Would You Rather?

We all know the format of these questions. Two options are presented to pick between, both equally appealing or unappealing, which are meant to start conversation, so for example;

Would you rather have a magic flying carpet or your own personal robot?
Would you rather have one eye in the middle of your head or three noses?
Would you rather have a bucket stuck on your head or a block of cement stuck on your foot?
Would you rather be the best player on a losing team or the worst player on a winning team?

Well this week the government gave me a real life ‘would you rather’ conundrum in relation to the new face covering rules, here in England.

The guidance was released the afternoon before the rules came into force. Face coverings are needed in places people will be indoors for a few minutes (shops, banks, post offices) though not places where people will be indoors for a few hours (theatres, cinemas). It is all very confusing.

I have never liked things that obstruct my face. No matter how bright it is, I don’t wear sunglasses (luckily, it is usually to cloudy to be a concern). This also applies to baseball caps, fancy dress costumes, face paint and much else. A lot of this is because I am autistic and like many people on the autistic spectrum I struggle with change and new situations. To prepare for this, I ordered a mask online and then tried wearing it around the house, it didn’t go well.

The conundrum is that I have been given a ‘get out of jail free card’ from HM Government. Alongside people with panic disorders, cognitive impairments, people with breathing difficulties, issues affecting dexterity and many others, people with ‘other non-visible disabilities such as autism’… ‘are also exempt from wearing a face covering, regardless of the venue’. I have found my autism alert card from when I was diagnosed so I am good to go… or am I?

On the other hand, just because I don’t have to wear one, does that mean I shouldn’t do so? The risk of spreading disease or catching it myself is not something I want to consider. Also, there is the bigger problem of having to explain it to the people I come across. I doubt many would argue if I tried to explain (its not the British way!) but with the guidance released so late, it is very possible many people won’t know about these exemptions.

Processing information, talking to new people (particularly in a confrontation) and being overwhelmed by senses and information are all causes of shutdowns and meltdowns.

So what do I do? What would I rather?

I guess I will have to give it a try and see what happens. Time will tell.

Magic flying carpet, one eye in the middle of your head, cement stuck on your foot & best player on a losing team – you?

Room To Let

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.

Carton boxes and suitcases placed on bed in empty light room — You never know what you will find…

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.

Representing The School

‘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’.

Nice to see you, to see you ????

I have heard many people say, ‘I never forget a face’. Well I do. Frequently.

I can remember obscure facts, historical details and stuff nobody cares about, but people are a mystery. Unless I have met somebody several times and recently, they are erased from my mind.

Yesterday, a woman stopped me in the street, she knew exactly who I was and seemed really pleased to see me. However, I had no idea if she was a childhood friend, former colleague or maybe just somebody I gave a bingo prize to last month. I was hoping she would drop in some detail that would help me out but no luck. She must now think I am a terrible person. Perhaps I should have admitted I had no idea who she is. Thinking back on it, I can remember where I spoke to that woman, what she was wearing and even what the weather was like but her face has already gone.

This is the second time in the last couple of weeks this has happened to me. The first time was a man roughly my age, who not only knew my name but also that of my brother.

Doing research for this blog, I find this ‘facial blindness’ is quite common in the autistic community.

Two comments from the National Autistic Society forum

An example from recent history is one day last October when I asked the same couple three times within an hour what they had done that day without any memory I had already spoken to them. Turns out they went to see the seals.

I am also completely unprepared for somebody to speak to me out of the blue. I do not really understand why they would want to. This is also the case on the internet. My job means I am required to have an ‘online presence’. In reality, this only involves other people from the same company who are also required to have an ‘online presence’, we all like each other’s posts on Twitter or Instagram (about events we all already knew about) and the same photo goes round and round. I am not convinced any of us really know how to use social media properly and I have no problem with that.

A message from a stranger comes as a complete shock, particularly when it is somebody with whom I have no connection at all. Why would they want to?

This week, out of the blue, I received a comment on a photo from months ago (of a sunset) from a person so unlikely I had to look several times…

Paul Burrell (best known as the butler to Princess Diana)

That one ‘like’ was from me. Goodness knows how he found that photo.

The internet is a crazy place.

The Radio Years – Prizes

The year after I left the local radio stations, there was several scandals involving competitions on the BBC. The most notable when Blue Peter ran a competition to name a cat and then changed the results. Many others then followed and choice details from the ensuing enquiry included:

A competition was announced that appeared to feature genuine listeners phoning in to take part, one of whom would win a prize on air. In fact, in recorded programmes, there were no competitions or prizes and all of the callers were actually members of the production team and their friends.
Viewers were led to believe that a phone-in competition, open to the audience, had been won by a viewer. Due to a technical mistake, calls from the public did not get through and the name of a fictitious winner was read out on air.
A group had been interviewed on-air and unexpectedly offered listeners a pair of tickets to a gig. Nobody phoned in and “in order to spare the band, the programme and the presenter any embarrassment, the producer invented a winning name, which was broadcast”.

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That last one is particularly heart breaking. They were often caused by technical errors or people trying to make the best of bad situations. My confession is, this kind of thing was rife everywhere. It was commonplace for competitions to run which nobody would enter (so we made up winners) or where the prize did not exist (so we made up entire competitions) for which we never answered the phone. It really never occurred to us that we were doing anything wrong.

When we did have real prizes, we ran real competitions. However, these prizes were generally terrible. Every week, we would get a list of items from a PR company who would give us stuff in return for an on-air promotion (anyone who listens to the radio, knows this still happens). I would always send off for everything but since we were a small station all the good stuff would be snapped up by the big stations with the famous presenters, so we got the leftovers.

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I remember giving away:

A ‘years supply of crisps’ which translated to 26 packets, presumably calculated for somebody who doesn’t eat that many crisps.
A voucher for ‘a leading supermarket’, even though the nearest branch was 46 miles away
A ‘dog care package’ which contained 4 tins of dog food and a brush
A ‘cholesterol testing kit’ (goodness knows why), the winner for this was so excited she got in a taxi to pick it up from the station straight away.

It never seemed to matter how terrible the prizes were, people were always really excited to win them. I would call them, and they would scream with joy at the thought of a free bottle of sun cream or some orange squash. It all seems so innocent now.

The Radio Years – Events

For a few years in the early 2000s I had a program on a small radio station that has long since been disbanded. Although the pay was much too low to actually live on, those were the best days of my life.

As part of this, I found I was invited to a whole host of events. I went backstage at TV shows, to music festivals, film premieres and industry parties. All I had to do was phone up the number on the press release and ask. It was often clear that the relevant PR company had never heard of the radio station but that never seemed to stop them from saying yes. The peak of the madness was the summer of 2005, me and a colleague drove to London for something almost every weekend and being young and carefree I thought it was just brilliant.

As it was a long cross-country drive, we would stay in a cheap B&B somewhere in the capital (or on one occasion, slept in the car in a layby) and I would always pack my red inflatable hat. The idea was that it would make me stand out, without having to do anything, so the PR people would spot me, and we would get the best of the free stuff.

A lack of self-awareness goes a long way…

One of the strangest evenings must have been my attendance at the press night of the new musical ‘Patti Boulaye’s Sun Dance’ at the Hackney Empire, described in the notes as ‘a new musical featuring a cast of 36 dancers, singers and musicians who celebrate the colours and music of Africa in a display of ceremonial dances, rituals and initiation ceremonies’. To be clear, I had no reason to be there. I was not a theatre reviewer and it was much too far away to expect any of my listeners to book a ticket. I seem to remember being offered an interview to speak to Patti afterwards but am less clear about if that transpired.

The evening started with us going down the red carpet. My colleague was dressed as John Travolta from Saturday Night Fever and I had my infamous red hat (I was so confident back then) and on reaching the entrance being told we were supposed to enter through a side door, meaning we had to go back down the red carpet the other way again, giving the photographers a second chance to ignore us. Thinking back, it seems a complete mystery why we decided to treat everything as a fancy-dress party.

I have no real recollection of the show itself but do know that once the performance was finished, we went to the after-show party, held in an upstairs room above the theatre. Various celebrities were there, people from daytime TV, Big Brother contestants and people (like us) who were there mainly for the food and drink.

The other significant thing about that trip was that once we got back to the hotel, I spent the whole night locked in a toilet. The handle fell off and despite my knocking, nobody came to my aid. After a while I gave up and slept on the floor until a cleaner found me in the morning. My colleague never did believe that was what happened.

I should use this opportunity to apologise to Patti Boulaye and her team for abusing their hospitality and everyone involved will be happy to learn that I lost the red hat in a strong gust of wind several years ago.

Who Do You Support?

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.

Soccer Player Kicking White Gray Soccer Ball on Green Grass Field

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.

Lost and Found

Living at work can be a strange thing. Upon moving in, there is the great unknown of what I will inherit from the previous occupant, people who have been there a while or departed quickly will often leave behind a vast array of things. Some of it more useful than others, toiletries are a given (there is always half a bottle of shampoo and some tins of cheap food) but other treats have included

A half build bird box
Two industrial sized bags of modelling clay
14 pairs of scissors loose under a bed
One bicycle wheel

It is all a bit like the final round of the Generation Game.

When I had to leave in a hurry (during the beginning of a global pandemic) a few months ago, I found there wasn’t room for everything in my small suitcase. Since I knew nobody else was going in there for a while, I took a gamble and left a lot of stuff behind with the aim to collect it at a later point.

By then it looks like face masks will be compulsory on busses and trains, I have no idea how to make one (and no inclination to find out) so I will need to buy one, but which one and from where? I don’t want one that is going to be very uncomfortable over a six-hour journey, yet I doubt I will be able to try one on. At first, I liked the idea of wearing a kids party mask and travelling as Batman but apparently it needs to be something ‘capable of catching respiratory droplets’. I don’t doubt it will be long until Respiratory Droplets will be running in the 3:15 at Goodwood.

People Wearing DIY Masks — Perhaps one of these might work…

Since my hurried departure was in March, things that didn’t make the cut included summer clothes. I took a winter hat and scarf yet nothing for sunshine, after all, it wasn’t even Easter. However, as we all know, there has been the best spring since records began.

As it became clear that a) I wasn’t getting the stuff back in the near future and b) the good weather was lasting, I ordered some cheap t-shirts and lighter stuff online. Then, of course, the delivery was delayed.

I got an email saying there was a problem and they needed more information. I went to the website to enter the information (as instructed) and found that feature had been disabled, then I phoned them to find out what information was required and how I can give it. Yet the automated system didn’t have that as a possibility and cut me off, twice.

The next day I got an email to say it was on its way, then another one an hour later saying there was a problem and they needed more information, still no sign of what this information is or how to give it. I contacted the seller who replied five days later to say that everything looks fine from their end.

By now I had given it up for lost yet on Wednesday it arrived out of the blue and since then it has hardly stopped raining. At least the change of weather means I won’t need to worry any longer about a weird face mask shaped tan line.

White Ceramic Sculpture With Black Face Mask

Ten Weeks Later

NHS claps are an odd way to measure time but seem as useful as any other method. Last night was the tenth one meaning we have all been inside for much less than the 45 years I had assumed we are up to.

Time has really melted away over the lockdown period. Much like people from the pre-historic era, the only things we need to do are eating and sleeping. Perhaps archiologists will find unearth items from our current period, perhaps bits of failed DIY projects, a discarded exercise bike or things panic bourght and never used. I know a lady who grabbed seven tins of tuna into her basket and then a week later remembered she was allergic.

The government have been turned into hype merchants. Rather than counting down to a big game, the release of a new Harry Potter book or tickets for Glastonbury, now we get excited for the reopening of the tip or garden centre, queueing for hours like autograph hunters at the final of a reality TV show. My local radio station sent a reporter to cover the opening of the tip, (a great use of their degree in journalism). I wonder how many people who went to look at bedding plants, didn’t even have a garden and were just looking for something to do. Next week car showrooms are opening, I can hardly sleep with delight.

One thing that has become a staple of my day is the government’s daily press conference, 5pm weekdays and 4pm at the weekend (unless the Prime Minister is doing it, in which case it can be almost any time). These briefings start with an announcement, if it is something important, it will have already been leaked, so I already knew. If not (something like a new taskforce or the launch of a website) I will not care but I will still listen. Then there is a rotating line up of scientists presenting a daily PowerPoint presentation, the slides are the same each day and I wonder if they sometimes use an old one to see if anyone notices. There is something oddly relaxing about listening to somebody describing a graph on the radio. Perhaps they could be clipped together and launched as a sleep aid.

The next part is a fun game, the journalist questions. I like guessing who the journalist will be (bonus points for predicting what they will ask). As a rule of thumb, the first three will be BBC, ITV & Sky and all three will ask the same question (I wonder if they realise) and none of them will get an answer. The final question will be from a local newspaper like the Stoke Gazette.

“What would you say to our reader Dr Brown who is very concerned about the PPE shortage, his hospital hasn’t had a delivery in weeks”

“I would like to thank Dr Brown for his valuable contribution to our national effort to get this terrible virus under control and thanks to the hard work of the people of Stoke we are now all able to go to the tip”.

Lucky us, at least we have car showrooms to look forward to.

Ring Ring

I do not like change. There is nothing unusual there. Many people do not like change. It leads to uncertainty and confusion.

This is why I have stuck with my phone for so long. My mobile phone is so old it could be displayed in a museum. It doesn’t have the internet on so I can’t use it to video call, look anything up or put photos on the internet. It won’t help me when I get lost, won’t tell me when the next train is, let alone allow me to pay for things with it.

Because of all this, I rarely remember to take it anywhere and it often runs out of battery. Because it beeps when the battery is low, I have turned off the volume so on the extremely rare occasion somebody does call, I miss them. I tell myself it is for emergencies but since I never think to take it with me, that isn’t really true.

The other day I saw some kids who made a phone out of two cups and a length of string and it seemed to be more functional than the device I have.

I am quite happy with my old phone. I bought it in 2011 (it is much too old for this new track & trace software let alone Skype or Instagram) and at the time I asked for the one that is the easiest to use. It has huge buttons and the only function I can comfortably operate is the alarm clock. Every 25^th December, I get a text message from somebody I have not seen in years wishing me seasons greetings. This was the last text message I received, and I had to find the instructions to remember how to send a reply (once I noticed days later that I had a message).

My laptop is fine for communication and I don’t really see the point in multiple devices. Perhaps I should replace the old phone but I am not convinced I would use it any more. While writing this I looked up the cost of a new phone, they start from £30 (much cheaper than I imagined). I could afford that… But why would I want to?

Yes, it would be much more convenient and keep me safer plus I am sure I would get used to it soon enough but ‘if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it’ and in my opinion it just ain’t broke.