The Groves of Academe

Well I was mega stressed by the whole thing, and although I had my laptop and recording device, I still could not stand to hear falsehoods and inaccuracies perpetrated during the lectures, and I guess at some point I could almost have taken over.

I was full of righteous anger every time the infernal triad was rolled out, if they could but see themselves and realise their own inconsistencies because if you were to add up everyone’s variant version of the memetic triad it would add up to something considerably more than three.

However that apart the thinking at Birmingham is considerably more liberal than elsewhere and we are given more credit than the likes of Amaral and Volkmar would give us.

It was a bad sensory environment and one where I did not know where I was supposed to be most of the time, when my laptop crashed, so did I.

The problem in the evenings was that I tried to be social, but I could have stripped naked and danced on the table and still would have been invisible, because there is something about the intensity of NT's social focus that excludes everything else, I was a tree falling silently even when I lost my temper.

There is a lot I am not happy about today, a lot I did not take in, a lot of consideration that was not given to my own autism despite being in the company of autism "experts" and workers.

I really only felt comfortable with Dinah Murray and Wendy Lawson. Dinah gave me a lift home, with Wendy in the back, I hope they now remember where the best Pylons on the route are, round by the NEC.

Did I forget to introduce Electricity Pylons into my interjections during any of the lectures, no I did not, (tastefully of course)

Other than that I am not very happy at the moment, the first part of the course will not be that difficult for me, but the problem is not what I know, nor what I can learn, but how I present it.

Maybe that is why the likes of Wendy Lawson and Ros Blackburn always get to do the presentations, they are smoother at it.

However in a weeks time, I am really in the Lions den as if Birmingham was not bad enough. I am going to be speaking fluent Larryese to some of the academics who invented the social model of disability and they will no doubt be speaking fluent bollox back.

I have four thousand words to deliver, that would if it were an assignment for my Birmingham course be at Masters level, yet Birmingham expects far less of me. Do you think I feel unappreciated, you can sure I do.