Beloved Aspie on self-driving cars

Well, Beloved Aspie (BA) suffers a little from vicarious road rage, by which I mean, he isn't driving, but he rages for me at other drivers' incompetences. Sometimes, I have to point out that I am not cross, so he needn't be. Mostly, he makes me notice how often I mutter about other drivers...

So when he started a conversation the other day about self-driving cars, I anticipated the worst. Obviously, they are a ridiculous idea, and will only cause other drivers hassle. Right?

Wrong. That was not where he was going with that one.

"Mum, I think self-driving cars should be given to old people first. There really is too much to try to do and worry about in new cars with the phone blue-toothed in and the sat nav in the dashboard. And all the driver is trying to do is get to the right place at the right speed. So if old people had self-driving cars, the car would make all those decisions for them and they'd be much happier."

That was a surprise. And in my usual over-enthusiastic way, I take the conversation further, "Would you extend that to new drivers as well, then, give them a chance to build their confidence?"

"Don't be stupid, Mum. They need to learn properly from the very beginning or they'll never be good drivers."

Well, that's me told.

Eckhart Tolle: my new BFF

Serendipity or synchronicity? Whichever it is, I love it when you pick up a book or an article and find yourself with exactly the thing you needed to hear.

I’m a bit grumpy today because I haven’t slept properly for the last few nights. I’m doing all the right things around food, exercise, drink, relaxing etc. but my brain isn’t listening.

I started this year with a determination/resolution to overcome both depressive moods and irrational anxiety – both of which I had been putting down to ‘that age’ and it’s associate ‘the change’.  I’ll be damned if I let hormones rule my life. However, as I researched and observed, it became clear that they were not the culprits.

I found myself drawn to pick up a book recommended a couple of years ago by a Buddhist friend. I have been practising Nichiren Buddhism for more than 20 years, a practice that encourages mastering one’s mind among other things. Whilst my practice remains constant, sometimes hearing things another way refreshes your perspective and reawakens your understanding. 

The Book is Eckhart Tolle’s The Power of Now.

Very simply, he teaches that depression means too much living in, focus on, control by the past: anxiety means too much concern and worry over the future. Now, on one level I knew this as our Buddhism teaches that the past is gone and done and the future is only a dream, not yet here. But I guess I only knew this in my head and hadn’t really considered the physical symptoms as trying to tell me the same thing.

And I embedded and excused both patterns by thinking: well, bad things happened in the past that mean I have to have certain strategies in case they happen again; and forgiving anxiety as the natural condition for the Mum of a special kid, frankly, any mum.

What utter nonsense. What a waste of energy. What a distraction from being right here, right now.

I thought I’d been doing quite well working on being present and being in the now – until I observed my manic mind these last few nights. So I opened the book this afternoon to read:

‘The mind absorbs all your consciousness and transforms it into mind stuff. You cannot stop thinking. Compulsive thinking has become a collective disease.’

Certainly describes me in my sleepless state (and possibly a lot of my usual waking state too). 

Thankfully, on the very next page, Tolle offers an exercise. When you are lost in your mind, you need to draw your focus back into the body, feeling the inner body.

So tonight, if my mind is frantic, I shall try to follow his advice. I just hope in another chapter soon, he can tell me how not to hear the deafening tinnitus in my left ear that threatens to ruin my peace. 

To the here and Now friends. Be present and enjoy.

Author reality vs imagination

There is a veritable chasm between the author’s reality and the author’s imagination.

To write a story, one may draw on one’s experiences, but again, there is a chasm between ‘drawing on’ and recording. If I wanted to write a book based on my actual experience, I would, and I wouldn’t be afraid to call it my autobiography. If I ever get that interesting, I may even do it.

For now, I write stories that grow in my mind, fed by the things in real life that inspire, confuse or intrigue me. Sometimes it might be a theme, like death, grace, humour or prejudice. That theme might be something that sits close to my heart all the time, or something that has become current and prevalent for whatever reason.

At other times, the ‘experience’ itself can be a tiny moment, or random observation that develops into a full blown idea that ultimately has nothing to do with its conception.

For example, I wrote a short story called Grace (you can read it on my website www.sineadgillepie.co.uk) The first inspiration came from photos that a friend was putting on Facebook that were particularly beautiful and exotic. The second factor was an impending death in our circle of friends which was having a huge impact on my experience of daily living. The two came together to create the story – but it was neither about the photographer, nor the lady who was dying.

In the current novel …but I love you there is a scene involving a bunch of roses – one to which most women can relate. And yes, once upon a time I did receive a huge bunch of roses. However, together with the themes that were hovering in my mind as I wrote the novel, themes around prejudice and power dynamics in relationships, a character grew out of the roses: Hal. Hal is absolutely nothing like the man who presented the roses in real life. Nothing!

So, it has been interesting to hear some feedback where it is obvious to me that the reader has over related or over interpreted and seems to think that I am writing more truth than fiction, and changing their opinion of me accordingly due to all the things they are now ‘learning about me’.

I wonder if Val McDermid or A.A. Holmes had the same problem? If you write crime, are you merely disguising your own unlawful temptations? If you write dark psychological thrillers, is it because you are mentally disturbed? If you write science fiction, are you really just living on another planet?

Or are you drawing on the stuff of human nature and playing with it in your imagination because you are a writer?

I am looking forward to being questioned in the next few weeks by BBC Radio, and by the book groups I shall be attending, and hopefully by the audience at my talk at the end of the month. I want to be challenged about my choices of subject and my characters. I want to think about my influences and how they shape my work. But I hope to goodness no-one thinks it’s all true…

Let's hear it for the Mums.

I’m very distracted today, struggling to concentrate on anything that requires actual thought.

Good news : that means a load of cleaning got done. I find the smell of bleach very reassuring.

The distraction is pre-op stress. The operation won’t be mine. The stress is.

(At this point I did just get up, cross the room, then return with no idea why …)

Beloved Aspie (BA) is profoundly deaf. He wasn’t born that way. He developed a growth in his ear at the age of 14 that destroyed the insides. He never once complained of pain, which is why it did as much damage as it did. It is a strange Apsie thing, that he had no relationship with his inner body. He has a very high pain threshold, and at the time, no vocabulary for or sensitivity to pain. He had never said he was hungry, or thirsty, and I hadn’t noticed, because being Mum, I just tended to feed him at the right times.

The NHS surgeons saved his life. The growth had been heading for his brain.

He was left deaf on one side, with chronic ear disease, which at its worst amounted to two attacks a month and all the ensuing antibiotics. At least we were assured it wouldn’t happen again.

Really? Approaching his 21^st birthday, I noticed a distinct deterioration in his overall hearing. A check- up revealed another growth in the other ear. Surgery ensued and most of the rest of his hearing was lost.

He has had the support of great doctors who recommended bone-anchored hearing aids. They operate by vibrating through the skull bone, bypassing the loss in the inner ear. Brilliant – so long as you don’t focus on the fact that this entails drilling into his skull, screwing in a titanium bolt, then waiting 3 months for bone and screw to meld so the hearing aid can be clipped on to the outside. The process is scary, but the results are amazing.

A bonus, when little kids stare at the small boxes at the sides of his head, I like to whisper, “he’s not a real boy/man.” BA has denied me the ultimate fun of following him with a remote control steering device...

The main problem tomorrow, as usual, is that on top of it all, BA is needle phobic. They have to sedate him to sedate him.  Every time, there is an argument with the anaesthetist because the drug they use would last longer in any of us. But BA’s massive adrenaline means he ‘digests’ it in a third of the time. They never believe me. This has led to some very unfunny moments of him waking up as they wheel him into theatre – and boy, is he loud when he’s scared.

So, maybe think of me tomorrow as I go into battle.

And think of all those other amazing mums who do so every day. (No disregard to the Dads, Mums just carry the pain differently).

Actually, I’m not so much stressed as sad – that BA has to keep going through this. He’ll be 25 next week – that’s over 10 years of chronic ear disease and regular surgery.  I know that people live with a lot worse – you have my deepest respect. I just wish our kids didn’t have to hurt.

TARDIS: Twixt Aspergers and Reverence (for) Doctor In Space

TARDIS : Twixt Aspergers And Reverence (for ) Doctor In Space.

It took a year. A whole year.

They said it was coming: this 50^th anniversary. I thought it didn’t matter. Or that it might be a ‘special episode’, or something as small as that.

You see, when they resurrected Dr Who in 2005 with one of my favourite actors, Christopher Eccleston, I couldn’t quite convince Beloved Aspie (BA) to give it a go. I talked to him of Daleks and Cybermen and Sea Devils (who’d been a particular terror of mine along with those giant maggots). But he was unimpressed. Of course, by this time Spiderman could fly between buildings, and the Xmen exalted their mutantcy in glorious CGI.

The king rat, early Silurians and a few bug-eyed monsters carried no appeal.

But, he didn’t give up (sometimes he is his mother’s son) and he got hooked (sometimes he …) And it became an event. On Saturday, we would sit together and watch the new Dr Who. The we discovered that our downstairs neighbours, the talented poet, John Mc Cullough, and his partner Morgan, were also fans. They started lending BA dvds of the older shows.

Well that was it  -addiction!

For BA’s 18^th birthday , it was a Dr Who theme. I spent months advising friends, in secret, what they should wear to look like this, that or the other alien, character, whatever. Their efforts were phenomenal and his joy supreme.

We did well –too well! His expectations of the 50^th Celebration were high. He was vigilant. He was one of the first to get tickets online (thanks be).  He had a dear friend signed up to join us there, (thanks, B). Then we started planning the costume.

Now, here’s the truth. As the year moved on, a total Aspie obsession set in. First it was the sonic screwdrivers: all of them. I have painted them. Family and friends have been enlisted to modify them. I am torn between wanting to kill him for tormenting everyone, and admiring him for enlisting everyone! Then it was the impossible route to building his own Vortex Manipulator (yes, be glad if you don’t know what I’m talking about).

What I haven’t enjoyed is waking him in the morning and the first words being sonic screwdriver  or vortex whatever…Good morning, mum works for me. Or the last words being something about the next bit we have to find in a shop to make whatever…I quite like a goodnight hug.

By last week, he was beside himself: overwhelmed with expectation and overwrought with anxiety about what could go wrong. I was the latter times ten. With expectation so high, how the hell was I going to fix it if it didn’t work out?

I dressed up, as River Song; thank goodness she did double denim and a white shirt. Check. BA was a stunning version of the 10^th Doctor (David Tennant). We got up at 5am. Left home by 5.50am to drive to London. A mad woman reversed into the car in the car park, helpful. Excel is huge and our friend couldn’t get past jobsworth because I had her ticket when no-one had wanted them minutes before.

And then everything melted: the stress, the panic, the mania. We were here. In the Weeping Angels’ group, going into the Celebration.

I won’t lie –there were things that could have been better. More space for the costumes and props area – fantastic stuff on show, and no room to swing a cat or take a photo.  Autographs and photos were overbooked so celeb moments limited. What saved the day was the behind the scenes teams who were showing us special effects, or make up, or model making (yes, those Daleks flying through the wall on the Anniversary special show, I did that) had the most amazing stories to share. And BA did get to see Matt Smith and Jenna Coleman being interviewed, and Tom Baker with Graham Norton, and the so friendly comedian, Jon Culshaw.

I died in the Dr Who Quiz without him. He was still shopping and I was answering S***e.

But we left the building with a final photo shoot as he put his Tardis Key in the door of the original Tardis prop, his shopping by his feet, to say farewell.

He was exhausted.

But he had the best day.

My work here is done.

For now...