First featured in Scottish Autism's late lamented Autitude Magazine many (many) moons ago I thought I'd reshare Amelia and Embeth's favourite freakishly fun and more importantly for youngsters starting to get into 'the horror' family friendly fright films for Halloween here for those who haven't read it. And let's be honest the Halloween themed posts of late are at least a wee bit more uplifting than the true horror that is our housing situation. Anyway, enjoy!    Corpse Bride (2005) Tim Burton's stop-motion classic - featuring the voices of Johnny Depp, Helena Bonham Carter, Joanna Lumley and the fang-tastic Christopher Lee - centers on the poor lovelorn Victor and his bride to be Victoria whose parents arrange for the pair to be wed in the hope of elevating Victor's nouveau riche parents to the upper classes whilst restoring Victoria's families wealth and standing.  Although the pair hit it off immediately, Victor ruins their wedding rehearsa...

As ever, just in time for Halloween....(almost) every single horror/cult/Eurotrash themed mix from the infamous Man With No Suitcase pre-club and beyond.   Just the right thing to get your party going with a bang. Probably.            

  For your Halloween party pleasure (well it is my favourite time of year) are the  weird and wonderful mixes of Euro-centric and cult American cinema soundtracks that I curated for  Blue Azure's rather marvelous monthly music show a few months back. Click to download and enjoy! Colour Me Giallo The American Scream   And for true music connoisseurs you can hear the full shows here and here .   

 Just sayin'.  

  "Anything can happen in the next hour!" Celebrate Thunderbirds Day with 60 minutes of Fab Supermarionation sounds.....  

A quick update for those who care.....just back from (another) meeting re: the house, this time with the new housing officer. Surprisingly it wasn't an utter shit show. The new housing officer was respectful, attentive and very professional which was a nice surprise. And the old housing officer? Well she was aggressive and angry, constantly shouting "I never done it!" at every opportunity (no, seriously) which, when your only achievements in 6 months are reporting us to adult services, breaching the equality act and being unable to arrange a skip being picked up without our help, is a pretty brave stance to take. Anyway onwards and upwards.     

This is a tricky one to write as I'm currently running on extremely low battery due to a glut of letter writing, emails and meetings. Yes, we're kinda in a calm/low period at the moment as far as the whole housing debacle is concerned, awaiting replies from various legal sources as well as waiting on an MDT meeting and the like in order to find our next move meaning I currently feel like I'm in limbo.  My Autistic brain - which is constantly moving and working (which detracts from the whole noisy head thing) has been dragged kicking and screaming to a halt before being pulled backwards, constantly replaying how an organisation could be so completely and so utterly incompetent (or uncaring) as to allow this whole situation to happen and, more importantly, coming to terms with how much it's affected myself and my families health. For myself, the physical effects like the huge flare up in my Psoriasis (documented earlier this year) and the spike in my blood pressure is not...

Well after almost 2 months of radio silence from housing we got a call today from our 'new' housing officer (seriously and I thought the number of Doctor Who's we currently have was mental) - it seems they want to have a meeting to get 'up to speed' on what's happening with the house. Should be a pretty quick meeting then seeing as the answer is fuck all.  And has been fuck all for the past 2 1/2 years. Who knows tho', maybe this time will be different.  

Well that's us celebrating 6 months since the (then) housing officer turned up at our door and the ball began rolling on our "really urgent" house repair job. To be honest it's actually 6 1/2 years since we reported the repairs and 2 1/2 years since they were meant to actually carry them out but I thought I'd be kind.  Anyway,  as a sort of  tribute to the incredible efficiency, general competence and all round professionalism of Wheatley Homes and their obviously top quality and well trained staff (and for those of you new to this whole sorry saga) here is a timeline of the story of us asking for a leak to be fixed.... Enjoy.  Oh and I've cut down on the sarcasm this time around for a change.    This statement may not be accurate. Mid 2020 – Report a small leak to our housing officer, he says he isn’t sure if Wheatley can repair it or if we have to pay to get it repaired and claim expenses. He says he will check and get back to us. Beginning 2021 – Toilet...

 The girls had their first appointment with the NHS Learning Disability Health Team last week - the team were fantastic and went out of their way to make them comfortable by the way so kudos to them - and part of the assessment was to put things in place to make doctors/dentists visits etc. easier for - in our case - Autistic (young) adults.   Which is great because Amelia has broken a tooth and due to a mix of sensory issues around her mouth coupled with an abject fear of dentists hasn't wanted to go get it sorted. The LD Health Check team took this into account and made a referral thru' our doctor's surgery for her to see a specialist dentist with experience of Autistic/LD patients. A brilliant idea you might think. Us too. Obviously the specialist dental team don't think so as I've just found out that her referral was refused, it seems that she can only see the specialist team if she first registers with a regular dentist and has a probably traumatizing  examinat...

  The prince and protector of the Glasgow canals, he was a joy to see (and pet and feed) on our daily walks and the girls absolutely adored him - as did hundreds of others who crossed his path (and sat on his bench) every day. RIP Ziggy.   

Can't believe that's been 2 years since our (award winning) little film AUTISM PLAYS ITSELF had its UK premiere at the Edinburgh Film Festival so felt it was only right to     re-share it for those who hadn't yet seen it (and if not why not?) or wanted to watch it again,  suffice to say it would be an understatement to say that this is one of the pieces of work I'm still most proud of.           And don't forget that you can actually listen to a version of it on the Radio 4 series Short Cuts  too.       A film shot in 1957 in at the Maudsley Hospital, London, captures the movements and behaviour of children under observation for atypical behaviour. In the present day, three autistic respondents watch the footage, bringing new insightful interpretations of the children’s behaviour as they explore the sparse environment of the clinic. Through speculation and identification, with wit and audacity, the responses fo...

For anyone interested, I was on Radio Scotland this morning talking about Autism and holidays...as in going on one, not that we should have an official day where you all praise us and buy us stuff obviously.   As an aside I actually got thanked for my expertise and insight.  Check me.   By the way you can listen again (for the next 30 days)  here . 

Huzzah! After over 2 months of telling them that it's full and that the kids (especially Cassidy) are slowly going stir crazy because they can't go in the garden the skip has finally been uplifted! Regular readers will remember that we were given it in March to help us get ready to move in April (to the house that we aren't allowed to talk about) but like everything else pertaining to our move/repairs it ended up just getting ignored no matter how many times we asked/begged for it to be picked up. The main reason it couldn't be moved was truly bizarre - it seemed that because someone in the street had put rubbish in it (as always happens) it couldn't be moved till the guilty party had taken the rubbish out. Housing even sent letters out to the neighbours ordering them to remove the unauthorised junk. Seriously, the letter about misusing a skip was more of a priority to them than actually picking up the thing, so in the meantime the girls haven't been able to hav...

  Trying to get straight answers re: housing, disability and the equality act from our housing association (still) be like:  

    BOTD 1957 - the saviour of my turbulent teen years and beyond.  Marc Almond. And if you want to know why you can find out here .

  Celebrating the release of Blade Runner way back in 1982 by soundtracking dystopia with Tyrell approved tunes, Roy Batty beats and synthetic samples. And yes, before you ask Blade Runner is probably one of THE most Autistic coded movies ever ( I even tried to explain why once upon a time ) so this post is justified! Anyway, enjoy....   

Not done a house update for a few weeks because everything is going so well. Not really, it's still a bit shit.     I think I may have hit the I really can't be bothered being civil with housing point right now (to be fair it has been going on since February), we've gone from them being very nice since Social Work got involved to in the last week them phoning SW (our allotted worker is on annual leave) because we hadn't rung them back straight away to now adding seemingly random policy rules to our promised move. A house (not ours) for illustrative purposes. We seem to have gone from "we'll find you a suitable property" to "if you don't accept the first property you're offered that's it because you only get one choice" which under the circumstances seems a wee bit churlish seeing as not only had we already accepted a property that we were subsequently told we shouldn't be offered (and are snapped at when we mention it, I just lo...

  Seeing as it's Father's Day I thought I'd reshare the top Autism dad chat (featuring a fair few Actually Autistic peeps) we did for Scottish Autism a few years back....   Enjoy.     

Sorry I was bored, plus I need something to cheer me up with all the housing shite.