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 2 1/2 years since they were meant to actually carry out the repairs 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. 30/05/24 – After nearly 4 years of waiting – and thanks to our local MP - repair work begins on the house. A new toilet is fitted and a large piece of wood is nailed to the kitchen floor. Alongside this a huge hole is left in the bathroom wall and paneling is removed...

 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...

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. 

  Remembering Rik Mayall....Cheers for being my stand-up inspiration as a 15 yr old kid (the audiences were kind) and for being unknowingly responsible for getting me a free swanky meal in London back in '91 due to a bizarre case of mistaken identity and misplaced accents.* *I mean c'mon, even Grok is still convinced.  

  Bizarrely it's exactly 5 years today since my Sedgley UFO tweet went a wee bit mental, amassing over 2 million hits on Twitter and culminating in TV coverage, newspaper headlines and death threats from fringe religious groups worldwide. Which was nice. So to celebrate the only time I've ever been popular here's a link to the post explaining the full sorry tale . Plus as a special treat here's myself and Rho excitedly discussing it on the Ashrology podcast .  I can safely say I'll never achieve this level of infamy again:         Enjoy. And remember, the truth is out there. Probably.  

A quick real life catch up as it's been a wee bit mad here at the moment. First up, apologies to anyone who missed my dulcet tones on the radio Tuesday , turns out they'd overbooked the amount of English males they needed so I unfortunately got dumped from the panel. I did managed to randomly add a few comments near the end but due to timing they skipped the punchline. Story of my life.  As a (self congratulatory) aside the visuals I produced for the inaugural  David Byrne themed Byrne's Night in Dumbarton seemed to go down a treat!       And on another bright note it looks like there may finally be some progress on the whole house situation that wont have to involve legal action and/or government intervention. Or any more Autistic meltdowns.  Which is nice.     I can't say too much right now except that having such a high stress level every day for almost 4 months certainly takes its toll. My head feels like someone has set a huge bag of firework...

Today isn't just young Master Cassidy's 20th birthday but also the 20th anniversary of the premiere of THE greatest animated film ever too!       So this is a good excuse to listen to the podcast I did with Autism Through Cinema regarding it.   It's Disney/Pixar's Cars if you didn't know by the way. You can listen to the podcast  here if you haven't already. Go on, I'll still be here when you get back.  To be honest, most folk don't expect it to be in my top ten film list (then spend way too much time figuring out where it sits in relation to Suspiria, The Wizard of Oz, Times Square, La Cabina, A New Hope and Bride of Frankenstein...as you can tell I never did get invited to parties as a teen). "But why Cars?" I hear them cry. Well, the Autie-ness of the movie permeates thru' every part of it - from a design point of view the 'faces' of the characters are reminiscent of Thomas The Tank Engine (a huge Autistic favourite...

Well 49 years ago today actually, quite possibly THE greatest film of all time was unleashed (in less than 40 cinemas - yes really, 20th Century Fox had no idea what to do with it) upon an unsuspecting world - and cinema would never be the same again. And neither would my life if I'm honest.   For one thing I'd have had no excuse to talk to the kid in the Star Wars t-shirt the day I started my new school so would never had a friendship that has endured nearly 50 years which is pretty good going for a group that, allegedly, find making friends difficult I reckon.  Plus it gave us the perfect excuse to dress the twins as Luke and Leia for Halloween when they were tiny.  Oh and it introduced Cassidy  to his go to cuddle buddy.   Luckily for us they've embraced Star Wars too (or have I brainwashed them? - answers to the usual address).     Obviously next year is gonna be the biggie - with the original version being spruced up for a timely re-release - but ...

 Happy World Goth Day one and all!   And to help you celebrate here's mine and Rho's podcast on all things Goth from a few years back.

Must have missed this one at the time but seeing as there's a protest in  Parliament Square on Friday, 22 May I thought I'd mention the fact that,  according to new Ofsted guidance, Autistic children as more likely be extremists.   Some extremist Autists yesterday.   First mentioned in a series of 2023 and 2024 training materials for Ofsted inspectors, it seems that Ofsted believes that autistic people are more susceptible to becoming terrorists or extremists because of their ‘special interests’. One of the Ofsted trainings on Prevent indicates that the trainer should tell school inspectors:  ‘Children and young people with Autism are at increased risk of being susceptible to extremism. This is because they are more likely to develop special interests.’  The training does not explain this assertion but does go on to claim: ‘Children with autism are more likely to experience social isolation and so use the internet to find friends. They trust the info...