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.

As a disabled blogger, I think it would be woefully negligent if I didn’t direct everyone here, to Steve Shives’ latest video in which he talks about the increased use of what he calls the ‘R word’. Rather worryingly, according to Shives use of that word – a derogatory word for people with learning difficulties/intellectual disabilities – is becoming more and more commonplace. Since the second election of Donald Trump, people seem to have started using it and words like it as some kind of repugnant rebellion against political correctness. As someone who has both known people with quite profound learning difficulties, and who has had the term used as an insult against him more than once, I know how vile and hurtful the use of the term can be. It is therefore extremely laudable to see somebody like Shives highlighting the issue and drawing everyone’s attention to it. To hear it now being used so casually and flippantly, when it connotes people who need the most support of all, truly is stomach-churning.

Not that anyone will be particularly interested, but I had a good, solid, eight hours’ sleep last night, so I was feeling distinctly reinvigorated when I got to my computer an hour or so ago. However, I must admit that, when I read the morning news to find this story of another assassination attempt on Trump, my initial and overwhelming reaction was “Oh please!” The world thinks Donald Trump is a joke, he’s fast dropping in the polls; it is blatantly obvious that he has once again staged another shooting in order to reclaim his fucked up, sickening martyr image. He craves respect, he craves pity; he clearly thinks that pretending people want to shoot him will somehow award him both.

I’m absolutely certain I won’t be alone in thinking that. The first attempt to shoot him a couple of years ago has now been thoroughly debunked and shown to be bogus, so why wouldn’t the great fraud do it again? With worldwide opinion of him fast slipping, would you put it past him? Of course, I have no idea whether this incident was staged or not, having just read about it over the web this morning; so I think it’s telling that we have reached the point where we react in this way. The president of America cannot now be trusted; events which would probably have caused serious concern are now doubted and assumed to be hoaxes. I am not a conspiracy theorist and try to avoid going down that dangerous path, but at the moment, with the USA looking as it does, with it’s president little more than a con-man, it truly is difficult not to veer in that direction. That in itself is surely an extremely troubling point to have reached.

I just got back from quite a nice trundle around Greenwich to find a group of Reform campaigners, rosettes and all, standing outside my flat. Needless to say, they were told where to go in no short order. Freedom of speech is all well and good, but I know what such people stand for, and how vital it is to resist it. The thought of letting them stay to continue to pollute the local community with their abhorrent politics was one I simply could not abide. I may have overreacted, and I could feel my heart instantly beating hard in my chest; but such xenophobes would away do with everything I hold dear – the welfare state, the NHS, the Beeb, everything. The sight of such people standing outside my home was frankly sickening, and I think I had every right to tell them to move on.

Frankly, it is becoming clearer every day that online engagement with film is becoming more and more advanced: every morning I go to Youtube to watch more and more articulate and knowledgable analyses of film, delivered through video. I was just watching this quite fascinating analysis of the prologue of Peter Jackson’s adaptations of The Lord of the Rings, for example. The thing is, it still makes me think back to my MA. I’m still extremely interested in how people engage with film. I don’t mean just watching film, but what they then say about the film they just watched and how they say it. It is this how which seems to now be evolving faster and faster, as online film analysis seems to be acquiring more and more of the intellectual facets of what we call cinephilia, but retaining the playfulness and enthusiasm of fandom. It interests me how the video I found earlier incorporates footage not just from Jackson’s films, but from other Tolkien adaptations and computer games based on his work.

Thus to a certain extent I can’t help suspecting that my 2014 thesis is now somewhat redundant and outdated (I suppose that’s natural to any academic discourse). Online people are talking more and more knowledgeably about film, while delivering what they have to say increasingly visually and graphically. There is a growing part of me which wants to take the subject back up. The notion of one day doing a PhD on the subject has never really died away, but I would probably need to find some kind of local university to do it with. There is obviously a great deal more to say about the increasingly complex relationship between the two expressions of filmic love. If anyone has any advice on the subject, of course I’d welcome it.

I’m glad to say my postal ballot was waiting here for me when I got in just now. No prises for guessing where I’ll be putting my cross later, although I must say I don’t have much choice. There is no denying that Starmer and the government are in deep, deep trouble, particularly due to this current furore over Peter Mandleson. On the other hand, it’s either a vote for them, or handing power back to the right wing outist morons who got the country into this mess. Thus I know who I’m voting for, but like many people I’m not that happy about it.

The 007 fan in me naturally kicked in just now, when I glimpsed the headline to this article about this year’s Proms. The James Bond themes are going to feature heavily in this summer’s festival, including greatest hits from Skyfall and The Spy Who Loved Me, among others. That in itself would be something for me to start looking forward to personally, but the article goes on to explain that this year’s proms are also going to feature The British Paraorchestra. Frankly, that is a very interesting prospect indeed. I haven’t personally heard anything from the Paraorchestra in years, for various obvious reasons, so it will be great to see them perform again. The fact that they’re playing on such a stage is frankly incredible, and it’s wonderful to see musicians with disabilities being given such an outlet. To have come into contact with those guys through Lyn was awesome, I’ll always take pride in having a connection to such an amazing orchestra.

I am not a military person. In fact I deplore all forms of military conflict and think that all international turmoil can and should be resolved through diplomacy. Yet I can’t be the only person who feels like gagging whenever we are treated to images of Donald Trump saluting. This is a guy who famously dodged the draft to avoid being sent to Vietnam, but now he is shown saluting like some great military leader whenever he walks past an actual soldier. We were treated to such images again this morning. What gets to me is the vitriol with which he salutes, as if the action is an innate part of his identity and natural to him, even though he thought himself above serving with his fellow countrymen. Again, I am by no means a military person, but I think I have a sense of integrity, so if I was I would find such a display actively insulting. The man is obviously putting on a perverse, cynical act, pretending to be something he isn’t, claiming the reverence awarded to those he once deserted and trying to play us all for fools.

I think I’m going to note something which I’ve been wanting to explain for a while. It might not be of any interest or relevance to anyone else, but is just one of those little details of my life which I like to articulate here. To be honest I’m slightly concerned that drivers around the borough of Greenwich think that I go about waving my cloth at them. That is to say, when they stop to let me cross the local roads, for some reason I twirl the cloth I use to keep my chin dry above my head. Thinking about it, it must look very weird: a guy in a powerchair, who they’ve just stopped to allow across the road, frantically waving what looks like a small face cloth in his hand at them. The truth is that I’m trying to thank them. Of course I would like to wave my hand in thanks like anyone else, but I don’t really have time to let go of my cloth without potentially losing it first; it’s easier just to wave at the kind drivers with my cloth still in my hand. The result is the probably very strange sight of a guy in a powerchair twirling a cloth around like a madman. Hardly important really, but one of those small details and potential misunderstandings of my life which I like to iron out.

I just came across this oddity on Facebook, and can honestly say I have no idea where I belong on it.

Such spectrums/images seem so reductive – where’s the dude with the powerchair and communication aid? On the other hand, it’s good to see that people are trying to make others more aware of the complexities around Cerebral Palsy.

I just got in from a trundle around the Olympic Park. I still head up there quite a bit as Stratford still strikes me as one of those interesting, vibrant, dynamic corners of the metropolis worth keeping an eye on. However, I just feel I need to vent an issue which I think is rather sad. When the Olympic Park was first created, you’ll probably remember there being plenty of green space: large areas of grass surrounded the Olympic Stadium. It looked quite picturesque. Over the past fourteen years however, these areas have been built upon and used for housing: the fields are now blocks of flats. This seems like a great shame to me. I know that housing is at a premium in London, but do they have to sacrifice every patch of green space? That land was apparently always going to be developed and built upon, but even so, spaces which had given that lovely new park a peaceful, open and almost rural feel, now seem far more enclosed.

The idea of banning social media for kids under sixteen once again cropped up in the news this morning. As I wrote here a few weeks ago, I’m still very much on the fence when it comes to the issue: there are obviously huge advantages and disadvantages to preventing kids using sites like Facebook. However, one issue I need to raise about this morning’s coverage is that it included an item about Prince Harry voicing his opinions on the issue down in Australia. I know most people won’t be very concerned by this, but does that not strike anyone else as weird? Here we have a figure, who nobody voted for or elected, speaking about quite a current, resonant, controversial political issue in a foreign country, and getting it covered on national breakfast television. What gave this guy the right to intervene in politics in this way, give public speeches on such issues, or indeed to use the topic to essentially increase his cultural/political footprint? I know most people won’t be that bothered by this story, but I feel I need to point out how odd, even mildly troubling, I find it.

Pretty much on a whim I was just looking through my entry archive, and as coincidence would have it, it is pretty much twenty years to the day since I wrote this entry about Iran. Back then, of course, George Dubya Bush was still president of America, and I wrote that I was worried that they were trying to make a nuke. I don’t think I had thought about the issue for ages before the current crisis; but the alarming thing is, the recent turn of events brought about by Trump has made the issue far more pressing and dangerous than it was when I wrote that entry. As Alastair Campbell and Rory Stewart go into at some length here, Trump is clearly not mentally stable, and has ripped up what progress had been made towards resolving the complex issue more or less to suit his own vanity and arrogance. When dealing with a despotic theocracy, surely that’s the last thing we need.

A few days ago, exploring North London, I was struck by a question concerning a minority/subculture, whose members I kept passing. At first I was rather nervous about writing anything about it on here, for fear of offending or upsetting anyone, but having just come across this documentary about the group of people I was wondering about, I think I’ll go ahead and ask it: Why would a group of people, which historically has been one of the most persecuted communities of all, insist on continuing to wear the same clothes and hair styles, effectively setting themselves apart from non-members? However, as the documentary explains rather well, there is a long, complex and rather fascinating history behind their culture. I had been naively concerned that their setting theirselves apart so fervently would just ferment mistrust and suspicion; but we must always bear in mind that such ‘concerns’ have historically lead to humanity’s darkest chapters. If we start trying to regulate how people dress and imposing rules to ease such suspicions, we risk stamping out the very diversity which makes humanity so beautiful. They dress as they do in order to keep their culture alive, and surely that must be celebrated.

I was trundling through the park earlier, when I happened to pass two guys on a bench speaking French. I had no reason to interrupt them of course, but I reflected to myself that, while it is wonderful to live in such a multilingual city, I could probably assume that they spoke English perfectly well. I’m afraid to say that I then caught myself observing that most French people can these days, even if they still live in France. It was just a casual observation to myself, but something about it struck me.

I suspect my French friends and relatives would be quite disgruntled at this speculation, but is there any actual leverage in it? Has the English language become so dominant that we can reasonably assume that most of our neighbours use it? Obviously, this will have a lot to do with the ubiquity of American culture; but knowing how proud French people are of their language and culture, this trend really must vex them. I have written before about how English now seems to now be the default tongue.

Has English really become that ubiquitous, or am I just being an arrogant, ignorant Londoner? The question is obviously moot as I’ll never know what languages those guys knew, but I was struck to find myself making the assumption I did. After all, if you bumped into two guys speaking English in a Paris park, they wouldn’t necessarily know a word of French. I was just struck by the reflection I found myself making, although to be honest I really suspect there is a lot of truth to it.