelfth century, the day of creation, the day God supposedly made the world, was march the 18th. Confirmed atheist I might be, but I must say that appeals to my sense of humour: I always suspected there was something special about me, and now I know what it is – I apparently share a birthday with the universe.

Every few seconds today, Facebook keeps telling me that someone has written on my ‘wall’, wishing me happy birthday. So far I have had over fifty messages. It’s strange – I did not realise I was that popular. Then again, a wall message is not like writing a card: it just takes about five seconds, on a website we’re all pretty much constantly on anyway. Nevertheless, it’s the thought that counts, and, looking down the list of names and attaching a face and memory to each, it’s good to realise just how many friends I have.

It is now clearer than ever that the group of people running the country are a bunch of greed-driven psychopaths who do not care about the suffering of others. As long as they can reduce tax for their rich friends, they have no qualm about letting the poorest people in society starve. Yesterday’s budget saw help for disabled people slashed, with many losing as much as fifty pounds a week, the effects being so bad that the webmaster of the tory disability group (can there ever be a greater bunch of traitors?) resigned in disgust. Yet this morning the insults to humanity were trying to defend their actions, with IDS trying to tell us he thought these cuts would somehow help by encouraging people to get jobs. What bull! The psychopath must know the suffering he has caused but carries on, rather like the paedophile who gets a kick out of hearing his young victims scream. I know that simile is a bit extreme, but I think it holds: we are being governed by people of the worst kind; people who think ruling is their birthright, and that they know best. Their goal is a low tax, greed-based economy, and tough luck to everyone who falls by the wayside. Their worldview, their aristocratic patronising attitude, the way they simply dismiss anyone who tries to call them up on their crimes, makes me want to see each and every one of these tory criminals hanged.

ADDENDUM: now that I’ve calmed down, I better clarify that I don’t actually want anyone executed – that would be barbaric. Nonetheless, I certainly hold people like CaMoron, Osborne, IDS and May to now be on a par with criminals of the worst kind.

I sometimes feel a little embarrassed to admit that I took seven years to do my masters, but after reading this Guardian story I feel much better. A woman in france has finally been awarded her PhD after thirty years of trying. ”A woman aged 91 has become one of the oldest people in France to gain a PhD after she completed a thesis that she had begun three decades earlier. Colette Bourlier was awarded the mark of ‘high distinction’ for her work, which she successfully defended on Tuesday before a jury of the University of Franche-Comte in Besancon, eastern France.”

It just goes to confirm one of the biggest lessons I received from doing my Masters: that you must never, ever give up on something, no matter how long it is taking. This story also teaches me not to forget about my own ambition to do a PhD. I think I’m capable of it, and I have a few ideas for one floating around my head; and if Dr. Bourler can pass hers at 91, then I have plenty of time to work on it.

Although I don’t have many details about it, I’d like to flag this up today. My friend Katie is creating a play, Speechless, about a young girl with communication difficulties. She has cerebral palsy, and is infantalised by her parents, but inside she is a rebel trying to get out. It sounds a great premise, and the sort of thing we urgently need to see more of. There are still not enough disabled people in the media, particularly people with communication problems. I hope this play will start to tell ‘our’ side of the story. Kate tells me the process is only just starting, but I really hope it is a success.

I have always loved the sight of the sky at night; it never ceases to fill me with wonder and awe. I remember when I was living up in Alsager, looking up at the stars of an evening on my way back to my room, and having my breath taken by the sheer magnificence of what I saw. Here in London, of course, the stars are largely drowned out by the light pollution, so the view isn’t so good. In Cyprus, though, the view was amazing. I will always remember the night’s sky there: it was so clear that it took your breath; we must have been able to see hundreds, if not thousands, of stars. I was able to make out the constellations (well, those I know) quite easily.

These days, we often see images of the stars on TV or in film, but such pictures cannot compare to the sight of the night’s sky in a place like Polis. The deep darkness seemed to arch over us, pricked by countless tiny points of light, indescribably viviid, making me feel tiny in comparison to it’s vastness. Frankly, that sight alone was worth the trip in itself, and is something I’ll never forget.

We just got home from Cyprus. Having been up since about 3am, I’m feeling rather knackered so I think I’ll leave the story telling for another entry and just share this picture with you.

Lyn took it at Paphos Harbour. Now, no matter how cold and blustery it gets outside, I can look at it and remember the incredible afternoon we spent there, and indeed our amazing week in Cyprus.

Its that slightly sad day where everyone is packing up, winding down and preparing to go home. Everyone seems rather tired. It has been a brilliant week, although we leave Cyprus intending to return. We have barely seen a fraction of this beautiful island, but what we have seen has intrigued us. I was barely a teenager when I last came here; this trip has given me a much better grasp of Cypriot life. Of course, I knew quite a lot about it already from my family, but finally getting to explore this place under my own steam has really been magical. I feel I now have a much clearer idea of the complex politics behind the conflict with the Turks for one. On the other hand, I haven’t seen half as much as I would like, so I really hope this is not the last time Lyn and I come here.

I genuinely think that this has been the fastest week ever. How can it possibly be Friday already? Time really has flown by, and a week doesn’t seem nearly long enough to explore this breathtakingly beautiful island. While we have kept to polis most of the week, today we took a taxi to Paphos, exploring the market and then the harbour. The highlight was meeting a busker on the dockside: he was playing all the classic rock Lyn loves, and let her join in for a jam. It was such a cool moment, and a good example of the friendliness of the people we have encountered here. I hope that rendition of Hotel California will stay in my head for quite some time. The holiday might have flown by, but I suspect my memories of it will remain for far longer.

A beer by the pool,

Man this is cool A long, chilled out day

Doing what we may.

Just enjoyng time Wind cool, weather fine.

Just chilling in the sun,

Slow, relaxing, and fun

The sun is starting to set and you can hear the boats creak in the harbour. Birds tweet in the trees nearby, preparing for the fall of night. Across the table in front of me, the woman I love tends to her work. All is calm and at peace. I can barley imagine a more beautiful, serene moment; a fragment of time which I wish would extend into eternity.

I don’t have that much to record on here today. Usually going on holiday means I have lots of adventures to recount and lots to blog about, but that is not the case this time. It has been a very chilled out affair so far; hours spent by the pool listening to music and talking. Truth be told, Polis is only a small place so there isn’t that much to do; and the lack of public transport has meant that we haven’t yet gone further afield. That is no bad thing, of course. Today may be different, though: a trip to the beach is on the cards. Standby for further reports.