And so the saga draws to an end...  Full story to follow. 

 You lucky (and not so lucky) people.  

Regular readers of this blog may be aware of our adventures of late trying to swap over our Motability car, something that should be easy and accessible (clues in the name). As previously mentioned it's the first time we've ever had to swap over our car (you initially get it for 3 years) so we reckoned it'd be fairly straightforward - the staff on the phone at Motability have been great - tho' there has been a noticeable delay 'tween getting information on the phone and it being passed along the chain to the actual hard copy paper department, for example we phoned one day to extend the lease and were told it was no problem only to receive a letter a few days later saying the lease was up and we'd stolen the car(!), turns out 'the system' hadn't updated. An excuse that NT folk seem to accept as a given even tho' the new information would have been updated manually and almost instantaneously - the real reason was no-one bothered to inform anyone f...

It's my birthday today and bizarrely I not only share it with Joe D'Amato but with Bob Todd too. This makes sense of so many things.

   

  Yay!    Finally got around to booking tickets (thanks Rho) for my birthday film at the GFT this coming Monday.   I'm off to see Batman Returns - probably THE greatest comic adaptation/romantic weepie/Christmas movie/Breakfast at Tiffany's mash-up ever (with a brilliant Siouxsie And The Banshees song to boot ) and one of my all favourite films of all time on the big screen again.         The girls have never experienced it in all its widescreen glory before so I hope they're ready for it.   And ready for me blubbing like a baby at all the sad bits.   Oh and when Michael Keaton stands up in front of the Batsignal obviously.   And the mistletoe bit.   And when Face To Face plays at  Max Shreck's party ( "Oh, my God. Does this mean we have to start fighting?") .   Oh and the ending.   Seriously I cry a lot at this film and end up totally drained by the climax but the pure emotional turmoil is so worth it.   Ye...

Blast from the past!    5 years ago I wrote this for the Twins Trust Multiple Matters magazine, a - rather good if I say so myself - article on our family, twins and autism. Enjoy - again - the full (uncut - I tend to ramble) version below.       Hi everyone! Your illustrious editor has asked me to pen a few words for this issue regarding twins and autism – or Autistic twins if you like. Now before you quickly flick the page thinking “Gawd this’ll be a wee bit depressing/preachy” (delete as applicable) let me just alleviate your fears by pointing out that unlike most Autistic overviews that seem to concentrate on the differences and struggles parents of autistic kids seem to have when interacting with their brood this’ll be a wee bit different. You see out of the 5 folk living in our house, 4 of us are on ‘ver spectrum’ - as the cool kids call it. So if anything that mysterious Autistic mindset I keep reading about is actua...

  To celebrate the birthday of Jim Morrison, here are a few little seen storyboards from the cancelled film adaptation of The Poet in Exile.  Enjoy.  

  (Autistic Edition)  

A rare day with just the boy today - girls are away to college then the cinema so we're planning something exciting - which has turned out to be Cass insisting on a trip to Aldi after lunch. The fun never stops in this house!  A grand day out according to Cassidy.   Counting down to Christmas (and my birthday) with a mix of the usual frantic to and fro' college trips, a few meetings, picking up the new car (much to the annoyance of everyone who hates the disabled/Motability users) and a school session next week featuring me indulging in my old job of balloon modelling which is nice, hopefully we'll managed to make it that far without collapsing in a tired heap as this term has really taken it out of us both physically - we're not getting any younger - and mentally with the amount of form filling/organisations losing claims/lack of support etc.  Fingers crossed that the arse end of 2025 is a wee bit kinder on us.