Got Rho to finally pen something for the blog - to be honest I've been trying to get her to write something for ages - as I reckon it's interesting to get another perspective on stuff pertaining to 'Ver Autism' as we call it around here. As ever it'd be interesting to hear other folks take on it, in a nice way obviously! So Rho it's over to you..... Rho and myself discussing stuff yesterday.   This is my first wee foray into the land of blog, if you like it, thanks! If not, it’s Ash’s fault….anyway, here goes…. Ash and I were having one of our late night autism chats. (Just for the record, Ash and our 3 kiddlings are autistic) We were talking about photos, Ash reckons his autism-dar goes off when he looks at someones eyes in a photo and we were chatting about what that could mean. That sort of “distracted” look. So I was thinking about the day to day things that my family talk about and how

Available here .

As regular reader(s) might know I try not to rant too much on here and occasionally post everyday, normal stuff that may be of interest. A case in point is that a few months ago I was asked to illustrate a strip for a 44-page, comic book anthology entitled Always Punch Nazis with all profits going to the Southern Poverty Alliance, anyway my print copy just turned up and it looks great. Buy your copy here . As an (arty) aside, if you're round and about in Glasgow over the next few weeks why not pop into the Mitchell Library and take a look at "Don't Assume" - an exhibition of the work I completed alongside the Open Museum. Normal ranting will resume as soon as.

As a short sequel - of sorts - to the whole #Puppetgate saga (you can read all about it here ) it turns out that we should actually be quite grateful that in the play All In A Row they decided to portray an Autistic person like this: Because this is what they originally designed: Honestly I don't have the words.

Anyone who uses Twitter - or social media in general will be aware a hashtag is a type of metadata tag that allows users to apply user-generated tagging which makes it possible for others to easily find messages with a specific theme or content. For example: "I like trains, how can I find train stuff on Twitter? I know I'll type #ILikeTrains and see what happens....." Cue hours of fun, hilarity and sometimes annoyance as you end up wasting hours reading random stuff. On a more serious note it's really effective shorthand for more serious/personal threads. The #MeToo movement is a great example of this. Unfortunately it can also be used to undermine and re-centre conversations that some groups may be uncomfortable with. And this unfortunately seems to be the case at the moment with the # ActualAutismParent  hashtag. Very recently there's been a huge upsurge in visibility of the Autism community online as we/they become more vocal regarding

Been a wee bit quiet around here of late due to much work having to be completed but couldn't let this pass without comment, albeit a very childish one seeing as much better bloggers than me have covered this too . And with way fewer silly asides but heyho. Anyway was online yesterday when I can across this ad for a new Autism based play called All In A Row. Can you see what they did there? And I'm not talking just about equating an Autistic person as a cake. Even if it's a blue one. Well we can be thankful it's not a bloody jigsaw piece.  Anyway let's ignore the life-affirming and twee ableist nonsense about the power of love and the strength of family 'overcoming' the pain of raising an Autistic child for a minute and concentrate on the fact that the Autistic character is portrayed by a bloody puppet. No, really. And here it is: You see according to the writer Alex Oates (who's worked with someone who knows a person with