Category: Socialising with Autism

Christmas is approaching, along with its onslaught of sentimentality. I have found myself thinking, in slightly maudlin fashion, about failed friendships. There is an expectation, isn’t there, that our friends will be similar to us? It makes sense, I suppose: we gravitate to those we can share things with. But the idea that our friends …

“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 …

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 …

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 …