This week I ordered a book from Amazon as a birthday gift. Yes, absolutely, I could have walked into town and used our local independent book shop, like a good citizen supporting the struggling high street businesses but it was lightly raining and I am lazy.

Upon checkout, I had the option of choosing three day delivery (an extra £4.99) or five day delivery (only £2.49). As the birthday isn’t until early September, I chose the later option. It was delivered the next day, which is great customer service but makes me wonder what the point of the two delivery options is when it arrives the next day regardless.

I immediately got an email asking me how the delivery was and on the bottom, saw the following magazines were recommended for me:

Apart from the combination offered, the next thing that struck me is how expensive the Kindle version of the Radio Times is, no wonder it is struggling in the star ratings. According to user reviews, it doesn’t arrive until halfway through the week when many of the programs have already been on.

This sent me down an online wormhole of discovering what else is recommended for me.

Apparently, the algorithms have decided I am interested in:

• Wooden flooring installation
• Campari
• Children’s shoes
• Retirement homes
• Inflatable palm trees

I have not taken this list as a compliment. I mean, Campari?

How many people are looking for both children’s shoes and retirement homes. Also, I wonder how the inflatable palm tree market is doing during these ‘unprecedented times’…

All this makes me want a Campari.

Putting on a talent show towards the end of a holiday is a guaranteed way to pull in a large crowd, meaning the managers are always very keen to include them in the programme, even if what comes on stage isn’t worth the effort. There are a number of steps to the process.

Step One – Registration

               A notice would be displayed asking people wanting to take part to meet at a given time. This is important to measure the level of interest and also filter out those who are unsuitable for a family show (generally, men of a certain age who don’t understand why their jokes are offensive “you can’t say anything these days”) or those who are not ready. “I would like to play the violin” “great, do you have a violin?” “not with me”

Step Two – Rehearsal

               This is by far, the worst part of the process. The people who turn up are usually completely different to the people who registered in the first place and at least half will have changed their act to something entirely different. A group of singing kids who now want to make gingerbread instead, that kind of thing. Another problem that raises its head at this stage, is that many of the people who registered don’t actually have an act and want me to teach them a dance routine or how to juggle by tomorrow.

               Between the rehearsal and the show, it is inevitable I will receive a series of emails, letters and phone calls regarding the people who have signed up. About a third will have changed their minds (often the best ones) but have found somebody to take their place. I have learned, it is worth checking if this other person actually knows they are being volunteered.

               Then come the requests. I now always bring the lyrics of the songs as it is probable many people won’t know most of the words to their tune of choice.  People suddenly decide it is vital they are provided with a long list of items they can’t possibly perform without. Often it is costumes “do you have a white and orange stripy jumpsuit I can borrow in a size 12” or “is there a leather jacket you don’t need that I can paint slogans onto?”. Other things I have been ask to locate with little warning have included a hay bale, three tins of yellow paint, a grand piano together with somebody to play it, a live dog and a mini cooper that can be driven through a fire door onto the stage.

Step Three – The Show

               No matter how early I arrive, there will be a line of people wanting to talk to me. People who were up late drinking have mysteriously fallen ill and can’t perform, people who have suddenly realised they don’t have the music they need, people who have written their own introductions for me to read out (often at least three pages long) and almost nobody will want to do what they did at the rehearsal yesterday. I will have to change the running order at least half a dozen times before we begin.

               The majority of the time, the shows are fine, if a little underwhelming. They are usually very fast, many people are done in less than 60 seconds and I have to stretch the time to make it worthwhile. There will always be a child who forgets what they are doing and starts crying. Also, somebody who announces that I wouldn’t let them do what they wanted. How unfair, they tell the audience, I didn’t provide them with a kangaroo costume that their family only requested two minutes after the show started. In amongst the people doing star jumps, blowing up balloons with their nose and telling slightly off-colour poems rather than the sonnet agreed, we struck gold.

• Some children playing flutes while simultaneously doing ballet
• A couple who both took the opportunity to propose marriage to the other
• A young woman who played 80s rock songs on the vacuum cleaner

In 2018, I made the best decision of my life, not marriage or children but to never run another talent show. I have never been happier.  

“This would be a great opportunity to explore a new career” said the lady being interviewed on the radio.

Like millions of other people, I am currently unemployed and am not finding job hunting easy. There is not much available and what is on offer isn’t that appealing. There have been stories in the news this week about thousands of people applying for a single position as a bar tender. If candidates with masses of qualifications and years of experience are finding it tough, what hope is there for people like me?

So, what can I actually do? When I was at high school, we had to fill in a skills survey and the results arrived a few days later in the post. I remember opening the letter excitedly only to find that my top match was prison officer. This experience has made me a little sceptical of the careers guidance profession.

An online job search this morning was fairly typical of the last few weeks. Almost everything on offer was either construction (to which I am not well suited) or care providing (which apparently needs certificates). I saw a company advertising for a ‘Front End Developer’. The skills required included ‘React.js, Angular & Vue.js’ and the fact I have no idea what language this is, almost certainly means I am unqualified.

I decide to start filling in a government provided, online career guidance skills assessment. They are free and are supposed to only take a few minutes. It is a long series of questions and I need to tick a box on a scale between strongly agree and strongly disagree.

• I am comfortable telling people what they need to do
• I make decisions quickly
• I prefer to follow what other people are doing

The questions keep on coming and as my brain starts to melt, the ‘I am unsure’ box gets used more and more.

• I set myself targets
• I am a competitive person
• I like to see things through to the end

By the time it is all over, I am completely beaten into submission and have no idea if I agree or not. The only positive decision I have made so far is to get a lottery ticket and hope that it solves all my problems.

Eventually the results come through. My top matches are

• Member of Parliament
• TV Stuntman

I wonder what I must have ticked to make this combination of results.

A quick check of the job centre shows that neither of these occupations have any current vacancies. It is true to say my scepticism for careers guidance remains unchanged.

Now, where is that lottery ticket?

               There are a lot of advantages in renting somebody’s spare room. Having a landlord onsite means the house is likely to be in a good condition, without the normal rental property nightmares like mould on the walls, broken appliances or mice. Plus, it is in their interests to quickly fix things that go wrong.  I have had some great landlords, people who have grown-up children leaving home and so are well used to people coming in and out are particularly brilliant.

               On the other hand, I remember a landlady who made up a burglary and called the police to report the theft of her non-existent jewellery. They arrested her within a few minutes as it was clear she was wasting police time. Another time, a previous tenant took keys when they left so the landlord changed the locks, forgot to leave me a copy and went on holiday.

               The websites looking for tenants reveal a lot about the landlords. The first group are the ones who have had bad experiences previously:

• No smokers, or Binge drinkers please. Also needs to be happy around Germans.
• Prefer males as I usually relax around the flat in just my boxers and won’t change that for anyone.
• It will not be possible to have post delivered to this address.

There are the ones who really don’t have space but need the extra money:

• Necessary to purchase the current double bed in the room, it won’t be expensive and there’s lots of storage space underneath it.
• Your room would be the large sitting room which will be shared from time to time. Bed put in storage during daytime hours.
• Room available Monday to Friday only. Minimum let three-months.

Then there are the rooms that for some reason have been available for a long time now:

• In addition, you will be expected to mow the lawn and need to know that my Guinea Pigs always come first.
• Female preferred to help the men keep the place clean
• Must tolerate the smell of takeaways
• Mad spurs fan lives here. Girls and gays are fine but not gooners.

I would recommend looking at these websites, they are a brilliant way to spend an afternoon.

‘You are representing the school’ was a familiar address from the teachers to our class before embarking on a school trip. My fellow students and I were never particularly bothered about improving the image of the school while touring local places of educational interest, so this instruction didn’t ever work. Perhaps, the threat of not stopping at the chip shop on the way home would have been more effective.

Terrible school trips are a part of my childhood and ones that particularly stick in my mind include

• A museum about the history of salt production, which has since been replaced by a butterfly sanctuary
• Trekking up a hill to an oxbow lake, which we never actually saw due to dense fog
• Looking at the chimneys of a local power station
• A reconstruction of wartime evacuation, which included us all making gas mask boxes out of brown paper and a long walk in pouring rain
• A couple of hours in a motorway service station when the bus broke down. Once it was fixed, there was no time left and we went straight back to school.

However, there was one school trip that made up for all the rest. When we were about 15 we went on a performing arts trip to Greece. Our brave teachers took us for a series of dance and drama workshops held in the town of Pireus (about an hour from Athens). We had classes in the morning and evening while the afternoons were ours to explore or sit by the pool. There were three other schools there and the idea was that we would rehearse something to present on the final morning. The weather was beautiful and being teenagers who would not be told to do anything, we all got sunburnt.

The drama classes were my favourite, we were broken into small groups and had to come up with a short play to present at the end of the week. The leaders said we were allowed to swear onstage so that is pretty much all we did. For the dance classes, we were taught a routine as a whole class. I have never been able to dance and this was quickly noticed by the tutor who instructed me to ‘step and clap’ at the back. That still didn’t go well, it was followed by the command to ‘clap quietly’.

As it turned out, our flights back were mysteriously changed meaning we couldn’t do the final presentation. The other schools were spared from my swearing and quiet clapping, which in retrospect was probably for the best, after all I was ‘representing the school’.

This is a question that I dread. The truth is, I have no interest at all in football and never really have done. It seems that is a subject there is no correct answer to. If pushed into a corner, I will name the nearest big city and say I support them. A few years ago, I confidently told somebody I supported London.

If I tell the truth, people look at me like I am crazy and edge slowly away, never to be seen again. Or else they just ask again ‘come on, you must have a team’. If I make up a club to support, it inevitably leads to follow up questions I have no idea how to answer. I have learned that VAR (some kind of action replay system that takes ages) is generally hated so I try to make a quip about that and change the conversation. Once I tried to say I supported England, but I found that was the wrong answer too.

I suppose a lot of this was down to school PE. I hated it so much, sports seem to make people angry and spending an hour in shorts in the rain in January was my idea of hell. We had a terrifying Scottish PE teacher who did nothing but yell. Mr Roberts was a short man, with a shaved head and for whom smiling seemed a sign of personal weakness. If a student, did particularly poorly in a lesson, he would make them litter pick. I always tried to do badly to gather crisp packets, but it rarely worked. One day it was announced in an assembly that Mr Roberts was about to become a father and I was genuinely surprized.

As an autistic adult, I find football very intimidating. Large crowds of people all shouting are something I actively avoid. People take it so seriously and major tournaments disrupt everything. I used to try telling people that ‘it is only a game and there will be another one on soon’ but that never seemed to go down well.

I have to pay special attention to the football schedules, so I am not around at the end of a game. Going shopping during an England game will guarantee empty streets. I have noticed that there are four stages of national mood during a football tournament.

Part 1. We will never win

               Part 2. We might actually win

               Part 3. We are going to win

               Part 4. We didn’t win.

So in anticipation of the football returning, I have found out that London is not the name of a team, League one is actually the third league and if all else fails just moan about VAR.