The biggest occasion of the week in the rural town I find myself living, is the market day. From my little flat overlooking the town square I get to witness it all and due to a poorly fitting single glazed window, I get to hear it all too.
The preparations begin the night before as two grumpy middle-aged men in high vis jackets put cones out to stop people parking on the market square. That is the easy bit. The harder bit is finding out who has not read the signs and locating them to move their cars out of the way. Cue a lot of shouting from the high vis two at hapless tourists “can’t you read” “are you stupid” and last week “you shouldn’t be allowed out”. Charming.
Market day itself begins before sunrise as the stalls are set up and the traders arrive with their wares. There are around 15 stalls. One is a greengrocer; another is a fishmonger. The rest sell a variety of things nobody really wants including wooden duck figurines, copies of posters signed by celebrities from yesteryear and model train parts. Another stall is dedicated to CD sales (desperately hoping they will come back in fashion) and weirdly, there are two stalls specialising in gentleman’s slippers.
From my little flat, I can’t fail to notice that market day comes with its own musical accompaniment. This is provided by a group of well meaning (but terribly out of tune) singers from a local church singing the material from their services. I have never seen anyone stop to listen. I have to turn the radio up louder to drown them out.
It is fair to say that the patrons of the market fit a particular demographic group. The local cafes are aware of this so on market day a range of demographic appropriate offers appear, most of which offer tea, soup and other produce that doesn’t involve a lot of chewing.
By 3pm, it is all over. The high vis two have removed the cones, the fishmonger has tipped ice down all the drains, the terrible buskers are having tea & soup and the same number of wooden ducks that have been there since sunrise are back in their van.
I wonder how much money the market really makes. It never seems that busy, but it is the heart of the town, and it would be a shame to lose it. Perhaps next week I should buy slippers from both the rival stalls and some celebrity memorabilia just to support the traders. What to do about the terrible buskers from the local church is a whole other matter… Perhaps the two men in high vis jackets could get involved and move them along… to somewhere no one can hear them….
The thing with birthdays ending in a ‘0’ is that they are rare and unavoidable. We get plenty of notice that they are coming so can make plans for something special to celebrate, or we can do our best to completely ignore them. I chose the latter option.
My recent 0 birthday fell on a Sunday, I had booked the weekend off work and planned to spend it out of town, away from the risk of any kind of surprize. This plan was thwarted when (yet again) train strikes were announced so my plans were cancelled, and I decided just to spend the day at work instead. The gamble here was did anyone at work know about my 0 birthday…
Sunday lunch at the rural pub probably deserves its own blog such is the peculiarity of that weekly occasion but safe to say, that it didn’t disappoint…
Highlights of my 0 birthday included
Telling a customer that they couldn’t switch their parsnip from the Sunday roast for an ice cream sundae for free
A waiter falling over a dog and sending an entire tray of drinks over a customer in their 80s
Somebody phoning up to ask for the contact details of the pub round the corner
A child drawing on a wall in felt tip
Going to the Co-op as the kitchen had somehow managed to run out of chips by 2pm
Arguing with a delivery driver who was adamant that a five-foot Christmas tree is the same height as a five-meter Christmas tree
Cleaning up the results of when the felt tip bearing child went on to have explosive diarrhoea on a dining room chair
I thought I had got away with it until the end of shift debrief when the chef asked me when my birthday was. It was a heart stopping moment, I paused just long enough for the phone to ring again (‘Has somebody handed in a picture of Del Boy in a frame? My mother has left it somewhere’). By the time that was dealt with, the moment had passed, and conversation moved to something else.
I now have ten years to plan how to avoid my next birthday ending in a 0. In ten years’ time, the trains will probably still be on strike and I will probably still be working with the public. I just wish for less diarrhoea on the furniture…
The coffee machine at the rural pub is terrifying. It is noisy, sprays hot liquids around and has sixteen buttons to choose from. It is no wonder I spent my first two weeks trying to avoid it that was until everyone started to notice and I had to learn how to work the stupid thing.
One thing that became clear to me is that all the staff members who make coffee, make it differently. One person will say it should be ‘milk first’, somebody else ‘coffee first’. Should it be a double shot or a single shot? Depends, who you ask. That is before we consider the actual presentation…
However, luckily for me, it turns out very few of the customers know the difference (or really understand what they are ordering) and the only complaint you will ever get is if the biscuit is forgotten.
This machine looks much cleaner than mine….
Our most popular order is the americano – just coffee and hot water – yet almost everyone wants milk to put in it (making it not an americano). Nobody seems that clear about the difference between a flat white and a cappuccino. When I asked, I got the answer ‘flat whites go in a white cup, the others go in a mug’. Although I am sure there must be more to it, I have followed this rule and I seem to be getting away with it.
A trick I learned is chocolate powder covers everything. It is fine if it looks a mess, just cover it with powder. I do this on a mocha, a hot chocolate and now a cappuccino (in a mug) then walk away quickly before they have time to taste it.
Another confusing order is ‘extra hot’. This request comes in reasonably often and is odd, how can water be hotter than boiling point? It all comes out the machine at the same temperature. We get round this conundrum by letting the other coffees in the same order cool down meaning the ‘extra hot’ one is the only one served with the correct level of heat.
No idea what all those buttons do….
By far my favourite order is a cafetiere. Coffee pot, milk jug, sugar bowl, biscuit. Easy. The scary machine is not involved. I try and steer anyone who is unsure towards choosing this option. They often seem quite relieved when I suggest it.
So, what I have learned is this, at the rural pub, very few people ordering coffee know what it is they are ordering. This is handy as neither do the people making it.
I found a clause on the ninth page of my contract which said the company would organise the relocation for staff members transferring to other sites. As a non-driver, I jumped on this. I was hoping that they would find me a van I could put everything in, instead the manager drove me himself in his car. The move also happened two weeks earlier than planned, perhaps he was keen to get rid of me. Either way, it solved my problem.
One of the skills I picked up from the cruise ships is the ability to pack and unpack quickly. I simply don’t understand the people that take two weeks to pack a suitcase for their weekend away, I can pack up everything I own in 45 mins. So it was, the posh hotel closed in the morning, and I was in my new flat in a new town that evening. It was all a whirlwind but as I knew it was coming, I was prepared, and the move was fine.
The flat itself is just round the corner from the rural pub I am working at. The company only bought it earlier this year and I am the first permanent resident. It is very large (four bedrooms) plus a big kitchen, to be frank, it is much too big for me but I am enjoying living alone. It took me two weeks to realise it would be safe to leave groceries in the cupboard, nobody would steal them as there was nobody else there. I noticed that I am close enough to the market square that my flat, or at least the bits of my flat I use, benefit from the town’s free wi-fi.
I requested a kettle and a toaster (neither of which were already there) and I was settling in nicely until the builders arrived. Apparently, now the building is occupied it needed to be fitted with emergency lighting and an upgraded fire alarm system. Why this couldn’t have been done while the building was empty remains unclear.
The work took more than a week and happened before and after the bank holiday weekend so for three days, I had floorboards up and holes in the ceiling. They left nails on the floor for me to stand on, plaster covered everything I owned and, on the Friday, they left my front door open all evening (while I was at work). They ate their lunch at my kitchen table and used all my toilet roll for their plastering. It is fair to say I wasn’t getting on well with the builders. On the last night, they were still banging around until 8:15pm. Who knew builders worked that late?
Anyway, It took me nearly a week to clear up all the mess since they left but at least they have gone and my peace has returned. That was until the building report arrived…
There are many reasons to try and get the day off when a large wedding is booked into your place of employment. It will be a very long day, many things will get broken, and the behaviour of the guests is often less than ideal.
We place bets on how many empty bottles of products we don’t stock we will be left to clear up, how many people we will need to charge due to the amount of extra cleaning required in the bedrooms and what time the police will need to be called.
Yuck
Another particular dislike of mine is having to endure the speeches. Not once all summer did we have a wedding where the speeches lasted less than half an hour (despite them being scheduled to last ten minutes) and they are often incredibly tedious. They are usually full of ‘in jokes’ that most of the guests don’t understand and it is surprizing how many stories are told in wedding speeches that are highly inappropriate for the family audience in attendance.
It is a weird tradition that people are asked to entertain after dinner despite having no public speaking experience so generally either read from a generic script downloaded from the internet in an incredibly unengaging way or go on a long whiskey fuelled ramble full of repetition and stories forgotten part way through. We will need extra staff on the bar during the speeches as many people on the further back tables use this time to slip away for yet more wine.
Please make it stop
Wedding speeches that stand out in my memory include
A party game and the guests had to guess the ending of stories about the couple and move around the room depending on their answers. People getting the answers wrong were eliminated. So many drinks were knocked over in the process.
A wedding that had nine speeches (though was scheduled to have just one) as their large competitive family all wanted a go too. It quickly became clear nothing had been prepared and the bride stepped in to tell everyone she had enough of all of them.
A rewritten version of the Fresh Prince of Belle Air theme tune which was performed to the absolute bemusement of many guests unfamiliar with the early 90s TV series.
A speech made in French as the groom had a degree in the subject. However, it seemed that he was the only person in the room who understood, and it wasn’t clear how much the speech giver understood either. We found out later he had just put a generic online wedding speech into Google translate.
So, for anyone planning a wedding, here is my advice. Don’t bother with the speeches. It will save so much time and stress and (most importantly) nobody will have to explain to Grandma what was said about the events of an 18-30s holiday in Faliraki.
“So, what do you actually want to do?” This was the very reasonable question put to me by the lady from HR. I didn’t feel I could tell her the truth which was, ‘I don’t really mind, I’ll do whatever you tell me to’.
The posh hotel is closing. We all knew it was coming. It was supposed to be happening since 2018 and because of that nothing has been maintained in years. There are four rooms that can’t be sold due to leaks in the roof, pictures are being hung in unusual places to cover up holes in the walls or damp patches, the fuses blow frequently and most of the woodwork is rotten. In fact, during the heatwave, I opened a window and the whole frame fell out. We have all become experts at distracting people from all this to such an extent that people more often complained about the state of the carpets or age of the curtains rather than the more serious structural issues.
We received our redundancy notices a few months earlier. I was asked to be an employee representative, I declined and quickly booked holiday I didn’t really want just so they couldn’t ask me again. I didn’t want to be responsible for myself let alone everyone else too.
yuck
I was not too worried. I have moved hotels before and every few days there is a news story about severe staff shortages in the hospitality sector (along with most other sectors). I felt sure I would get something. My problem is admin. My autistic brain can’t cope with lots of choices and I find form filling very stressful. Because of my admin fears, it seems much easier to stay with the company and move to one of their other various establishments around the country, rather than look elsewhere (too many options).
In preparing for my meeting with the lady from HR, the only things I had decided was that a) I wanted somewhere that included a place to live and b) I wanted to get off the minimum wage. Where the hotel was, doesn’t seem to important and neither does the work itself. I figured, they have access to enough of my appraisals to decide what I can and can’t do. I told her all this and she just looked at me in a confused manner.
“So, what do you actually want to do?” That question again. To waste time, I got a little notebook out of my pocket and opened it at a page that had writing on. The writing was irrelevant to the conversation – bus times for a place I lived years ago – but it gave me time to think of something to say.
More yuck
“I think I would like to be an Assistant Manager at somewhere not too big”. Was this actually what I wanted? No idea.
Three days later, the manager of a rural pub came to interview me. It occurred to me that the fact he has come to visit me and that it was so soon, meant that I would get the job. He was clearly desperate. In fact, he told me that the position had been vacant for a while and nobody else had applied. I didn’t mind a bit. We chatted for a while and then he offered me the job. I accepted it without a second thought. In hindsight, perhaps it would have been better to go and visit the rural pub, after all I would be living there too and I really don’t know the area, but it seemed like a solution to the problem and that was fine. Five days after my meeting with the lady from HR, I signed the contract.
Shortly after that, I realised that I don’t really know what being the assistant manager of a rural pub actually involves…
I have been visiting the Edinburgh festival for years. Not just the comedy but the films, plays, books, exhibitions and street performances too. I try and stay away from the famous names and instead go for things that catch my imagination. The scale of it is vast (over 55,000 performances across 317 venues) as is the quality. Everything from professionally designed high quality extravaganzas through to things that are essentially ‘people messing around’ in basements.
Memorable moments from my last few visits include
A comedy show with only three of us in the audience (the other two didn’t speak English)
A version of Jekyll and Hyde from the perspective of the monster performed as an interpretive dance
Something performed in a hotel pool where the audience members were invited to swim with the cast members
Very often I choose shows depending on what is closest and starting shortly. A few years ago I was walking down a street when it started raining so heavily, I rushed into the nearest foyer and ended up at a show so terrible, the performer stopped to tell the sound technician to ‘please sigh more quietly’.
However, as an autistic person, the Edinburgh festival can present a lot of problems. They can be hard to plan as so many things run late, plus there is a lot of noise, many venues are incredibly hot and of course, there are so many people there.
This year, the festival was a tough one for me. On the first morning, I got lost and ended up rushing to see a 10am show. Because I was away from my regular routine and overstimulated with the noise and crowds, I turned badly and twisted my hip causing a lot of pain. Over the next few hours, my body must have tried to adapt and so my other hip was overcompensating and that started to get very sore as well, meaning I had to adopt a slow shuffle as I moved from place to place. Edinburgh is not an accessible city. It has a lot of steps, steep slopes, busy roads and that is before you add in the festival crowds. To top it all off, I got my dates mixed up so the 10am show I rushed to see wasn’t actually on.
One particular moment was when I arrived at the main entrance of the Assembly Rooms (the normal home of the university) to see Choir of Man, a show I knew had been on in London and the main selling point was a working bar on stage which the audience members could use to get free beer. Obviously, without the ‘free’ beer, the ticket prices would be cheaper.
Anyway, the way into the show was up a huge stone staircase which with my twisted hips was impossible. I asked the lady at the entrance what I should do and she kindly explained the best way was round the side (up a hill) where I could use the accessible entrance. Although when I tried to do this, I was stopped by a security guard who told me I couldn’t pass due to the upcoming tattoo parade and instead I should ‘use the stairs’.
So back I shuffled round three sides of this huge building, fighting against the noisy crowds and after being given wrong directions by two different stewards I eventually found the accessible entrance and was put into a service lift which led me to the backstage area. Judging by the reactions of the various staff members, I got the feeling they were unused to this scenario. It was exciting being backstage in such a large theatre as people rushed by with large pieces of equipment. I was quite happy observing this show but following a hushed meeting of the various staff members, it was decided I should wait in the bar instead. This was fine, I said, how do I get there? Just down the stairs, came the reply. Another clue that this scenario was a new one for them.
The only way to get there without the stairs was through the sound booth where the audio engineers were working on another show (a very impressive street dance troop) and I shuffled through, giving them all a fright in the process. The bar was a temporary affair set up in the middle of a huge regal hall and I was the only customer. The bartender came over to chat to me (I don’t think she had anything else to do) and I asked who was the man immortalised in a large painting in the centre of the wall. “I don’t know, probably some colonial slave owner” came the response.
The show itself was fine, a rowdy singalong affair, all the characters were introduced even though there was no storyline, much of the time was taken up by the free beer queue but the audience didn’t seem to mind, they were having a great time. I think I would have preferred to watch the performance from the backstage corridor I was in earlier but maybe that says more about me than the show itself.
I decided that would be my last night in Edinburgh and I would go home the following day. There will be many more festivals and I can come back another year when I am feeling better. This is what I did and typically, the day after I got back, my hips went back to normal.
Thinking back on it, despite everything, I did have a good time this year.
A talented seagull snatched a sandwich out of my hand without leaving a mark
There was a ‘meal deal’ advertising a glass of wine and a Snickers bar for £4.50
I asked for the autograph of a composer to be told nobody does that anymore.
Next year, however, I will be more careful to check my dates and not rush to things that are not on.
The NHS have published the following advise for coping during a heatwave
“Have cold food and drinks, avoid alcohol, caffeine and hot drinks, and have a cool shower or put cool water on your skin or clothes. Keep your living space cool. Close windows during the day and open them at night when the temperature outside has gone down. Electric fans can help if the temperature is below 35 degrees.”
Of course, I ignored this and spent the hottest day of the recent heatwave walking three miles to a dog show held in a field up a hill. Aside from the heat, another surprising factor in this choice is that I don’t really like dogs. Their behaviour is unpredictable, I could really do without all the barking and jumping at people.
When I arrived, I was informed the tickets were £10 and cash only so I had to go back into town to find a cash point. It strikes me this is the kind of place that still pay for goods by postal order. I was told to give my £10 to Julie who put it straight into her pocket and told me receipts were not available. I am still unclear if Julie had any connection to the show.
The dog show itself was held in a large ring surrounded by a series of stalls selling, amongst other things
Axes (‘for the adventurous at heart’)
Telescopes
Cookies at £3 each
A lot of tweed
There were a group collecting signatures to overturn the fox hunting ban with leaflets encouraging people write to Tony Blair, who presumably won’t be that interested since he left his role as Prime Minister fifteen years ago (there have been five other prime ministers in that time). Perhaps its time that group update their materials.
There was trouble in the central arena as Barney (a beagle) was disqualified from the beagle show for ‘excessive barking’. I watched as a stern looking woman in wellington boots (even though it hadn’t rained in weeks) deposited Barney into the back of a range rover and drove off before the beagle show had finished.
I found a shady spot next to a van selling ‘Hawaiian style cocktails’. Oddly, this particular crowd were not interested in cocktails at 11am. My attention strayed to another man who was going from van to van asking for Ribena. Apparently it was for ‘Harley’ his foxhound who had deserved a special treat. I have never heard of dogs drinking Ribena before and neither had the stall holders who failed to deliver the special treat for Harley.
A large part of the event was a sheepdog trial. Having sheep chased around by dogs in 31-degree heat didn’t seem to be a problem for anyone present. The announcer informed us “I’ve been carefully watching the judge, she seems to be smiling, a bit”. Hardly a ringing endorsement.
All this excitement meant I was distracted and missed the awarding of the best walked hound. I did, however, hear the announcement thanking their sponsor (an insurance broker) for their ‘generous’ prize which was £2.50. I actually bought a program to double check this amount and yes, the insurance broker really did donate £2.50 as a prize.
I imagined that would be my favourite announcement of the day but it was beaten a short time later by “does anyone have any lettuce that Shirley’s Baps can borrow?”. Shortly followed by “Shirley’s Baps are still looking for lettuce, they sent young Josh to Tesco more than an hour ago, but he has gone AWOL”. Tesco was no more than a ten-minute walk away. Maybe he had gone back for Harley’s Ribena or stopped off for a Hawaiian style cocktail. I feel ‘young Josh’ probably deserved a drink for all he has to put up with.
Come to think of it, I feel most people there could have done with a drink…
* Less than half of autistic adults live independently
* 78.3% of autistic adults are unemployed
The reasons behind these facts are complicated but it is true that for many single autistic people such as me, true independence is hard.
I am lucky that I have always managed to find a job. Now, the market is in my favour, there are jobs everywhere. I work in the hospitality industry, and it feels like every hotel, every resort, every restaurant, everybody is hiring. Getting the job is easy. It’s keeping the job that is harder.
Routine is important and unexpected changes are difficult to deal with, workplaces can be full of these. Autistic people are not always great at teamwork but can often be brilliant researchers with an eye for details that others often miss.
Living in the hotel means a lot of white bed sheets are available…
However, my struggle is housing. I realised a long time ago that I don’t think I will ever be able to get my own house. Even if I won the lottery, the process of finding a place, doing the legal paperwork, arranging utilities, dealing with any building work and sourcing furniture is too much for me. The idea of all that turns me cold. I can understand why so many autistic people stay with family forever or end up in some kind of assisted living, it’s just easier.
My solution is different, I live at work. One of the great things about working in hotels is that there is often staff accommodation. Furnished rooms with utilities included and an on-site maintenance team to deal with problems, it really is a great situation for me. Often, I get free food from the restaurant too – but does this count as independent living? Probably not…
So, what happens when you loose your job? The home goes too… This happened to me a few years ago (during the start of the covid crisis) when I was given three days notice that both my job and my flat were being taken away from me. It took me a long time to get over that. In fact, for more than two years afterwards, I carried on checking my work emails, it was still part of my routine.
Then late last year, I got a job in the posh hotel with a lovely room to stay in. Things were going well until mid-summer 2022 when it was announced the hotel was closing and I received a letter of redundancy.
When I was about 15, I had a conversation with a friend regarding which we would prefer. To go grey or go bald. In my case, nature chose both options. As a result of this, going to the barbers is usually a straightforward procedure. I am not a loyal customer and will go to the place that happens to have the shortest queue.
Men’s hairdressing has become more complicated in recent years with the introduction of Turkish barbers and their hot towels. I also notice (in researching this) that Turkish barbering includes nasal hair waxing, I wish good fortune to anyone brave enough to try this. For me, even shampooing seems a bit unnecessary, I can do that myself.
So this week, I went to get my hair cut in a small barber shop in the town centre. It is one that doesn’t bother making appointments and you turn up and take your chances. My rule is that if more than two chairs are occupied, I will wonder around town and come back later. Sometimes I can waste a whole afternoon on this. Perhaps it would be more time effective to just sit and wait.
Torture equipment?
I was introduced to a barber I hadn’t met before. Let’s call her Caroline. She was a friendly woman and went through the standard list of questions. 1. How do you like your hair to be cut? 2. Are you working today? 3. Do you have any holidays planned? Perhaps there is a module on these questions at hairdressing school.
After about ten minutes, I started to notice that Caroline wasn’t really doing anything. She seemed to be looking at my hair, putting a comb through it but crucially, not cutting very much at all. After about twenty minutes of faffing around, Caroline decided she couldn’t see my hair so span round the chair to face the middle of the shop, bashing my feet into a cabinet in the process. ‘Much better’ she exclaimed.
Another twenty minutes passed during which time Caroline hit me in the face with a comb (three times), somehow managed to stick her finger down my ear, stuck a bit of folded up paper under the chair as it was wobbling (another bad sign) and then crashed my feet into the cabinet again as she mistook the chair for some kind of fairground waltzer ride.
In the meantime, Emma (the hairdresser in the next chair) had finished three customers. All three asked how busy the salon had been and Emma replied thoughtfully each time, like she had never heard that question before. It was very impressive. I also enjoyed her conversation with a young man which included the phrase “your hair would look better for longer if you tried washing it”.
Like a theme park attraction.
Luckily, I wasn’t in too much of a hurry (although neither, it seemed, was Caroline). After an hour and five minutes, Caroline asked Emma to check she ‘hadn’t missed too many bits’. Emma looked over from her cup of tea across the shop and said she ‘was sure it would be fine’.
Finally, it was all over and I went over to pay. Caroline asked if I wanted a loyalty card. If I visit her ten times, I will get a £2 discount on the eleventh haircut. I politely declined. As I was leaving she said “I am sorry about hitting you with the comb so many times, I hope you will come back soon”.
I wonder how long it would have taken if I still had a full head of hair, perhaps a toilet break and a spot of lunch would be needed…
Unseaworthy 