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firemonkey
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Joined: 23 Mar 2015
Gender: Male
Posts: 5,570
Location: Calne,England

05 Apr 2021, 4:59 am

Jan 15 1965. My 8th birthday. Saw Mary Poppins at the Leicester square Odeon followed by a birthday celebration at a
Lyons corner house.It was a halcyon day before the storms gathered. I may have been odd, but if so other children had not reacted as though I was. 5 days later I started boarding school.The place where sons of diplomats go at the age of 8 or less. I was totally unsuited for it. I was faced with something I struggled to cope with. Not overtly traumatic ,but traumatic nonetheless. It manifested in bed-wetting. The differences between the other boys and me became glaringly apparent on going to public school. Like a lot of my generation found decades later to be autistic I was subjected to severe bullying. In my case it was verbal. The result was increasingly poor mental health resulting in an overdose at the end of my penultimate term there.

I went back for what should have been my A level term so as not to disappointment my father. I lasted a week before saying I couldn't cope. After a few days in the school sanatorium I was admitted to Severalls psychiatric hospital.