From Diagnosis Onwards…
It’s official. Or rather, it became official on a dark evening in late February. The Harley Street psychiatrist, slightly grainy over Skype, shuffled his papers, sighed a little and said “Look, we could go on and on, but it is obvious that you are autistic”. A feeling that I always associated visually with melting …
Wake me up when Summer’s over I sit down to write this having endured four days of what the newspapers helpfully screamed was a “mini-heatwave.” For four days, despite the fact that we are currently edging towards the middle of September, it was Summer again. Suddenly, I was eating salads and wearing white, wondering whether …
“And, how is your left buttock, Joe?” I asked one Saturday afternoon, via Zoom. Joe laughed. “Oh, it’s fine thanks. Still a bit bruised, but….” “He’s making a fuss about nothing,” said Miranda, his wife, “just to get maximum traction and sympathy.” “Aren’t you going to ask how my right buttock is?” “Erm…. I hadn’t …
My holiday destination of choice is Paris. Eminently gettable-to on the train, its beige, ornate buildings peacefully homogenous, smaller and quieter than London…. I could go on, but suffice it to say that I enjoy my time there. One of my friends used to live in Western France; we would meet in the capital for …
FOMO (that is Fear of Missing Out to the uninitiated) became a “thing” a couple of years ago. “Do you suffer from FOMO?” Screamed a raft of magazine articles. “No,” I would reply, bewildered. “I don’t “ But perhaps I have a slightly more complicated attitude to socialising than the above suggests. Casting my mind …
A couple of years ago, when people still met face to face and large groups were not associated with the passage of disease, I went to my friend Catya’s birthday party. One of the other guests was a more recent friend of hers, Max. Max was an actor. Not a famous one: the sort of …
I am checking my diary for the following week. In the corner of Tuesday’s box, I noticed a little “R” and I know what that means: it means that on Tuesday I will contact my friend Rochelle. Perhaps I will text her, or send her a WhatsApp message with a picture of Loretta. I have …
As much as I hate to admit it, my journey from pet-less to dog Mama has been one cliché after another. Loretta came to me just before Christmas – dog charities say that you shouldn’t buy at that time, but the pandemic was on and everybody did anyway. She is a French Bulldog, currently sitting …
“How are things with you?” my neighbour Ellie asked me yesterday from the opposite side of the road. Her little girl screeched to a halt on her pink scooter and pointed delightedly at Loretta. Cocker spaniels interlaced themselves around Ellie’s ankles. Her older children were back at school, the cat was waiting for them at …
Post Diagnosis:The Aftermath. Let’s start with some numbers, shall we? I like numbers and, contrary to popular autistic stereotypes, that is not because I enjoy or am good at maths. I just like the patterns that numbers can make. Looking back, perhaps my parents should have suspected that there was something autistic going on when, …