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Dogeasyfox
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23 Jan 2015, 3:14 pm

Lawrence of Asperabia

Peter O'Toole has passed away. Like Jeffrey Bernard, he is rather more than unwell; and the news has savaged his fans and followers more acutely than the critics of Macbeth savaged him back in 1980.

I remember him for different reasons, most simply because on the day I was diagnosed, my psychologist (a highly-experienced man who'd dealt with hundreds of Aspergers) told me unequivocally that he'd once seen Lawrence of Arabia and that T. E. Lawrence (as written by Robert Bolt and played by O'Toole) had displayed unmistakable symptoms of Aspergers:

"He focused intently on one precise skill - cartography, drove his employers mad and disappeared into the desert on a camel!" he said.

I focused intently on cataloguing, drove my employers mad and disappeared into the Mojave desert on an Amtrak train!

There's also one short scene in Lawrence which clinches the argument for me.

Near the start of the film, T. E. Lawrence walks through the officers' mess in Cairo en route to have a "pow-wow" with a general. His uniform is rumpled and gives the impression he is an outsider, He wears his cap indoors (which looks out of place), disrupts a game of billiards and twirls dyspraxically into a fellow officer. He is considered a clown, he says it's just his manner. The general doesn't know whether he's bad-mannered or half-witted. Neither does Lawrence.

I know the feeling.

That single scene, written economically, shot cleanly and acted immaculately, captures Lawrence's Aspergers perfectly.

At the time (1961-1962) no one had ever heard of Asperger Syndrome, yet Bolt, David Lean and O'Toole caught its characteristics perfectly. One reason I agree that Robert Bolt's screenplay is arguably the greatest ever written, and perhaps why I have been increasingly influenced by and impressed with it.

There's one other funny thing. It was mentioned in Dear Miss Landau that, as we prepared for my own little trip (to go see Juliet Landau, not take Aqaba) in 2010, the National Autistic Society Scotland did begin to wonder whether I might be the first Asperger to carry out and record such a trip.

Perhaps I was, but Lawrence predated me with Seven Pillars of Wisdom and Revolt In The Desert. As he is now long dead and cannot be diagnosed, I could cling to my paper title on a technicality, but on the whole I don't mind coming second to such a man.

(First published in the Huffington Post U.K. by James Christie)



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23 Jan 2015, 3:25 pm

Let Them Not Fall Through Life's Sieve, Those Who Cannot Bob or Weave



Last November in Bournemouth, Lewis Gill punched Andrew Young to the ground. Andrew, who (like me) had Asperger Syndrome, cracked his head on the pavement and died in hospital the next day.

Thirteen years ago, a thug in a Lanark street punched me three times to the head, but in my case the circumstances and outcome were a little different. I was then about as old as Andrew was, but unlike him my mental age was that of an adult. I was also a veteran of weight training and boxing gyms; and at a height of six feet four inches as opposed to my assailant's six feet, I outweighed and (as he soon discovered) outgunned him.

Three punches to the head, but it was like a light-heavyweight taking on a heavyweight and he could neither seriously hurt me nor put me down.

Slightly drunk, he then retreated across the street with his hands down, which was not a very bright thing to do when facing a puncher who'd been trained by an ex-amateur boxer.

A left hook put him down, and I'd swear I saw a look of complete disbelief on his face as he hit the pavement. How, that look seemed to say, could a tough young guy like me have been decked by a thirty-eight-year-old librarian?

But this discourse is not meant to be a macho exercise in triumphalism. I was big, fit, well-prepared and lucky. Many people with autism are far less capable of defending themselves. In general, we are somewhat dyspraxic (physically clumsy), our reflexes are not that good (my own reactions were once described as similar in speed to those of a three-toed sloth) and we are not always streetwise enough to know when we are in danger.

I survived my assault, and even managed to send my attacker home with bells ringing in his head.

Andrew Young, who had a mental age of fourteen, no ground-in defensive skills, and probably lacked street smarts, was not so fortunate.

The Attorney General has until March 21st to decide whether Lewis Gill's four year sentence is far too short.

Funnily enough, I'm writing this in Bognor, fairly near Bournemouth.

And frankly, I hope they throw the book at him.

(First published in the Huffington Post U.K. by James Christie)



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23 Jan 2015, 3:35 pm

Turning The Garden Shed Into a TARDIS

I built the garden shed the other day. Actually it took two weeks, I had to uprate the original specifications (if the manufacturer says use a 60 mm screw, use a 70 mm screw..), create a windowsill from scratch and bolster the foundations while the shed itself teetered above my head at a ninety degree angle restrained only by a ladder wedged up its underside. What a daft way to die if it had fallen. One can imagine the headlines:

ODD AUTHOR AND ASPERGER KILLED BY SHED.

Or...

ASPERGER GONE TO HELL WITH DRU, MOST ATYPICAL.

Or, most accurately...

WHAT A STUPID WAY TO GO.

But the shed didn't fall on my head, though some may think it might have improved my writing if it had. It also seemed some sort of internal mechanic kept watch on my construction, calling up to my conscious mind from a neurological Engineering in the manner of a deranged Scotty with comments like:

"Ye cannae do that, the crossbeams willnae take the strain..."

"Ye're really gonnae gie yersel' a hernia this time..."


and, most frequently:

"Are ye com-pletely deranged!! !"

And so it came to pass that I put the final bolt on the door, added the coat of arms to the finial and finished the wood in a soft shade of harvest gold, nicknaming the shed my Type 40 TARDIS and explaining away the fact that it looked nothing like a nineteen-sixties police box with the simple comment that "the chameleon circuit on this one actually works."

Not exactly newsworthy, of course, except for the fact that in Barbara Jacob's helpful book, Loving Mr Spock, an early but lucid, analytical and realistic look at life with an Asperger, she had said:

"Don't expect any DIY or much help around the house. Aspergers can be very good at arranging things, but can take hours over a simple task, and are too clumsy in subtle ways to do decorating or home improvement."

With regard to her Asperger spouse, a contributor to Spock also commented that:

"He often strips screws, breaks components when he is assembling things, because he fanatically over-tightens. He is so precise he makes simple jobs very complex and time-consuming."

However, although there certainly were echoes of this in my own behaviour (plus some swearing when I broke another drill bit...), I tightened screws but knew when to stop, selected the right tool for the job and erected the whole thing efficiently and without ego.

So although Aspergers can be a great excuse to avoid doing jobs around the house, it's not a total get-out clause.

Why?

Well, apart from the fact that autism is a broad spectrum disorder and those on the spectrum are as different from each other as chalk is from cheese, there are (very roughly) two types of Asperger - the focused and the unfocused. There are those who painstakingly grind their way through the flood of information coming at them and slowly, carefully, sometimes crudely, make the right decision. The Mr Spocks who work it out with hard logic and no little effort. Carrying out functions under manual control which neuro-typicals deftly fly through on autopilot.

Then there are the unfocused others, like Danny in Loving Mr Spock, who:

"...actually managed to put the wardrobe together, in a makeshift kind of way, but had to prop it up with a piece of wood. The rest of the bedroom remained in the boxes. It was still there the last time I looked."

Overwhelmed by the information they cannot filter and unable to let up on their need for precision, they may indeed be dunces at DIY; and it must firmly be remembered that mundane tasks which are easy for neuro-typicals may be like climbing Everest for those with autism.

So I was pretty pleased to finish my shed, manage the house and even work the washing machine efficiently while Mum had a brief stay in hospital. It may seem a bit soulless, but at least she had a clean, tidy, neat and ordered home to return to when the time came. Aspergers has its advantages.

And we also have our childlike imagination. My shed became a TARDIS and sparked a renewed interest in Doctor Who; and though I can't quite claim it's dimensionally transcendental, that golden box at the bottom of the garden looks to me like a ship ready to cross the universe.

(First published in the Huffington Post U.K. by James Christie)



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23 Jan 2015, 3:44 pm

Talent, How Not To Train Or Keep It…

Rifling through the pages of The Times after a fine and fruitful meeting with my publisher at The Fox in Felpham, I found a supplement entitled Employee Engagement & Benefits and some fascinating phrases about problems facing businesses from Andrew Benett, author of The Talent Mandate:

"Amid all the alarms being raised, we hear only rarely about what may be the most fundamental crisis facing most businesses today - talent. How to get the best. What to do with it. And how to keep it."

More specifically, Mr Benett went on to say:

"The talent crisis hasn't erupted because of a shortage of workers. There are plenty of people out there looking for jobs. The problem is that we don't simply need people with specific sets of skills, workers we can slot into place as others retire. Our new, vastly more complicated organisations require high achievers with vision and drive; people who can create positions within the company that we didn't even realise we needed."

Well, much though you may went 'em, Andrew, if my experience is anything to go by, you ain't gonna get 'em.

For though I was now at the apogee of a life which read like fiction, a published author discussing the possible translation of the tales of Dear Miss Landau from book's pages to the tread of boards on stage. An Asperger who'd made history and crossed America for the film star he'd met on Sunset Boulevard, defined by a former fundraising officer of the National Autistic Society Scotland as "a unique human resource" and (more obscurely) a walking piece of Scottish library history, I had not reached that place (and lunch at The Fox) courtesy of the care and development of complicated organisations.

Quite the opposite, in fact.

Twenty-four years ago, an organisation supposedly in search of talent found me and put me on their first-ever training course.

Fans of The Simpsons will know of Mr Burns and his slimy assistant, Smithers, but might be forgiven for believing (hoping?) that such creatures don't exist in real life.

Would that I could tell them they were right. I met Burns and Smithers, all right, and underneath a precipitously thin surface veneer of charm, "Burns" quickly proved himself to be (in the words of another employee) a "schizophrenic megalomaniac" and (I have absolutely no doubt) one of the one in twenty-five business leaders who is in fact a psychopath.

"Smithers" happily confessed that "I always do what I'm told" and he and "Burns" set out paternally to teach us the business, basically by pressuring all hell out of us in the mistaken belief this would make us "thrive under pressure."

They screamed if anything went wrong, turned the classroom into a pressure cooker, mouthed bland buzz words and despite having dimly realized they needed to find good people ("Smithers" commented early on that they were expecting lots of ideas from me), reverted to type almost as soon as they got us through the door. It really did feel like the Stanford Prison experiment reincarnated.

At the time, I was an undiagnosed Asperger and these were unqualified teachers, acting more like like sadistic old dominies from Victorian Scotland. They most certainly did not have one clue how to run a course. It was a month of living hell which I endured in the belief that this was my chance, throughout which they said they knew what we were capable of, finally admitting they didn't.

From being on the supposed fast track to the top, I was fired. You do not want to know what it felt like to go from top to bottom so fast. I think another person might have killed himself or refused to accept the experience and blanked it from his memory. With the terrible clarity of the focused Asperger (and no knowledge there was any reason for my inability to learn) I faced my failure and set out to redeem myself - specifically by being published on merit. One of the hardest things in the world to do.

It took twenty-two years for me to reconstruct myself and crawl back out of the pit, during which I presented a cheery face to the world and hid the darker truth within. I once said to a friend that anyone going for a Sunday stroll through the depths of my subconscious would come back white-haired and shaking. He thought I was joking.

My course mates? They were placed in slots and did what they were told.

In the end I was indeed published on merit, but the road to that lunch with my publisher at The Fox was harder than anyone will ever know.

In fairness, I had my limitations, could never have worked full-time in the business I was supposedly "trained" for and had not then reached my maturity (I only really "peaked" at forty-four, when I wrote Drusilla's Roses) but the ability was there and very difficult to discourage, but both that first organisation and others seemed determined to do their very best to destroy me, while at the same time proclaiming their desperate need for talent...

I deeply doubt much has changed. They cannot change their controlling ways and the very people they need the most are those least likely to tolerate them!

Just the other year, I had an interview for a part-time local job. The HR man interviewing me was inflexibly set on putting me in a specific slot while I tried to suggest ideas to him he didn't know he needed.

I might as well have been speaking Martian.

In the end, feeling much like Morgan Freeman did during his last interview with the parole board in The Shawshank Redemption, I told him to go to hell and walked out.

(Extracts quoted from The Times, 4th March 2014)

(First published in the Huffington Post U.K. by James Christie)



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23 Jan 2015, 4:06 pm

The Ragged Road to Adult Autism Research

History is seldom neat. More often it’s as ragged as Amy Pond oft accused the eleventh Doctor of being; so please excuse this raft of quotes regarding Autistica’s new Research Centre for Ageing with Autism at Newcastle University as the inevitable by-product of history’s march:

“In Vietnam we spent five million dollars a head to kill the citizens of that country, and our profit was the undying hatred of everyone there, both north and south, and the loathing of the civilised world. We’ve made our mistakes, now let’s profit from them.

“For far less than one thousandth of the cost of killing a man, and making his friends our enemies, we can save a life and make the man our friend. Two hundred bucks a head, that’s what this operation costs.”


(Commando Raid. Harry Harrison. 1970)

That quote was fiction. This next one is not.

“You know, I’d have been willing to work with you, to have been some sort of autism ambassador.

“But now, after what you’ve done, after the way you’ve treated me, you can whistle for it.”


How do I know this quote was real? I said it.

The organisation to whom I was quietly and bitterly talking, the last one for which I worked, most certainly earned my absolute and utter undying hatred. I’d also been becoming aware that far less appeared to be being done for adults with autism as opposed to children on the spectrum [see (Lette) Kathy Come Home] and that many of those grown-ups, often therefore unable to contribute to society, would (according to my arithmetic from that article) need at least three million pounds worth of support during their lifetimes.

As there are about 500,000 adults with autism in the UK, the total bill for our upkeep may be about £150 billion. And counting.

I’m not good at sums, but Rupert Isaacson, the father of an autistic son, just mentioned in The Mail on Sunday of 22nd June that:

“...if almost every group of people that predates industrial society has a way of integrating neurologically different individuals into the core of their culture, then why haven’t we?

“We had better answer these questions. If the current figures for autism are true – one child in 88 over the age of eight, and one boy in 56 – then if you tried to institutionalise all these people, the economy would implode.”


So institutionalisation won’t work, but it’s not easy to unlock adult Autists’ talents. I should know. As I recently mentioned, I have my limitations, could never have worked full-time in journalism and took a decade or so to reach my peak. But being literally tortured by selfish little bigots while I struggled at work? No, that was not okay.

But while I’d still like to see such bigots lowered into molten lava an inch or so at a time, it was with a cautious sense of hope I heard about Autistica’s research centre.

Autistica’s figures (added up and boiled down better than mine, most likely) still front up the same hard facts:

1% of the UK population (600,000) has autism. This will certainly go up, many remain undiagnosed.

Only 60 pence per adult per year is spent on research into adults with autism. If I’ve got my sums right, that means only £300,000 is spent on us per annum.

Whereas...

Autism is estimated to cost the UK economy £32 billion every year, largely in the form of adult care costs and lost earnings.

At the moment, only 15% of adults with autism are in full-time work and a quarter of us cannot speak.

I’m one of the relatively lucky ones – I’m articulate, I managed to work for about twenty-six years and became a successful published author; but the hard and terrible lesson I learnt along the way is that there is a crude and xenophobic core of creatures in our society who care nothing for others and turn on anyone perceived to be different.

That brave new world which would place us far from such ugly attitudes and provide platforms for other potential Newtons, Jeffersons, Lawrences and Einsteins (all probable Aspergers) may seem as remote as a sunlit city on the edge of forever, but if that city’s name is Newcastle I hope the research to be undertaken there will benefit that jobless 85% and mute quarter of adult Autists who, today, are not as lucky as they should be.

(First published in the Huffington Post U.K. by James Christie)



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23 Jan 2015, 4:13 pm

Equality? Diversity? What’s the Reality?

It's often the smaller nuggets of news that make it onto the blogger's beat. I'd wondered why the spectre of Scottish independence was making me sick, Glasgow's Commonwealth Games leaving me cold and the latest crisis in Gaza rendering me - I don't know - eyeless?

Perhaps it was because I'd seen too much of the ugly side of human nature to believe the dirty truths of that nature should temporarily be sticking-plastered over for the sake of a transient sporting or political event. I am left unmoved by shiny red, blue and gold banners suggesting we all just close our eyes to the evil that men do and pretend that things can only get better when the reality more often resembles a crude patchwork of glacially slow progress.

Consider one little nugget of news, almost overlooked: the case of Detective Sergeant Paul Whiteley of the West Yorkshire Police. An organization whose statement regarding equality and diversity reads as follows:

In accordance with our Purpose and Values, West Yorkshire Police will put our communities first, responding to their needs and concerns, and our officers and staff will act with compassion, humility and respect. Every police officer, special constable and member of police staff is responsible for delivering a fair and professional service, promoting equality for all.

According to the Huddersfield Examiner and the Northern Echo, Whiteley (a commended officer with twenty-two years service) has just been convicted of assault by beating after being challenged about his intent to drive while drunk after a long and bibulous afternoon at the Fylingdales Inn near Whitby.

Bad enough, but you might argue that justice has now been done. However, during the incident one short statement was allegedly made by Whiteley to a girl called Mia Crossley.

Mia is autistic.

This was the alleged statement:

"F-ck your f-cking disabled child."

People with autism can't always say how they feel, and if a neuro-typical detective sergeant who doubtless attended a manure-load of equality and diversity seminars can so quickly and plainly state how respectful he really feels regarding someone so vulnerable after downing a couple of bottles of plonk, then I think we've got a long way to go before we can let banners promoting our "progress" fly so gaily, and a lot of growing up to do.

(First published in the Huffington Post U.K. by James Christie)



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23 Jan 2015, 4:22 pm

Is There or Is There Not an Actual Job!

Word reaches me that yet another young Asperger has been sent along that false but winding yellow brick road towards a sunlit city on a hill proclaiming the golden words:

EMPLOYMENT OPPORTUNITY!

Only to find, upon arrival at the gates of Oz, that there is no job at the end of the rainbow but instead a shifty little character mouthing meaningless phrases like, say, “economic downturn”, “next financial year”, “there’s no work” (said once to me) or, more likely:

“You’ve impressed us a great deal during your work trial, you show great potential and promise, we will keep your details on file until something comes up.”

But still, despite the aid of several agencies, placements and progress reports courtesy of (God help me...) quality assurance frameworks (QAF), there is no actual job at the end of all that effort.

We live in an age of smooth phraseology and soundbites that makes any requirement for black and white cause and effect or a Yes or a No answer seem almost Neanderthally crude (you used to turn a TV on or off, now it stops somewhere in the middle at standby), but looking back over my so-called career, what I most regret is not insisting more bluntly that the word if was not acceptable, jumping through hoops while smooth HR people ticked off QAF boxes, labouring through badly-run, home-grown and humiliating “training” courses with a possible job dangled like a carrot at the end of them or (in a couple of cases) traineeships lasting six to nine months.

It was not always someone else’s fault – on occasion I was not suitable for the posts supposedly on offer – but in the end I think I’d far rather have just tried out the job itself for a week or so to see if I had the right stuff instead of being stuffed through a quasi-educational traineeship, work trial or placement.

But that would have to mean there was an actual, solid, real job to try out. A genuine, black and white, no-nonsense job. Not possible or probable but actual, to be all no-nonsense and Neanderthal about it.

And such a job would truly be a holy grail for a high-functioning Autist, enabling him or her to achieve some independence, save for the future, buy groceries, avoid isolation and gain self-esteem in the real world, where you can’t just put your mortgage on standby with a smooth phrase...

According to the National Autistic Society employment service, “only 15% of people with autism are in full time employment” (which admittedly makes my twenty-seven-year car crash of a career sound a little better) but a 2009 Guardian article showed that, in the case of Asperger Robyn Steward, “the lack of understanding of her needs ... has meant she feels unable to contemplate applying for jobs.”

So it’s quite a trial for an Asperger to go on a work trial, but you would think it only fair that there at least be a job at the end of it, and no nonsense about it.

That’ll be the day.

In a meeting recently, not long after I’d laboured through a twelve week trial for my own holy grail of a library job, only to indeed be told by some muppet of a manager on the very last day that there was no work; I met a young man with Aspergers who summed the whole thing up perfectly:

“You do a job placement and then there’s no job!”

Employers demand much from their employees. Perhaps it is time employees and agencies demanded Yes or No answers from employers to questions like:

“No if, but or maybe! Is there or is there not a job at the end of all this?”

And if you don't get a clear answer, don't budge a blinking inch!

(First published in the Huffington Post U.K. by James Christie)



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23 Jan 2015, 4:32 pm

No Farewell to Leicester Square, but Au Revoir to Earls Court

Standing on a street corner far from Sunset Boulevard, near a stop on the District and Piccadilly lines and north of the Thames, memories of the lives and times which became Dear Miss Landau seem miles and years away. But then my fellow fans and I begin to shuffle forward towards the glass and steel gates of the comics convention, clinging to the corners of Earls Court exhibition centre like amiable worker ants well on the way to meet their queen.

My book's in the British Library, but it's only one among millions. My face is on the cover, though half-unseen, so I walk in line with my fellow travellers and together (Supermen, Spidermen and the odd Sontaran), we slowly gain entry to the hall.

There's quite a crush and pulp and mash of well-behaved people in gaudy costumes and bright colours channelling themselves between stands of memorabilia and pushing through to the celebrities' stances. As usual, I queue to see my dear Miss Landau and at last I reach the front.

There is, of course, a rose for the Rose. Later, a photo shoot dedicated to a fan from Kentucky. An invite to sit with the celebs and enjoy the feeling of family. And just in time, too. The air conditioning had packed up, and I'd been about to jack it in before I died of heatstroke.

Instead, I end up seated straight between Juliet Landau and a somewhat surprised Summer Glau.

I've fond memories of meeting William Russell, one of the first Doctor's first companions, and Anthony Stewart Head (Giles in Buffy); though I was not able to tell him I was like a real-life version of his character - an ex-rare books librarian who'd found a vampire for a flatmate and been pitched straight into the Slayer's world...

But then, at the last minute of the last day, a young lady from a library in Paignton recognizes the unseen author. It seems Dear Miss Landau is doing rather well down there, she's seen my photograph several times and I'm relieved I still look like my younger self. I talk and sign and talk some more, but the carnival, sadly, is over. Everyone's packing up and it's time to go.

It was a rare feeling to wake the morning after and feel that just for once the universe was in fine order. Sadder then to wake today and hear that C. Howard Crane's art deco creation was due for demolition and the chop.

On the face of it, Earls Court is a name and venue so synonymous with and representative of London that getting rid of it seems as silly an act as knocking down the Shard. That famed art deco frontage should at least be retained as part of the "super village" redevelopment.

It should be but I fear it won't, and I have a sneaking certainty that though these new homes will no doubt house their own domestic dramas, they will in no way replace the economic and cultural hub which went before.

For all the world's a stage, and Earls Court a stage for all the world.

Image


(First published in the Huffington Post U.K. by James Christie)



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23 Jan 2015, 4:56 pm

We Were Warriors Once, and Young...

Image

It was a wonderful night in Red Lion Square. Conway Hall in Bloomsbury, home to the UK’s only humanist and ethical charity and venue for the first autism convention, as opposed to conference.

Elly Badcock, senior events officer for the National Autistic Society, said:

“The first AutismCon was a fabulous event, with people travelling from all across Britain to attend. We heard from many interesting and inspiring speakers, singers, actors and authors on the autism spectrum, and even relaxed with some superb singing and poetry reading in the evening. Events like this are so important, because they showcase the incredibly diverse range of talents and skills that people with autism have and put paid to the idea that people with autism can’t be creative.”

I shared an authors’ panel with Alastair Reynolds and Peter R. Ellis, saw X factor finalist Lauren Lovejoy sing Skyfall live, met Johnny Dean (front man for Menswear and icon of nineteen-nineties Britpop), sold out my stock of books and got a strong sense of quiet solidarity, but one late query from the audience stayed lurking in a corner of my mind:

“Are we warriors?”

A question which might have seemed a trifle macho in different circumstances, but considering the fact nearly two hundred and fifty people with varying degrees of fear and anxiety about travel, noise and social intercourse had made themselves move, meet, talk and socialize (I came from Scotland – was that the furthest?), it merited a sympathetic answer and received it – the fact that every day is a battle with demons for an Asperger and we struggle through the difficult hours with metaphorical ropes and gritty focus.

This is true for me, too. It may seem I travelled with effortless ease but the truth was anything but. Crossing the Atlantic in 2013 brought on all the old fears and at the time I described them even as I fought them:

"...But now I'm midway over the Atlantic. If not past the metaphorical point of no return, edging onto the perimeter. And the fear comes at me like a blunt-edged wave. Though I've done this before, faced this before, it is like a red cloud shaking my limbs, the primal fear of lack of shelter which never, never ever, goes away.

I joked at Gatwick this morning about another brother on the spectrum, so unable to cope with change every aspect of his journey to and through an airport had to be preserved as if in aspic - bus number, flight number, everything.

But now I know the fear he would feel. It lies in wait and bursts into my consciousness, but I can - just about - navigate my way through it.

I don't make a sound. I reassess the facts and options. I have currency, cashcard and credit. I know my route. I am already sharpening up and the rust is coming off, but I know how vulnerable I am and that the fear will always be lying in wait for me."


Even today, on a domestic flight with BA, I ground through the route in my mind and worried about factors a neuro-typical would have breezed through or crashed headlong into without a care. The seeming hindrance was a help. I picked up the fact there were roadworks nearby and that I had to backtrack four miles at dawn wearing a backpack to meet the bus, catch the tram and make the flight.

I hesitate to call myself a warrior, but for me, that was a fight.

For me, there’s some slight parallel with the lyrics of Lauren Lovejoy’s cover of Skyfall. A bit like the old joke I made to MSPs in Dear Miss Landau about being the NAS’s “blunt instrument.” I’d felt a bit like an ageing Bond at the time (we’d both had shaking hands), going out unprepared but making it all turn out right in the end.

Pretentious delusion, you might think, but when you’re an Asperger, getting through the day can be like traversing a really scary skating rink while partially blindfolded. Though I’ve crossed the world, travelling still feels a bit like being hit over the head by a blunt instrument.

But others are taking worse hits.

According to the NAS, over 695,000 people in the UK have autism and only 15% of autistic adults are in full-time paid employment. Many others are isolated and/or have mental health issues.

So we’ve all got a long road ahead down which we must walk and this meeting, not at the Mansion House in 1942 but Conway Hall in 2015, reminded me of Winston Churchill’s words on that other day:

“...this is not the end. It is not even the beginning of the end. But it is, perhaps, the end of the beginning.”

This first AutismCon was a good and humane start, but it’s not an end in itself. We cannot yet rest on our laurels and say we once were warriors.

We need be warriors right now, for the war’s still on.

Image

Image

(First published in the Huffington Post U.K. by James Christie)



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01 Feb 2015, 2:00 pm

My Moment Meeting Jordan

I stood next to Katie Price (AKA Jordan) once.

I think it was at Heathrow about April 2004. My mother and I were flying in from South Africa, Katie and her mother were flying out en route to elsewhere. An airport official was explaining something about passenger transfers to me, a flustered blonde woman was talking about "going back through departures to avoid the press" to him. Next to the flustered blonde stood a very short girl with dyed blonde hair. I'm six foot four and I honestly recall it seemed she only came up to my hip.

That was Katie Price and at the time her son Harvey was two, born the same year I was diagnosed with Aspergers. The moment passed quickly. Airport Official told Flustered Blonde (Miss Price's mother) she could not go back. Twice. Katie said nothing. I went my own way and that was that. Any suggestion we were ships passing in the night would be vainglorious, inaccurate and ridiculous.

It turned out that Harvey had several health issues (blindness, ADHD, Prader-Willi syndrome) and is also on the autistic spectrum. Separately and many years later I found myself wondering why a paid journalist like Katie Hopkins talks and prints such ill-thought-out rabble-rousing rot without at least slowing down for one half-second and thinking first before writing in haste (she's no fool - she graduated from Sandhurst); and now the two Katies are feuding on Celebrity Big Brother re the costs incurred by the local authority of transporting Harvey to school. Katie H. thinks Katie P. should foot the bill herself. Katie P. responded that said bill would be "up to a grand a day."

So here are some thoughts on the matter from someone else on the autistic spectrum, and I stress I've thought them out as well as I can:

• Education law is the law of the land and (at least in theory) equally applicable to all. The scales of justice must indeed be blind and any cries of "she should pay, she's got money!" are based on irrational emotionalism and jealous spite. Not only that, in practice it's almost impossible to make exceptions to the rule. If I recall correctly, Alan Sugar once virtually begged the Department of Work and Pensions not to send him the Winter Fuel Payment. They insisted he keep it.

• Katie Price pays tax, and although she no doubt has a very good accountant, probably pays a lot of tax. It's not like this money is just being snatched away from other people. Her accountant (if he wished to do so, of course) could probably make a very convincing argument that, on the basis Miss Price is partly freed from worry regarding her son and therefore more able to earn, she is (albeit indirectly) at least partially and possibly fully recompensing UK taxpayers for their outgoings.

• The rich (and by this I do not mean the super-rich - the Koch brothers are worth at least $80 billion and Alan Sugar ca. £770 million) do not actually have endless money. Katie Price appears to be worth about £40 million. That is more than most of us will ever see, but it's less than a twelfth of Lord Sugar's wealth and given the cost of living in some of Britain's neighbourhoods she might actually be classed as relatively poor if she stayed in Belgravia! Miss Price nevertheless has a large house in Sussex and five children to support, as well as two ex-husbands with whom to contend.

• It is also extremely likely (and I say this with respect and understanding) that Harvey will require lifelong and very expensive full-time care. The more Miss Price can earn, save and pay in tax today, the more she may reduce later cost to the State; but strip her of help now on a blinkered emotional basis and the more it might cost us all in the future.

• There are also fringe benefits. There's an old saying in industry that "you'd better be nice to people on the way up, because you'll meet them all on the way down again." The world is not fair, nor is it often very nice; but if a celebrity is demonized now, the day may come when he or she is desperately courted by public or charity to act as figurehead or ambassador and help others.

And there's only a heartbeat's pause between the words YES and NO.

So be charitable now, and in future I believe Katie will be all the more willing to pay the Price on behalf of an autism charity or two.

And just this once...

Katie Hopkins, I've striven to make this article (if not inarguable) as even-handed and well thought out as possible.

Consider yourself taken to school!

(First published in the Huffington Post U.K. by James Christie)



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02 Feb 2015, 3:21 pm

Hall and Hebdo in a Huff with Obama?

I see President Obama has criticised the scribes and pages of this august paper. “Get informed, he says. [but] not by reading the Huffington Post...”

Well, as one of those scribes I’d say writing a blog for the Post can be a ball, but I approached it more in the manner of setting out a good stall.

I took care to write properly, back up my statements, moderate my assertions (that was quite a lesson – like anyone else, I have my bad days but even when it seems the world does pall, there’s still two sides to every argument, one and all), pull the wool over the reader’s eyes and then the rug from under his or her feet, then sum it up with a concise closing line clearly in sync with what came before.

So though there may be many more bells and whistles in this brave new world of journalism to dazzle folks today (much as Cinerama did in its long-forgotten heyday), I didn’t let myself be seduced by the razzle-dazzle and roses.

My watchword was: write a good column, add hyperlinks and pictures to make a fine veneer; but at heart and core set out the store; and whether they be in the park or on the iPad, try to give the audience both a good read and that little bit more.

Pre-Huffington Post, I’d had a long and hard apprenticeship to the art of authorship, but one of the last stops along the way was at a hostel in Monterey in March 2010, the morning after Barack Obama signed the Health Care Bill which became the Affordable Care Act, better known as Obamacare.

Pleased with the potential promise of health care for all (or at least more) Americans, I bought five national papers that day. Funnily enough, the local Monterey Herald seemed to sum it up best, and the straightforward headline:

Obama signs health bill

...now hangs framed above my bed. Though perhaps not quite on a par with the lost innocence of Kennedy’s tarnished Camelot, Obama’s Bill was a substantive part of the explosive, whirling framework of chance and coincidence which had swept me from a flat in Partick to the shores of the Pacific and Steinbeck country by way of Sunset Boulevard and a certain Hollywood star.

And of course no Camelot can long endure. My blue and sunny days in Monterey became part of myth and Dear Miss Landau, but since then I’ve seen Obamacare challenged, Obama himself disturbingly reviled, been on hand for the 50th anniversary of John F. Kennedy’s death and had to consider whether America may indeed be in irreversible decline.

Sometimes it seems like that peak of personal achievement by the Pacific’s shore was a one-off, doomed to be reclaimed by the mediocrity that lies in wait along so many of life’s byways.

And sometimes it doesn’t.

I’ve never met Barack Obama, of course, but I’ve been overland across America three times during his Presidency, considered its Constitution and even paralleled the fictional path John Steinbeck’s Joads took over the Colorado River and into California via the arcing bridge at Needles during the last Great Depression. I’ve also been reminded of the importance of free speech, laid down in the U.S. Constitution’s First Amendment and recently borne to prominence once again courtesy of Charlie Hebdo in Paris.

Namely, that Congress “shall make no law ... abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press.”

And also, as per Evelyn Beatrice Hall’s quotation (wrongly attributed to Voltaire) which acts perhaps as statutory instrument to the legislation, “I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it.”

So I’ve seen some of Obama’s America and reported it as fairly as I’m able, but while I may disapprove of the President’s seeming dismissal of the Huffington Post as a relevant source of news, I’ll sure as hell defend to the death his right to say that that’s what he thinks.

(First published in the Huffington Post U.K. by James Christie)



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13 Feb 2015, 7:00 pm

Fifty Shades of... Dru?

Apart from a shared interest in kinky sex, perhaps, you wouldn't think Drusilla (Spike's girlfriend from Buffy the Vampire Slayer) would have that much in common with E. L. James and Fifty Shades of Grey. But from my particular perspective, there are parallels:

E.L. James started out writing vampire fan-fiction on the website FanFiction.net about five years ago, and so did I. She concentrated on Edward and Bella in Twilight while I was drawn into Drusilla's rich, dark world of Buffy.

From that first gleam of potential in the grey and shaded world of fanwritten fiction, we both developed into published authors, E. L. James (real name Erika Leonard) coming from Twilight into Fifty Shades and myself moving from Drusilla's Roses to Dear Miss Landau. Although never legitimately published, Roses is strongly referenced in Dear Miss Landau and, technically, both works should be read together.

I didn't read Twilight fan-fiction myself and have no memory of running into "Snowqueen's Icedragon" (Leonards' blogging pseudonym) at the time, but we (along with hundreds of thousands of other writers) were all in the mix together. God only knows what would have happened to Edward Cullen if I'd decided to pair him up with Dru one dark night and see who was left standing. She'd probably have had him for breakfast...

Then things diverged. I sent Roses to a certain Juliet Rose Landau, who was "blown away" by it. That led to my crossing America to meet the lady who'd portrayed Drusilla and the publication of Dear Miss Landau. E.L. James, for her part, reworked her original material, changing names from Edward and Bella to Christian and Anastasia, and tapped a torrid vein of desire leading to a googolplex of sales and a throne (no game) as one of Hollywood's major movers and shakers.

Fifty Shades became a trilogy and my Dru novellas became a quartet which could change the Buffyverse forever, but while Dear Miss Landau quietly garnered great reviews and got good sales for a debut novel, Shades went stratospheric.

Such is life.

Am I (as Catherine Tate would say) bovvered?

No, actually.

It would be easy to harp on about Shades' lousy reviews and purple prose, or stand pious at a pulpit and say I'd never rework my own words, but I don't knock fellow authors. J.K. Rowling is a good professional and E.L. James got the sales. They earned their rewards, and anyone who puts pen to paper does not, in the first instance, do it for financial gain. We know how few ever make any real money. Congratulations to those who do.

Perhaps the real difference which caused our divergence is this:

When I started writing Drusilla, I had no grand plan in mind. But then it seemed as if the vampire herself jumped headlong out of the Hellmouth and politely insisted I finish her story. There are tales of writers who claim an incredible connection with their characters, so intense it is as if that character becomes real. There are even legends of tulpas - fictional creatures who physically manifest themselves in our world and aggressively demand their stories be told. Conan the Barbarian apparently did this to Robert E. Howard. I don't think that was quite the case with me and Dru (she was more the vampire "flatmate" alive in my mind), but it was a profound and very personal experience.

And it's not for sale; except in its original, unaltered state.

I don't think E.L. James had the same connection to Edward Cullen, so there was no attachment to violate; and though I'd say Dear Miss Landau and the Dru quartet (Roses, Redemption, Revenant and Graveyard) are rare examples of cross-pollination between the fan-fiction genre and published authorship, you never can tell what will go viral and what won't.

After all, and to paraphrase, what would it profit me if I suffered the loss of my own soul, but did not gain the whole world?



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16 Feb 2015, 9:16 pm

Last Train from Needles

Every trip I take, every move I make (at least abroad), I ask myself if I’m being too blunt, too harsh, too downright about the facts of life regarding independent travel.

And the funny thing is, I usually witness proof that my approach is basically right and that those who fail to listen to the truths of travelling life when abroad will sooner or later be on the wrong end of a serious reality check.

In terms of communications it seems, funnily enough, that a focused high-functioning Asperger can outperform some neuro-typicals (NTs) because he or she sees things as they are (let us say objectively), rather than the way some NTs may wish to perceive them to be (that is to say, subjectively).

Roughly speaking (and I stress I am not an expert on autism), objectivity correlates with the “logic first, emotion next” function of the autistic brain whereas an NT is more likely to be subjective and/or emotional in his or her belief.

You could liken it to Joe Friday from Dragnet repeatedly dragging an emotional suspect back to her statement and patiently asking her just to provide “the facts, ma’am.”

Think that’s crazy and clichéd?

Then look to the tale of just such an Asperger, waiting on the borders of California for the night train from Needles to L.A., wondering idly if he was being a bit too hard on his fellow travellers...

I’d wanted to take another trip across the States while body and soul still held out, rather than get locked in my own literary history as part of Dear Miss Landau. My subconscious had suggested the title Cross At Needles for a companion novel to the original and I’d worked out this meant I should indeed cross the border from Arizona into California at the town of Needles, the exact route the Joads took in the film version of Steinbeck’s Grapes of Wrath.

I really did do that, and an observer at the time would indeed have seen a big blond Autist waiting for the 12.49 a.m. train to Los Angeles on December 2nd, 2013.

And just about to be presented with two incontrovertible pieces of evidence regarding the advantages of objectivity in communication.

I was chatting to a Chinese lady when two polite teens asked me where the 12.10 train to Flagstaff was. I explained there was no 12.10 train, just the 10 to 1 to L.A., most definitely going the other way. They didn’t really seem to get it so I asked to look at their tickets.

The answer soon presented itself.

The objective fact of the matter was that the 12.10 to Flagstaff was at 12.10 p.m., whereas the 12.49 to L.A. was at 12.49 a.m.

That was all there was to it. Any subjective perception of reality was ground to pieces as thoroughly as if it had fallen under the wheels of a three-hundred-and-fifty ton train. The two girls, polite but careless and a touch too full of casual assumption, were either twelve hours early or twelve hours late for their train, and as I said at the time, “there’s nothing I can do. I can’t just whistle up a trans-continental express.”

They wandered glumly back to their motel, I chatted on gaily to my Chinese lady, time passed and the 12.49 a.m. did indeed turn up.

The U.S. railway company Amtrak does not usually allow passengers just to turn up, pay on arrival and blithely get on board (not in the case of their long-distance trains, anyway). You should reserve your seat in advance and preferably have your ticket ready. I’d checked the facts, made the reservation, printed out three copies of my ticket to ride and kept an electronic copy to boot.

Almost before the conductor could ask to see said ticket, I’d presented it politely to him at close range and as a result was indeed waved on board, efficiently if without fanfare. My attention moved from the crucial fact of boarding, now successfully achieved, to my fellow passenger, and I got that old familiar feeling (call it a sixth sense or command intuition) that something was wrong. I headed downstairs but it was too late. The train was already moving out and my Chinese pal was spending the night in Needles.

She hadn’t checked the objective facts and now she was learning them the hard way.

In the end, I’ve found that effective communication largely involves dealing with the facts as they are and not as they are perceived to be; and sad but true to say, that’s why one Chinese lady and two confused teens were left on the platform at Needles that night while I went on safe to L.A...

(First published in Autism Network Scotland's newsletter, February 2015)



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19 Mar 2015, 6:32 pm

Led by the Lamb to the Slaughter

“He was gasping, but forced himself steady, and said solemnly, ‘I have given us our freedom.’

And he paused, aware at last of the gathering weight of the silence. Fourteen images stared at him, without any of them offering a word in response.

Bakst said sharply,
‘You have talked of freedom. You have it!’

Then, uncertainly, he said, ‘Isn’t that what you want?’ “

(The Life and Times of Multivac. Isaac Asimov. 1975)

More rights, it seems, will be going to people with learning disabilities, autism and mental health conditions courtesy of Care Minister Norman Lamb.

And at first glance, you might well say that’s a jolly good thing!

But I’ve a slightly darker view of it. I’ve heard the horror stories of Jimmy Savile, Stafford, Winterbourne View care home, Rotherham Council and more recently Connor Sparrowhawk, who died in the care of Oxford’s NHS on 4th July 2013. I’ve even recounted the horror story of my own treatment by the NHS in the Huffington Post. Over a seven year period, the NHS seemed unable to learn anything from their mistakes, unwilling to control their own staff, and as my father before me found out at Strathclyde Region (once the largest local government region in Scotland, abolished in 1996) and as stated in Dear Miss Landau, sulkily intent on deflecting blame away from themselves and onto me, my father (or any other whistleblower) for everything.

In addition, in an earlier incarnation (before I was unlucky enough to regenerate into my later NHS role like an errant Time Lord), I was a law librarian; and while I could not read everything that passed through my hands (an impossibility on the face of it) I can say with authority there’s already an awful lot of law, rights and legislation out there.

For example, in his work The Political Animal : an anatomy, a pre-bearded Jeremy Paxman pointed out that “the claim that more laws have been passed in Britain since the Second World War than in the entire period between 1066 and 1945 seems entirely believable.”

I also know for a fact that the amount of Current Law Statutes (blue paper releases) that went before Parliament increased by 300% between 1998 and 2004. I know it because I filed those releases and while I could just about fit a year’s worth into one A5 binder in 1998, by 2004 I was using three to four such binders...

While this avalanche was not solely composed of disability rights legislation (employment law and intellectual property were two major growth areas, if I remember rightly), the Disability Discrimination Act, Human Rights Act and Equality Act 2010 (which may be nine inches thick!) are indeed enshrined in law.

So society’s vulnerable (including those with autism) should already be protected and Lamb’s Law will add only a little icing to a great, wonderful, impregnable cake?

Try telling that to the sixty-three people abused by Jimmy Savile at Stoke Mandeville hospital between 1969-1992 and the patients who, as the chairman of the public inquiry into Stafford's failings between 2005 and 2009 said, were “let down by the Mid Staffordshire NHS Foundation Trust. There was a lack of care, compassion, humanity and leadership. The most basic standards of care were not observed, and fundamental rights to dignity were not respected. Elderly and vulnerable patients were left unwashed, unfed and without fluids. They were deprived of dignity and respect. Some patients had to relieve themselves in their beds when they offered no help to get to the bathroom. Some were left in excrement stained sheets and beds.”

Then there were the thirty-eight charges of neglect and ill-treatment of patients at Winterbourne View in 2010, the report in 2014 re. Rotherham Council’s child abuse scandal showing that 1,400 young girls had been exploited, and lastly Connor Sparrowhawk’s death in 2013 while supposedly under the “care” of the NHS.

So how come this catalogue of horrors happens so often when it’s so thoroughly been outlawed?

I found a quiet ferment of anger growing within me as I read the usual excuses about failings in the culture of NHS trusts and other care organizations, and relived my own sickening memory of the way an Occupational Health consultant made excuses for the Stafford-style staff I’d encountered by saying, “they don’t know any better.” I’ll also never forget attending a meeting of the Glasgow Disability Alliance some years ago where we all came to the conclusion that the problem was basically attitude. That despite several tons of well-meaning legislation there seems no will or motivation to change the way vulnerable people or workers are treated. That there is only the gathering weight of Asimov’s silence; and while many may pay lip service in theory, very, very few do anything in practise.

Lamb’s Law may sound like a jolly good thing, but in practice it might be as useful as a piece of bling!



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01 Apr 2015, 9:47 pm

Dear Miss Landau : the Musical?

Could there really be a musical version of Buffy the Vampire Slayer?

Three things:

A stage musical version of Dear Miss Landau is in development. This could be about the first time anything Buffy-related has got back to stage or screen since Angel wrapped.

We're sending James Marsters' representatives a demo-tape and details concerning this. This is real, by the way, it's really happening. If anyone heard me mention this to James during his talk on Saturday, please note it was with Chaplin Books' knowledge and authorization.

So is this post.

The musical has been in development for about two years and there's a lot of plagiarism in the music industry so I was asked to keep it quiet.

Those are the first two things - stage musical and demo-tape. Third point I found out while I was at the talk: that any attempt to develop any Buffy-related project (Giles, Faith & Spike etc.) usually got killed off by copyright problems. The original copyright agreement being so impregnable that the holders will retain rights to the bleeding head of Buffy until the end of time, if not longer.

I used to be a law librarian. Many areas of law have become much more complex over the past twenty years or so - employment law, certainly, and though it wasn't quite so marked in my time, intellectual property (IP), which in my layman's view, has (to sum up a very complex subject extremely inadequately) changed and expanded radically since the days of cosy old copyright with the advent of the internet

A solution cannot be suggested with one simple phrase so beloved of screenwriters. The odds are against us and the situation is grim, but that is true of virtually any media project - see Tales From Development Hell, which I just read. This is true of Hollywood and of life. The team (I'm the original writer) is both bullish and optimistic, and I feel that febrile sense that great things may be near our grasp.

So, is there a way?

First, background: I tried to work out Buffy copyright about three years ago and (arguably) learned that Kuzui Enterprises, Sandollar productions and Mutant Enemy, in association with 20th Century Fox, holds the reins.

There's also a reference in my notes that "as per a contractual stipulation (stated in public by Buffy artist Georges Jeanty at Starfury, Heathrow, 2010), [Whit] Anderson could only use characters from the original 1992 Buffy movie." Whit Anderson, as some may recall, tried to write a Buffy reboot and failed cataclysmically.

So, acknowledging the complexity of IP law and the possibility there was enough of a loophole for Anderson (via Warner Brothers) to write something, there might be a way...

Reiteration: what's the basic problem?

Original, impregnable copyright.

But, as Mr Spock might say, there are always possibilities. The blocked spinoffs were straightforward versions of Buffy - the original, fictional characters, directly controlled by copyright, let us say, who could be directly blocked, and probably were.

But add a logical Asperger to the mix who, like Spock, might just see a possibility, find a way...

And a few hours later, a possible way occurred to me.

Not quite a Eureka moment, and less a solution than a tiny possibility, but a possibility nonetheless.

The inside page of Dear Miss Landau, and three little words I'd half-forgotten amidst all the hullabaloo of the last few years.

One little factor that might, just might make a hairsbreadth of difference:

COPYRIGHT JAMES CHRISTIE.



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02 May 2015, 10:58 am

They Saved Einstein's Brain!

More precisely, they lost it. It finally turned up in Wichita, Kansas, in the hands of the secretive pathologist who’d originally sawed it out of Albert Einstein’s skull and still sought to find the secret of his genius within its cerebral structure.

But there’s no definitive answer. For one thing, hundreds of Mensa-level brains would have to be examined to find if they all had a “sign of omega” (a knob on the brain’s right motor strip often more developed in musicians) or another similar physical correlation. It would also be extremely difficult to work out whether Einstein was born with a big brain or, due to the stimuli he gave his grey matter during his lifetime, developed it.

Some say Einstein might have been autistic but we’ll never know for sure. However, while I know I don’t have his brainpower (one source estimates Albert’s IQ at about 160 but when I was diagnosed with Aspergers my full scale IQ came in at 120), my verbal IQ (essentially my writing ability and spoken articulacy) was “very superior” but my performance IQ (the speed at which I processed information) was “significantly worse than all other indexes” and represented “a clear and specific deficit in [my] ability to quickly and efficiently process visual information.” My processing speed, in fact, was “better than only 3% of the population.”

In other words – input feeble, output fandabidozi; and as my brain could scarcely function any faster than a low-grade moron’s, you might assume I would have needed a structured existence, rigid routines and outside support just to cope with everyday life.

But despite undiagnosed Aspergers and with said deficit, I took that brain independently across Australia for a year in 1988-1989, dealt with major change, coped with unstructured experiences and socialized to survive. Later, I worked in the real world for a living, ran my own flat, wrote a book and filed all these blogs.

Was I born with a “big brain” or did I develop it via stimuli?

Well, as I later explained in Dear Miss Landau:

“Every brain has its hardware and its software. The software holds the higher intellectual capacity for flexibility and creativity. The hardware is the uglier, no-nonsense part of the machine which comes into play when the higher functions, either from fatigue, a hammer blow to the head, or both, no longer function.

Skills deep as bone. Burnt into me in Australia, the back-up capability to make the right decision when I couldn’t think straight.”


And as I’d worked out, and also said in Dear Miss Landau:

“According to the article How To Be A Genius in the New Scientist of September 16 2006, although some people are indeed born with greater genetic gifts than others ‘some critical things line up so that a person of good intelligence can put in the sustained, focused effort it takes to achieve extraordinary mastery.’ Just having great talent or intelligence on its own was not enough, it seemed. That talent had to be built, honed and painstakingly sculpted. There also seemed to be a ten-year rule: ‘it seems you have to put in at least a decade of focused work to master something and bring greatness within reach.’

What happened to the brain as a result of this work?

The article seemed to have the answer:


‘Eric Kandel of Columbia University in New York, who won a Nobel prize in 2000 for discovering much of the neural basis of memory and learning, has shown that both the number and strength of the nerve connections associated with a memory or skill increase in proportion to how often and how emphatically the lesson is repeated. So focused study and practice literally build the neural networks of expertise.’

Although my brain was autistic I’d put in, not ten, but fifteen years of work to bring the neural networks of my verbal IQ up to par. Despite the deficiencies in my performance IQ, my ‘Asperger focus’ had actually given me an advantage, helping me to concentrate on developing a particular skill more easily than a multi-tasking neuro-typical might.

I imagined the way those neural networks must actually have grown and thickened, helping the sparks of inspiration flow more easily. Whereas a talented but unpractised writer might only have the equivalent of low voltage domestic wiring in his brain, I now had heavy duty commercial cabling.”


That is what seems to have happened to me. Studies of Einstein’s brain, however, discovered it had more glial cells than normal, that the neurons in his prefrontal cortex were more tightly packed than usual (possibly allowing faster information-processing), that his inferior parietal lobule (in charge of spatial cognition and mathematical thought) was wider and better integrated than most, that his mid-frontal lobe (responsible for working memory and planning) had an extra ridge, that he did indeed possess a “sign of omega” and also owned a thicker-than-average corpus callosum, allowing better co-operation between brain hemispheres.

But did he come out of the womb with his superbrain fully formed, or did a lifetime’s scientific research improve his cerebral hardware, add heavy duty cabling to his neural net and thicken his callosum?

The answer probably lies partly with nature and partly with nurture, but since Einstein died in 1955 and promptly had his brain removed, we can’t ask him. As I’m alive, as I’ve been formally diagnosed and as no one has yet removed my brain (although, having met me, many would like to try) I can attempt inexpertly to explain that the crucible of my experience in Australia plus decades of writing practice does indeed seem to have upgraded my neural net (I can put together the blog you’re reading right now much more easily than I could have done twenty years ago), added back-up hardware and partly compensated for my slow and moronic performance IQ.

But a man’s a man for a’ that, and there’s no single, simple way to find his measure.

(First published in the Huffington Post U.K. by James Christie)