Tell me, would you not feel highly insulted if, wheeling into the lift at the Woolwich Elisabeth Line station last night, an elderly couple gets in with you, and you hear the woman exclaim haughtily to her husband “Mind your toes!” Given that you haven’t driven your powerchair anywhere near anyone’s feet, upon hearing this you instantly feel extremely insulted. But then, when you try to confront the couple about it, they both completely ignore you and, upon reaching the ground floor, make straight for the station exit as though you didn’t exist. You pursue the couple for a few metres, until they head into the M&S next to the station, obviously thinking it was the only place people like them should do their evening shopping, at which point you give up and head for the bus stop. So, what would you do? Would you not feel indignant at being so patronised and spoken over? Would you not want to call them out on it and explain that such language and attitudes were not acceptable? Or would you just ignore it, accepting it as just part of the background discrimination which you know you’re going to have to put up with all your life?

Or would you mentally chalk it up as material for your next blog entry….

I initially took Thursday to be quite an uninteresting day. I got home tired and frustrated, having set off to explore the area around Orpington, but not having come across anything especially remarkable. My plan had been to go to Orpington and from there try to finally get beyond the M25, but I took a few wrong turns and ended up getting rather lost. To my surprise I ended up going along country lanes like the ones I used to know in Cheshire. An afternoon of this lead me to somewhere called Downe, from where I fortunately found a bus I could take to Bromley, and then home.

Sitting at the bus stop, Downe struck me as such a quaint, rural place that I was rather taken by it. It felt like I’d somehow been transported a few hundred kilometres away from the metropolis and was suddenly sitting in the rolling fields of rural England. Once back at home I therefore naturally punched the village name into google, if just to find out where the zark I had taken myself to, only to find something extremely cool. Down House, a place I had noticed sign posted from the bus stop, was once the home of Charles Darwin. A bit more trundling would have seen me come across the home of one of the greatest scientists of all time.

To be honest when I saw that I felt slightly frustrated, but at least I now knew how to get there again. Thus yesterday I set off, simply reversing the journey I had made the previous evening. This time it was nice and straightforward, although I was still taken by how rural that area of Greater London feels, while still being within the M25. It honestly felt like I could have been back in Alsager or Swettenham.

A short ride from the bus stop found me at the house, and I instantly felt like I was on hallowed ground. Of course, Down House has now been converted into a museum run by English Heritage, so I was able to go in for free. There was a working, well maintained lift, so I was able to go up to see a quite fascinating exhibition on the journey of the Beagle, including a video narrated by David Attenborough. The information on display was incredible, although you could still tell that the place had once been someone’s family home.

As usual I didn’t stay long before feeling the need to start finding my way home, but as with my visit to Eltham Palace last week I determined that it would not be long before I head back. To have stumbled across somewhere so remarkable as a result of getting so lost is something I find truly awesome, and is why I venture out in my powerchair every day. London , it would seem, still holds many more surprises up it’s sleeve.

This is getting sickening. I’ve recently watched quite a few Youtube videos on just how appallingly corrupt the USA is becoming, of which I think this is one of the best. There was a time, just after the second world war, when America was lorded as the world’s saviour and bastion of democracy: everyone loved American culture, film. and music. From what I’ve been hearing, it acted magnanimously and selflessly. Quite frankly, the contrast with the US we see today couldn’t be more gut-churning: a vile, selfish culture of arrogant luddites, lead by a wannabe despot. With more and more people crying out in genuine anguish and bewilderment at the direction the country is heading in, surely the time is fast approaching for the rest of humanity to step in.

It was just a laugh: a fleeting expression of mirth and amusement to another as they passed me earlier today. It barely lasted a second, and didn’t hurt or harm me in any way. Why, then, did I feel so enraged by it? Why did I let it get to me enough that it made me want to leap out of my chair and punch them both? Was it their impertinence – the sentiment of arrogance, superiority and derision I perceived beneath their chuckle? Its suddenness – the fact it came from nowhere out of the blue, just as I was setting off on my daily trundle? Or the simple fact that they would never laugh so openly at anyone else, yet I will always have no choice but to accept such mockery.

I know how important it is not to take the piss out of other people’s cultures or traditions, but from time to time I see something that really does stretch my incredulity. We all know how unseasonably hot it is in the UK: in fact I had to stay home yesterday afternoon because it was so warm. Today though, not wanting to be confined to base, I ventured out. No doubt like most other people I was wearing shorts and a T shirt, but crossing a nearby road I saw something that I frankly found utterly baffling: a man, who I presume was Jewish, wearing a thick heavy suit and large coat. He must have been absolutely boiling! Even more bizarrely though, he was carrying an umbrella*. I realise that it may be part of his culture, and that such things have to be respected; but surely there comes a point where the stupidity and weirdness of such things has to be pointed out.

*To be fair a while later I spotted two women carrying open umbrellas, which I presume they were using as parasols; but from the way the man was carrying his closed and under his arm, I got the impression that it was part of some kind of custom or cultural uniform.

I was enjoying a cappuccino in Kidbrooke yesterday morning when I saw something which kind of perplexed me. When I was very, very young, I remember being pushed around in a pram. Before I got my first manual wheelchair, I suppose it was the easiest way to move me around when I was outside. Probably like most people, I remember my mum pushing me around shops and the town centre. When I grew too big for it, when I was five or so, we switched to using a small manual wheelchair. Yesterday though, when I was in Starbucks, a man entered pushing his obviously severely disabled son in what looked like a large buggy. It was more or less exactly the same as those used to ferry babies around, only bigger; there was no way the boy in it, who was probably around seven or eight, could push himself around.

Of course, there could be a wide range of reasons why it was a good idea to use this kind of transportation device with this young man. The thing is, I can’t help feeling it infantilises disabled young people: it is like they are still babies, only bigger. At least when I got my first wheelchair I could attempt to propel myself; the young man I noticed yesterday didn’t have that option, but would always be passively pushed from place to place. While I wouldn’t quite say I find that troubling, it nonetheless puts a slightly nasty taste in my mouth. Wheelchairs and powerchairs are something which you see adults using, but such enlarged buggies, however practical they may be, will always limit the person in them to the role of an infant. At least in a manual chair you have the potential to move yourself around, but such buggies seem to me to deprive young disabled people of that agency.

Not that I think anyone else will be particularly interested in things like this, but yesterday I went on a bit of an epic public transport adventure. I’d been wanting to check out London’s tram line again for quite a while: I’d been rather impressed with it a couple of years ago, but I’d been kind of itching to give it another go. On top of that, I had recently realised that I always tend to head to north London on my trundles, without ever exploring the south properly. Thus, my curiosity growing and not much else to do, I set out yesterday. My route was simple, although it took all afternoon to complete: the 122 bus to Lewisham, and then the 75 to Croydon. After checking out Croydon and it’s almost empty shopping mall, I hopped on tram all the way to Wimbledon.

Wimbledon is quite a swanky, affluent area of the metropolis, although, strangely, it’s mall was also eerily quiet. The tram ride there had been smooth and straightforward, although after checking out Wimbledon I din’t really want to ride it all the way back to Croydon. I therefore caught the District line to Paddington, then the Elizabeth Line to Woolwich, from where I caught the 122 home. All very smooth and accessible.

I’m aware that this entry might just read like a list of public transport routes and train stations, and might be rather dull. Yet, to be honest, this is something I am really excited about. I love exploring this city, and part of that joy comes from knowing I can get around it. Now I’ve used the tram I know I can go back and explore more of the places along it’s route; now I’ve been to Wimbledon I know how to go back there to explore more of it. Such adventures open the city up for me more and more, which to be honest strikes me as awesome. I love how the huge, labyrinthine public transport system makes such escapades possible, bringing the entire Metropolis virtually to my doorstep, to the extent that wheeling through it’s step free corridors and up it’s lovely automatic bus ramps almost makes me feel like a child at Christmas.

Having said that, I still find it striking how little transport infrastructure there is in South London compared with north of the Thames: there are the trams, but that’s about it, and they only hook up with the rest of the tube network at Wimbledon. This makes getting around south London far harder and slower, especially for guys like me, so that Croydon felt almost out-of-the-way and unconnected to the rest London. Geology-related issues aside, you’d think there must be some way of extending the tube network south a bit more, and linking areas like Croydon to the rest of the metropolis. Even so, adventures like yesterday’s give me such a euphoric sense of freedom and potential – I feel an almost constant urge to find out what might be around the next corner – that writing about them here, even if it’s just a list of bus routes and train lines, fills me with just as much joy.

I think at least part of that euphoria stems from the fact I know how different things could be: I come from a relatively small town in Cheshire where busses were infrequent, bus ramps still manual and trains or trams more or less non-existent. I know how different things could be, and would still be without the progress made in the last twenty or so years. London’s transport system is still far from perfect and it still has a lot of work to do; but adventures like yesterday’s show me how amazing and global standard-setting it is gradually becoming. That, to be honest, fills me with tremendous pride.

I know I shouldn’t just send everyone to watch videos on Youtube, but I think anyone concerned by the political situation in America needs to watch this. It’s the most recent episode of Chanel Four’s podcast TrumpWorld, and goes into detail about how political maps are being redrawn by the Republicans to deliberately disenfranchise black/Democratic voters. If that is so, it would be the overt reversal of civil rights laws. It’s rather long but lease watch. If what they are saying is correct, I really think we should all be very, very worried.

There was an item on the breakfast news this morning about how divided society currently seems to be, and about how an upcoming television drama, apparently set around Gareth Southgate, will address the issue. This is a subject which troubles me very much: we only have to look at what took place in London on Saturday to see the extent to which society is now very much riven into two mutually opposing camps. It’s not just happening here but in the USA and all over the world, and is frankly becoming frightening. Thinking about it during my shower earlier, I started to think about what could be causing this division: Class? Language? Education? The issue soon started to appear very, very complicated, and would probably require a PhD thesis (at least) to look into. But then it occurred to me that the answer might actually be rather simple and obvious: could it just be that society has always been this fractured, but the advent of social media has simply made the fractures more visible? We’ve always placed ourselves into various camps, but the web has simply brought those camps into open contact with one another. The result, unfortunately, is the intensification of social rivalry and open intolerance.

I’m writing this sat in the Elizabeth Line station at Woolwich, desperately trying to board a train into central London or not. You will no doubt have heard about the two protests that are happening there today: a march in favour of Palestinian solidarity, and a gathering of far right halfwits. Part of me wants to go up there, not so much to get involved in either action as much as to just observe what is going on. Yet I know full well how dangerous things could get; I also know how angry and provoked the sight of such events would probably make me. Part of me thinks I should change my plans and head to Charlton to watch the cricket instead. Thus, sat here I find myself utterly torn between the desire to get involved in the bigger events unfolding in this city today, and an almost tangible apprehension about what might happen.

Since the Elizabeth Line opened, I have tended to avoid the jubilee line. It’s still perfectly usable of course, and in fact I used it yesterday ahead of a lovely trundle along the South Bank. It’s just that, compared to the newer line, the jubilee line’s uncomfortably noisy. The strange thing is, the Jubilee line isn’t that old; yet as it goes through its tunnels it frankly sounds like a balrog getting it’s balls bitten off. The Elisabeth Line now seems so much quieter and more pleasant in comparison, I can’t help wondering whether anything could be done to bring the Jubilee up to the the same standard.

To be honest I have been slightly reticent about saying anything about the political maelstrom the government currently seems to be going through, as it is just too much of a brewery-bound pissup to go anywhere near. Yet I think I will say the following, simply because I feel compelled to do so: No Tory or right winger has any right to mock, gloat or feel superior to what is currently unfolding in the Labour party. Firstly, I hardly need to point out that they went through very similar turbulence while in government, getting through four leaders in about as many years. Secondly and more profoundly, this current turmoil is a direct, incontestable result of their idiocy. The trouble the UK and it’s economy is going through stems directly from brexit, and would impact any government whatever their colour. Last week, so many barely literate morons voted for the Tories or reform out of disquiet with the status quo and a desire to protest, not understanding that such thinking was what got us into this mess in the first place. Thus I get the feeling that the Tories are giggling at the trouble Labour is going through, but they have no right to do so.

While much of what she says is perfectly valid and very interesting, I can’t help thinking that the woman presenting this video has some pretty significant issues. It’s a fairly coherent analysis of why Americans are – or are perceived to be – so stupid: She goes into detail about things like their education system, and why it was set up decades ago to keep students obedient and unquestioning. It’s quite revealing and well worth watching; yet the Australian woman in it presents with such fury and venom that it took me aback. It is as if she feels personally insulted or wronged by the subject at hand. That might just be her cultural manner, but I think it really detracts from what she is saying. That is a shame, because what she is discussing certainly needs to be said. Perhaps that is one of the drawbacks of online video content versus traditional prose, with everything being delivered with so much gusto to attract hits, it ends up actually detracting from what is being said.

I’m not sure whether I’ve blogged about this before, but it’s definitely worth reiterating. I’m now a big fan of the Elizabeth Line. I use it quite regularly, and to think that such a system could be created from scratch still makes my jaw drop. I enjoyed a lovely lunch with my family yesterday at a Chinese restaurant in Brent, and so used the Lizzie Line to get to the other side of the metropolis. 

However, what bugs me is the fact that none of the stations on that side of the city are step free, so I have to ask for someone to be waiting for me with a ramp to allow me to get off the train. It obviously isn’t that much of a problem, and yesterday it went without a hitch. Yet, you would think that, given it’s a completely new railway line, surely all of the platforms could have been made level with the train.  That way, guys like me could just get on and off when we want, without having to tell the station staff of our intentions or having to commit to a fixed destination. Joking aside, the need to tell TFL staff where I want to go makes me feel kind of awkward and special;  would it have been so difficult to lump a little more concrete onto the platforms in the right places to make journeys like mine slightly more seamless?

While a small part of me thinks that perhaps I should just pipe down and be satisfied that so much of the public transport network is as accessible as it now is, the fact is the need to ask for a ramp, rather than being able to hop on and off trains as I want, makes me feel singled out. What other London commuters need to tell station staff where they are going? More to the point, given that they spent such an eye-watering sum on the Elizabeth line, to be honest it baffles me that it isn’t quite perfect.

I’m not going to pretend I understand/get everything he’s talking about, but this must be one of the most interesting pieces of Star Trek related analysis I’ve seen in a long time. Basically, according to Star Trek’s mythos, humanity is supposed to have a third world war, and the utopia it depicts will rise out of that cataclysm. The guy in this video looks at the extent to which that might be coming true: we are indeed now living in an ultra capitalist dystopia with far right politics on the rise. While the delivery is somewhat tongue-in-cheek, he makes several fairly in-depth philosophical and scientific references, making what he has to say well worth checking out. Mind you, one thing I would point out that he doesn’t seem to pick up on is that the future Star Trek depicts is not in fact a worldwide global utopia at at all, but simply an Americanised globe or the world remade in America’s image; something which, especially at the moment, is looking distinctly repugnant.

It would seem that summer has suddenly arrived like the reappearance of an old friend after a long, dark absence. I just got in from my usual daily trundle. It was nothing special, checking out Greenwich Park and then heading down to its busy Saturday market. Before heading home though, I thought I would head to Charlton park, mostly because it had been so long since I had last been there. I still have very fond memories of watching cricket in that lovely little park, but I had assumed it was still too early in the year for matches to have resumed.

However, to my great and joyous surprise, there was a match being played. There is no better sight than that of men in white dashing between wickets or about a green pitch, under a sky of pure blue. Even better, as I was rolling up to the pitch, the guys recognised me and called out. It suddenly felt like a decade of happy summers had come sweeping back in one blissful wave. There really is no better feeling. I was suddenly among good friends – guys who read my blog and know how to help me eat sandwiches.

Unfortunately I couldn’t stay long as I needed to get back, but my mate James told me that they would now be playing every Saturday. Summer, it would seem, has returned, and I suspect it’s going to be a great one.

I posted this on a few political Facebook groups late last night. You should see the reaction it’s generating!

Today we are celebrating the hundredth birthday of someone truly wonderful. A broadcaster without peer, who over the last seven decades has done far, far more than anyone else to open our eyes to the beauty of the natural world. To be quite honest, I am at a loss for what to say here today: I have written before of my sheer admiration for Sir David Attenborough. I hold him to be the greatest broadcaster ever, and probably always will. To think he started making television programmes before either of my parents were born, and is seemingly still going strong, is quite, quite incredible.

I fear that if I go on I would risk becoming too nauseatingly melodramatic, something which I doubt the great man himself would appreciate. How could I possibly list all the fascinating, beautiful things he has shown us or all of his astounding televisual triumphs in one short blog entry? I will therefore simply wish Sir David a very happy birthday, and say that absolutely nobody does what you have been doing for the last seventy years better. Thank you.

I think I’ll direct everyone here this morning, to the most recent edition of the Private Eye podcast. I think it is worth a watch because, amid the usual mixture of political comment and wit, about half an hour into the programme, Hislop and co. start talking about the BBC. They aren’t entirely complementary of course, but I found their conversation notable for the way they outline just how much soft power the Beeb exerts. As an organisation it is almost unique, known across the world as a source of reliable, dependable news. It is used as a bastion of information not just by english speakers or UK expats, but by a vast range of people. Thus, as the guys in the podcast lay out, things like the World Service are something to hold dear and defend.

By and large, I think it’s fair to say that we watch films to be inspired or entertained: we go to the cinema to be uplifted, or to momentarily escape our humdrum, everyday realities. I’m afraid to say that the film I watched yesterday evening at Peckhamplex did precisely the opposite. Surviving Earth must be one of the most depressing, miserable films I’ve ever seen. It is essentially thee story of one man’s struggle with addiction. We see his descent into depression, estrangement from his daughter, battle with drugs and eventual suicide. It is truly a bleak, dark film, and I frankly left the cinema feeling quite distraught. Things might have been different if the guy was someone you could sympathise with, but to my mind he treated everyone around him so abrasively and appallingly that I felt no pity for him. Of course, I know that, like all art, film has a duty to reveal such realities and not just focus on the uplifting aspects of life; yet Surviving Earth felt overtly bleak and depressing, almost as if it was wallowing in it’s own misery.

Check out what Mark Kermode said about it here.

When I was very, very young I remember watching Only Fools And Horses with my parents and brothers. I was so young that I barely understood it, although I remember it making me laugh a great deal. One thing I do remember though, was that it was set in a place called Peckham. At the time I had no idea where that was: I probably assumed it was another town out in the countryside somewhere, a bit like my own. I could never have imagined that one day I would know exactly where Peckham was, visiting it fairly regularly.

Peckham is a vibrant, fascinating part of the capital. I am currently sat in it, waiting for John to meet me here to watch a film. The thing is, I can’t help wondering how it matches up with it’s depiction in Only Fools And Horses : that old BBC comedy was set forty years ago, so it must have changed quite a bit. Like the rest of London, it is now extremely multicultural, throbbing with African and Eastern European shops. On the other hand, it doesn’t seem to have undergone the same gentrification and investment which is happening in many other parts of London, so it still feels very working class. There is still a raw authentic feel to the area, so I can almost imagine that Delboy Trotter might still be around here somewhere. I wonder, is this a place he and his brother Rodney would still recognise, or has it, like the rest of the metropolis, been propelled into the twenty-first century so far that it has become a completely new area?

Chilling as it is, I think it would be remiss of me not to flag this eleven minute scene from the Michael Moore film Fahrenheit 11/9 up. Truth be told, I just came across it while looking for something else completely, but found it very resonant. In it, an overt parallel is drawn between the rise of Trump and MAGA, and what happened in Germany in the 1930s. Moore’s film may have been about American politics and Trump’s first term, but it seems to speak louder today than it ever did; not just with respect to what is currently happening in america but here too, with politicians now talking about curtailing our right to protest. We live in increasingly dark, worrying times, if such doom-laden films can be so salient.

Just when I started to wonder about what to blog about today, I came across this absolute doozy by Beth Moulam. Beth, like me, uses AAC, but she has obviously had quite a few issues over people doubting the authenticity of what she types into her communication aid: she describes how people have sometimes assumed that what she is ‘saying’ is AI generated. I can certainly see how that could be an issue, although to be fair I have never really encountered it, probably because I have always typed what I want to say word for word. However, Beth writes “I’m battling thoughts around if a speaking child said the same words an AAC user outputs, would we accept it as typical development and assume their competence? Or because someone is using AAC with an AI interface, are we holding them to a new standard, different to their speaking peers? Are we forgetting to presume competence and assuming it is the AI speaking, and clearly cannot be the person?” People are obviously starting to raise questions over whether a young person using a communication aid is actually choosing the words they use, or whether the device is doing it for them; a very ominous, concerning turn of events.

With the rise of Artificial Intelligence I can see this becoming more and more of an issue, which Moulam begins to explore really well. As a writer too, AI is starting to seem like a growing threat. Frankly, the last thing I need is people starting to question the authenticity of what I’m saying or writing. Historically, people have always doubted the intelligence of people who can’t communicate ‘normally’, and the issue Moulam lays out here may well compound that.

I realise that the subject of my entry yesterday may have seemed rather misplaced, even slightly random, given everything else going on in the wider world. To be honest it was an entry I began typing into my Ipad yesterday morning, sat on a bus having settled on the subject just after breakfast. Truth be told, i’m not sure what to say about the two bigger, more salient issues: on the one hand we have the King’s visit to America, which seems to me to have done nothing other than flatter and appease Trump, massaging his ego in exactly the way he craves. On the other hand there was the entirely predictable defeat of the Tories’ pathetic attempt to trigger an inquiry against Kier Starmer, notable only for the fact that it should never have seen the light of day in the first place. If any tory had an iota of integrity, they’d refer theirselves to the privileges comittee, rather than launch baseless bullshit stunts against Starmer! It was just a perverse, hypocritical attempt to smear him. I’m just glad to see that the stunt will get no further than it did, leaving me to blog about more interesting things, like James Bond.