The Lakes again

Blogging after the event again … decided after our Lakes trip last year that most of us were enthusiastic for another one, and after a few false starts, booked Applegarth at Braithwaite, via Sally’s Cottages. It’s a typical Victorian Lakeland stone house – although this wasn’t obvious from the description, it’s actually a semi that’s been converted to a six-bedroom holiday let by dint of knocking through the second floor, so holidayers have half of the ground and first floors of the house, and the whole of the second floor. The distribution of the bedrooms proved quite convenient, with three on the first floor for Dave and Hazel, Nia and Alys, and Huwie in his own room; and three on the second floor for Mum and Dad, Ray and me.

Applegarth

Minor downsides of the property: 1) as a consequence of the alterations to increase the number of bedrooms, the kitchen is too small for the number of people the property sleeps; 2) the second floor rooms were a bit tired-looking, though the rest of the property was nice; 3) although there was an enclosed garden, it wasn’t actually enclosed directly from the back door, leading to a constant need to keep an eye out that toddler Huw wasn’t heading down the drive towards the road. The major downside was the ropey water pressure to the second floor, lending an exciting uncertainty to the whole business of taking a shower. As bathrooms are important to me this would probably be sufficient to put me off staying there again. No big deal, hopefully, as the area is awash with holiday lets.

However … on the whole it was lovely, despite the above. (And I should note that all the reviews on Sally's Cottages' website seem nothing but complimentary - so it's entirely possible that I'm just a bit of a fusspot.) Really pleased with the location - Braithwaite is a well-situated village for a whole range of walks and outings, and has three pubs and a useful village shop. And we were unbelievably lucky with the weather, for pretty much the whole week.

Thursday 18 April

I booked a half day from work and Ray arrived at my flat around 3pm. He had offered to drive me as it was roughly on his route and we weren’t sure how much parking we would have at the holiday let. As last year, we had booked a Premier Inn pit stop at the Stoke/Trentham Gardens hotel. We arrived early evening, had a G&T in the bar and a nice dinner at Joe’s Kitchen, opposite the hotel.

Joe's Kitchen

Friday 19 April

I got up for an early walk around the bits of the Trentham estate that are accessible from the hotel.

Piece of something or other

Old gates on Stone Road

We set off from the PI around 9am and made our way through heavy traffic up the rest of the M6 to Penrith. Stopped at Tebay services – the last M6 services before the Penrith turn off – after reading reviews of various services on Motorway Services Online (we were bored). Although it was heaving with bodies due to its being Good Friday, it certainly manages to seem more like a National Trust visitor centre than a service station. We didn’t go into the farm shop but did buy takeaway tea and cake from the café which we ate in Ray’s van looking at the quite pleasant view.

As we couldn’t access our holiday let until 4:30pm, we parked just outside Braithwaite and walked from there into Keswick, a walk of about 2½ miles each way. Keswick was heaving with people and we were glad we hadn’t attempted to park the car there. We had lunch at a café and Ray bought some insoles for his new boots. I bought a coaster from the adorable ‘Herdy’ shop.

Walk to Keswick from just outside Braithwaite, and back

Saturday 20 April

We walked into the village and bought ice creams from the village shop.

Dave and Hazel decided to take the girls to tackle Cat Bells, so Ray and I tagged along while Mum and Dad stayed at the house with Huw. In the event I only made it about halfway up due to not feeling 100%, so had quite a pleasant sit with a lovely view of the lake while the others successfully scrambled up to the top. Four-year-old Alys looked adorable in a flowery dress and new little walking boots. Dave has blogged about the walk here.

Afterwards we returned to Braithwaite and had drinks at the Royal Oak.

Derwentwater from the path up Cat Bells

Drinks outside the Royal Oak

Route of my walk up part of Cat Bells. The summit is a way off the bottom of the picture.

Walk up part of Cat Bells, and back

Sunday 21 April

Easter Sunday. And Hannah’s birthday.

Ray and I went out for an early morning walk of four and a half miles or so, taking a route south of Braithwaite into the Newlands Valley, initially along a path that skirts the foot of Barrow and then along a country road, returning via the village of Stair and along a lovely footpath by Newlands Beck. The Newlands Valley is separated from Derwentwater by the range of hills that includes Cat Bells.

Looking back towards Braithwaite

The bridge at Stair

Our route below in red, with start and end points in Braithwaite at the top.

The rest of the day was substantially taken up with Easter eggs. Dave and Hazel set up an Easter egg hunt for the kids in the garden. The children gave Hannah a ‘Happy Birthday’ serenade via WhatsApp. We had roast chicken.

Monday 22 April

Dave and Ray set off early to tackle Helvellyn via Striding Edge. Also mentioned in Dave’s blog post.

Mum suggested a lakeshore picnic for the rest of us. She and Hazel drove into Keswick with the kids and got the Keswick Launch across to the jetty at Hawse End. Dad had been looking less than keen on the boat trip (though we weren’t clear why exactly) so I suggested that he and I walk from Braithwaite to Hawse End to meet the others, a walk of just over three miles each way. The route involved in part the path along Newlands Beck that Ray and I had walked the previous day. We observed (well, Dad observed, and I saw them once he’d pointed them out) lots of pretty little orange-tipped butterflies.

View from our walk

Our outward route from Braithwaite to Hawse End in red:

We met up with the others and had a picnic by the lake. Afterwards Nia climbed a tree and Alys and Huw pottered about by the lakeshore.

Mum with Huwie and Nia

Alys by the lakeshore

Tuesday 23 April

Dave and Hazel took the kids to Whinlatter Forest to do the children’s trail activities there. Mum, Dad, Ray and I set out – Dad driving – to visit the Haig Colliery Mining Museum in Kells, near Whitehaven.

Just as we were driving out of Braithwaite onto the Whinlatter Pass, I decided to Google the opening hours of the museum and was a bit taken aback to get this.

Couldn’t decide whether to convey the ‘Permanently closed’ news to Dad – and I then lost mobile reception so couldn’t do any further research – but chose to assume (wrongly, as it turned out) that he must have done the homework re checking its current status, so kept quiet.

We drove through some somewhat depressed-looking towns and villages towards Whitehaven, and parked at Kells in a none-too-cheery looking and fairly deserted area. We ascertained that the museum had indeed closed. Dad and Ray took a walk to the seafront, in the interests of doing something given that we’d driven all the way there. On reflection – or possibly through subsequently contacting his business partner Steve – Dad discovered that it was the wrong museum altogether anyway. I forget the name of the actual mining museum that’s still open, somewhere else in Cumbria. A trip for another day.

We were keen not to just go straight back to the holiday let, but none of us fancied Whitehaven for a day out so someone – Mum, probably – came up with the idea of visiting Muncaster Castle. We’d never been there as a family on previous Lakes holidays, probably because it would have seemed too far over to the west to make the journey, but as we were already over in that direction it seemed like the opportunity. We spent an enjoyable few hours there walking in the grounds and attending a falconry display. The rhododendrons were in fantastic colour.

Barn owl and its handler

On the return journey, Dad made the surprising decision to take the route over Hardknott and Wrynose Passes. To pinch a quote from Wikipedia:

“[Hardknott Pass], which is the most direct route from the central Lake District to West Cumbria, shares the title of steepest road in England [my emphasis] with Rosedale Chimney Bank in North Yorkshire. It has a maximum gradient of 1 in 3 (about 33%).”

Dad admitted afterwards to having forgotten what the road was like (“I hadn’t!” put in Mum) and his large automatic Volvo proved not too well suited to it. I’ve never driven an automatic car so am not sure whether it’s possible to override the automatic aspect to get the same effect as putting a manual transmission into a low gear. The length of the car was also a problem on the hairpin bends and it was looking to those of us cowering in the back as though we were only just making it around them without getting stuck.

Postscript, re Hardknott’s ‘sister’ steepest road: Mum did once drive down Rosedale Chimney Bank during a holiday in the North York Moors in 1989. She hadn’t known it was coming up so there hadn’t been time to prepare, but notes that at one point the steepness of the descent was such that she lost sight of the car’s bonnet. I don’t recall much in terms of drama, though, so she must have kept a pretty cool head. We were heading for the village of Rosedale Abbey, where we had tea in a café where both of us remember being served by a child on roller skates.

Wednesday 24 April

Dave, Hazel, Dad and Nia went off to climb Haystacks, Nia having been keen for another, more grown up, hill walk. Mum, Ray and I took the two younger children to the same playground in Fitz Park in Keswick that we went to on last year’s trip. They seemed to enjoy themselves and we had tea and cake in the café.

In the evening, Ray and I went for a walk to look for evidence of the old railway line that used to carry the Cockermouth, Keswick and Penrith Railway. We walked out of Braithwaite to the north and crossed the A66, then turned down the drive to Braithwaite Farm. After passing the various buildings we carried straight on along a footpath. We passed what used to be Braithwaite station building, now a private house. The Wikipedia page has a photograph of it looking rather more derelict back in the 1970s. There are some earlier pictures here.

The former station building at Braithwaite

Between Braithwaite and Keswick, the route of the old railway can be seen on Google Maps as per this snip (beyond Braithwaite, the track bed is used by the A66). However, there proved a limit to what we could see on the ground: this photo was taking looking towards the old railway embankment – the line of trees – but we couldn’t see that there was any public access to it.

Looking towards the railway embankment

We turned north along a beck for a while before crossing back over the A66 at Thornthwaite and returning to Braithwaite along the road. Ray clocked the campsite at Lanefoot Farm as one possibly worth future investigation for possible trips in his camper.

Church at Thornthwaite

Our route in red:

Thursday 25 April

Ray and I spotted Dalehead Tarn on the OS map and decided to do a walk to it, in the interests of having a tarn walk. We parked in the car park by the Honister Slate Mine and took the footpath leading north towards Dale Head. However, it was a colder day than the rest of the week had been and we were decidedly chilly by the time we were about halfway, so after a brief sit, abandoned locating the tarn and returned to the car.

The Honister Slate Mine

Moody view

On the way back, we visited Lingholm and had a warm drink in the lovely café there (in fact we snuck back for brunch the following morning, before leaving the Lakes), as well as a look around the walled garden. We had a wander down to the lakeshore via a snoop at a lovely-looking new holiday let that was under construction at the time.

The Boathouse, Lingholm

The jetty at Lingholm

Ray reading about Beatrix Potter

In the evening, we had a family meal at the Coledale Inn to mark our last day.

Food

In an attempt to curb my sweet tooth, have been doing more home baking recently. This wholewheat banana and walnut loaf went down well with colleagues.

These muesli muffins were also (I thought) pretty nice and formed a robust mid-morning snack with a cup of coffee. Topped with linseed, just in case there weren’t enough seedy bits in them already. Ruth is suspicious of the wholemeal flour with millet seeds, linseeds, cracked wheat and poppy seeds that I am trying to use up (bag just visible on the right of the picture) as she claims it keeps creeping in to recipes where she expects white flour and is solely put there for her to crack her teeth on. None of which is of course true.

Have also found a delicious Delia Smith recipe for peanut butter cookies - halving the amount of sugar in the recipe (also leaving out the actual peanuts, and using smooth peanut butter as I prefer it - OK, so quite a lot of modifications) - but haven't photographed those yet.

At the other end of sweet snacks: Arctic Roll. I had no idea this was even still made. I remember having it occasionally as a child, and perceiving it as a luxurious special treat (or possibly just a respite from Instant Whip), though I don’t think it was something Mum was willing to buy all that often. Ruth and I had a nostalgic slice each, which we enjoyed though almost inevitably with such things, we weren’t as enamoured of it as adults. From an adult perspective, Nigel Slater's reported comment about Arctic Roll tasting of frozen carpet is probably a reasonable summing up, but I do remember that from the point of view of a 1970s child, Swiss roll BUT WITH ICE CREAM IN THE MIDDLE did seem rather thrillingly decadent.

A bit of research suggests that Arctic Roll did in fact cease production, but had a bit of a resurgence following the 2008 recession.

Moving on to savoury foods: I had a go recently at a recipe for saag paneer. The result looked quite pretty but lacked something in the taste.

Finally: bloody marrows. I like courgettes and Ruth and I did grow some a few years back, but I've no idea how people end up with such a glut of them - possibly it's crucial to stick to having only one plant. These somewhat careworn-looking specimens were laid out on the garden table at Mum and Dad's when I visited in August. Mum has evidently made chutney with some of the marrows, but no idea whether that used them all up - I suspect not.

Spot(s) o' culture

‘Into the Blue’ at the V&A

13 August

Admittedly my tastes may be a bit niche, but this was really interesting. Exhibition of the development of swimming pools over the years. Lots about lidos and recent campaigns to restore them. It featured a photo of the Thames Lido, which coincidentally Ray and I had visited again just the previous day.

It was pretty small-scale, tucked away on an upper floor of the V&A (which I had to ask how to get to – the staircases at the V&A each intriguingly only lead to certain floors, so you’ll find yourself on a staircase leading to floors 1, 2 and 4, with the staircase to floor 3 somehow at the other end of the building). I think this Guardian article alerted me to the exhibition. Pics nicked from the exhibition page.

‘Foragers of the Foreshore’ at Oxo Tower Wharf

29 September

This one was only on for a few days in September. Ruth is intrigued by mudlarking, presumably imagining discovery of gold coins, Roman artefacts etc; I am less intrigued by it, pessimistically imagining discovery of rubbish or the odd human torso. This claimed to be ‘the most expansive exhibition on Mudlarking that has ever taken place’. I wasn’t familiar with Nicola White but Ruth follows her on Twitter.

The exhibition itself was quite interesting but hot and crowded, so our visit was fairly brief in the end. Some interesting stuff has certainly been found over the years, though the exhibition did also reference the pitiable Victorian children who'd scoured the Thames' shores trying to actually find stuff to sell.

It was a relentlessly wet day. Afterwards we huddled outside the branch of Caffe Nero opposite for a hot drink. Think Ruth's expression says it all.

I’d often walked past the Oxo Tower but not visited any of the shops or the gallery space there. We had a quick mooch around the shops on the upper levels, though most of them appeared not to open on Sundays.

The mudlarking exhibition was held in Bargehouse, a large building opposite (presumably a former warehouse; no idea how it’s avoided conversion into luxury apartments) that's also part of the Oxo Tower Wharf development. The whole thing’s apparently owned by Coin Street Community Builders, a social enterprise.

Bargehouse has the names of the nine Muses written along one wall, which had me dredging my classical memory banks to enlighten Ruth as to who they were.

‘Other Spaces’ at 180 The Strand

12 October

Came across the exhibition while Googling exhibitions on in London during October, looking for the token something cultural for Helen and I to do on our meetup that weekend. Never heard of this place before. I might have walked past the building before, but certainly wouldn’t have thought it was an exhibition space – it looks like an office block with boarding around the ground floor. Apparently it’s an ‘iconic Brutalist building’ undergoing a transformation into an arts venue.

To get in, we joined a queue stretching around the corner of the building – I’m not great with queues but we agreed to give it a bit of time and see how fast it moved. In the event it moved reasonably quickly. We were then funneled in quite organized fashion through the three rooms, though there was plenty of time to experience each. Once inside, the exhibition was over three rooms containing three separate installations, ‘Our Time’, ‘Vanishing Point’ and ‘The Great Animal Orchestra’. There's a short clip here of the three installations.

I didn’t have my phone on the right setting for taking pictures in darkness, and didn’t like to fiddle about with it too much once we were inside, so these pictures may or may not give a flavour. Here's a review.

Our Time

Vanishing Point

The Great Animal Orchestra

‘Mary Quant’ at the V&A

19 October

This was great. Mum had mentioned quite a while back fancying going to see it – it’s been on since April – but we took until October to get around to arranging it. Fantastically set out on two levels within the V&A’s fashion gallery.

One of the most fun aspects of the exhibition was that there had evidently been a shout out for women to loan their Quant dresses to the exhibition (#WeWantQuant), with the result that in addition to the dresses themselves being on display there were a number of accompanying photographs of the then-girl in question wearing the dress in her parents’ sitting room or back garden, and a bit of the back story as to how she’d come by it.

I’m too young to be able to imagine the impact that Quant had on fashion options for young women, but Mum said that Quant had without doubt influenced the way she dressed in the Sixties. She said that she’d once modelled for a Quant-style pointed haircut while in college, though disappointingly isn’t sure she’s got any photos of it.

Quant’s King’s Road boutique 'Bazaar' was apparently famed for its eccentric window displays. I assume this exhibition mock-up of a woman in a distinctly eccentric pair of trousers with a lobster on a leash was one such.

There was an incredibly varied selection of outfits on show, including a range of PVC rainwear, and a range of shoes. Also some information about the range of ‘Daisy’ dolls, which I hadn’t known about. One exhibit showed some of the range of ‘Daisy’ accessories that were available.

Funky outfits

'

'Daisy' dolls and accessories

After doing the Quant exhibition and lunch, we went up several floors to the ironwork gallery to view the Hereford Screen, installed in Hereford Cathedral in the late nineteenth century and removed from it in 1967 and sold to a museum in Coventry, who couldn’t afford to maintain it so sold it to the V &A. Hard to imagine that it’s likely to return to the cathedral at this stage.

Mum by the Hereford Screen

Well, who knew?

Emma’s score of 11 on the ADOS-II did reach the cut off for a diagnosis of Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD).

History 

Brief introductory blurb without over-sharing (actually, I realise it’s gone on a bit). As a lifelong sufferer from anxiety (and more intermittently, depression) I’ve consulted a variety of services over the years, but most recently (prior to last year) the NHS’ ‘Talking Therapies’ service, part of NHS England’s Improving Access to Psychological Therapies (IAPT) project. (Back in the day, a GP practice would often have one or more counsellors who worked with them, whereas this isn’t the case any more due to funding cuts. So on the surface it’s hard to see how access to therapies has improved, particularly for those who might fancy talking to an actual person as opposed to a voice on the telephone. Anyhoo. Much as I am in general quite fond of technology, the internet etc, I do feel that therapy is possibly one of those things that shouldn’t be moved online.)

TT is the first – indeed, the only – thing GPs will refer you to now if you present with anything short of extremely severe mental health problems. TT’s ‘entry level’ service seems intended as a breezy way to help sufferers from milder psychological conditions get back up to speed. In reality, the first-level offering means telephone sessions with a ‘Personal Wellbeing Practitioner’ (I know) who, in the case of the one I was assigned, is apparently sitting in a call centre and reading from a script. If the entry level sessions don’t work for you, you can get access to TT’s second level offering, which involves going on a waiting list to receive a set number of face to face sessions, still of CBT-style therapy but rather more tailored to your actual needs.

I had a number of sessions on this occasion with a PWP plus doing exercises on an online CBT program. I actually thought the program (‘SilverCloud’) was OK as far as it went (though the content is frequently banal: a typical multiple choice question would be: “When you feel anxious or low, is it best to a) ignore it and hope it goes away; b) talk about it with someone; c) drink heavily”), but was less satisfied with the general format of the sessions. As a consequence of feeding back fairly negatively, I did get a mollifying phone call with another woman, who after some discussion agreed to refer me on to their second level offering. I duly had a far more useful hour’s introductory session with a very nice young man, where I explained what I felt were issues. I returned for the next session to be told that he had spoken with his supervisor who had suggested that some of the issues I’d raised suggested possible Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) and that I should be referred for an assessment. I was surprised but open to the idea, so agreed. This was in May 2017. When I still hadn’t made it anywhere near the top of the NHS waiting list by summer 2018, I cracked and decided to pay for a private assessment.

Finding reputable places that assess adults took a bit of research, but I eventually picked The Practice MK, partly because they also do NHS assessments as well as private ones and rightly or wrongly I took this as a good sign. They’re based at Warren Park, pretty much just down the road from my flat in Wolverton - which obviously wasn’t a strong reason to pick them, but still. Unfortunately, being registered out of the MK area I couldn’t be seen under the NHS but had already reluctantly signed away the quite large amount of money involved as a necessary price to pay.

The assessment

This was in two parts: an initial hour's consultation - at the end of which you get given an indication of whether the psychologist does think it's worth proceeding to a full ASD assessment - and then a longer session (a few weeks later, in the case of mine) which constitutes the main bit.

The initial consultation was an hour's ‘free talk’ session with a clinical psychologist, given over partly to me talking freely about issues that had led to my NHS referral, and partly to the psychologist asking questions at intervals. As is the way, I have no memory now either of the questions nor of what I said in reply. However, the upshot was that based on what I'd told her, she did feel that proceeding to a full diagnostic assessment would be a good idea.

The main assessment

A few weeks later I went for a full assessment of several hours with a Katherine Goodsell, Principal Forensic and Chartered Psychologist.

• The ADOS 2
Stands for Autism Diagnostic Observation Schedule (Second Edition). This seems to have been the main test instrument, though The Practice stresses that they never reach a diagnosis based on just one instrument. 

Katherine’s questioning began with some questions clearly designed to weed out whether I had any comorbid learning difficulties; I think after my somewhat offended response (and possible reference to my PhD) she was satisfied that I don’t. According to this NAS page the ratio of people on the spectrum who also have a learning disability, vs. those who don’t, is about half and half.  

Parts of the ADOS 2 struck me as a bizarre instrument to use with adults – use of storytelling from pictures, etc – but it would appear to be a respected tool. According to The Practice, it's "considered as the 'gold standard' for observational assessment of autism spectrum disorder". It's used to - supposedly - gain insight into the individual's abilities in communication and reciprocal social interaction. 

There are several ‘modules’ of the ADOS 2; Module 4 is the one used for adults. A total score is arrived at from the separate scores for Communication and Social Interaction. The cut-off for being counted as on the autistic spectrum is 7.

• The Social Responsiveness Scale (SRS-2)
This was a questionnaire which I was asked to complete. I was also asked for someone who has known me for a good while – but not necessarily a parent – to also complete it, so asked Ray. Interestingly, both Ray’s and my versions came out almost the same in terms of scoring, though neither of us saw the other’s responses before they were submitted. The report blurb has it that both the informant and the self-report version of the SRS-2 “indicate that [Emma’s] overall score falls within the Moderate range. This suggests that she experiences deficiencies in reciprocal social behaviour that are clinically significant and lead to substantial interference with everyday social interactions. Such scores are typical for individuals with autism spectrum disorders of moderate severity.” I’m half-hoping that’s standardised wording as I do feel I manage slightly better than that implies.  

• Sensory Profile
This included something called the Q-global questionnaire, which I completed online before the assessment. Apparently it’s testing for sensory issues. I actually remember nothing about the content of it. 

The Sensory Profile works on four Sensory Quadrants. I scored ‘Much More Than Most People’ in both the Sensory Sensitivity and Sensation Avoiding quadrant.

Individuals with Sensory Sensitivity have low neurological thresholds that cause them to respond readily to sensory stimuli. Behaviors associated with Sensory Sensitivity include distractibility and discomfort caused by intense stimuli. Advantages of Sensory Sensitivity include a high level of awareness of the environment and an ability to discriminate or attend to detail.

Individuals who engage in Sensation Avoiding behaviors are overwhelmed or bothered by sensory stimuli. Consequently, sensation avoiders actively engage with their environments to reduce sensory stimuli. Advantages of Sensation Avoiding include the ability to create structure in environments that provide limited sensory stimuli, as well as a tolerance or enjoyment of being alone.



• The Beck inventories
And a couple of old familiars: the Beck Anxiety Inventory (BAI): my T Score = 86 (Severe; an average is 50). This one wasn’t much of a surprise. And the Beck Depression Inventory (BDI): my T Score = 73 (Moderate). I’m guessing these are included because anxiety and/or depression are often comorbid with ASD – in particular, high functioning cases that have gone undiagnosed for quite a while (hello). In fairness, I think both of those scores should have gone down a bit thanks to getting an actual diagnosis.

The diagnosis

I went back to see Katherine a few weeks after the main session, where she gave me the outcome verbally, and advised that I'd get a full report in due course.

The cut off for an ASD diagnosis (in the ADOS 2) is evidently 8, with 12 the cut off for what would be formally termed ‘autism’ (the difference between autism and ASD is evidently a matter only of degree of severity of symptoms, rather than different symptoms). I scored 11. So I’m actually slightly weirder than I thought. Having reached 50 without a diagnosis and given that I’m holding down a reasonable job, I hadn’t necessarily expected to get a diagnosis of any sort.

Things that I hadn’t realised about myself, that are evidently consistent with ASD – but they’re the sorts of things you’d need someone else to point out:

• Relatively monotonic speech;
• Speech formal and precise; 
• Limited range of facial expressions;
• Erratic eye contact

Things that I did think, after a bit of reading up, were probably indicative, though the possibility wouldn’t have occurred to me until the IAPT service pointed it out:

• Rather extreme dislike of changes of plan. (An example: I may have planned to leave the house hours early in order to take my time getting somewhere, not have to talk to anyone and have some time to recoup at the other end. Some jolly person might then suggest ‘Let’s leave three hours later than you’d planned and ALL GO TOGETHER’. Mental shutdown and possibly tears may result.); 
• Go to some lengths to avoid crowds and noise;
• Find more than one person talking at once excessively jarring;
• Struggle when there are several people talking at once to pick out the strand of conversation, sometimes as if I had a hearing problem – except that I don’t;
• Occasional what might be termed in autism-speak ‘meltdowns’ where I lose verbal capacity;
• Extreme irritation with people who don’t follow the rules and/or act logically (though ‘logically’ may well translate as ‘how I think they ought to’)

There are a few others, which I’m not going to relate here in case they interfere with the more-or-less normal persona I like to present. Some of the ones I have listed should hopefully help to explain my decision not to bear children.

An additional view is that highly intelligent people can compensate for difficulties due to ASD by watching and learning from others and then applying. For obvious reasons, I rather like this one. The idea of performance in social situations having to be ‘learned’ makes some intuitive sense. Becoming more adept in social situations with age – as I certainly have – is also consistent, though I’d guess that’s not uncommon among the population in general.

Some musings

• Asperger syndrome. There appears to be greater prestige attached by some individuals to a diagnosis of Asperger syndrome rather than autism (I’ve seen this termed ‘Aspie superiority’). My guess is that the term ‘Aspergers’ is associated more with brainy maths boffins and less with uncontrollable nonverbal children, so carries more appeal for your average adult of normal intelligence. It strikes me that it’s used as something of a proxy for ASD sufferers of normal-high intelligence, to distinguish them from other types. It’s no longer a diagnosis in the diagnostic framework that The Practice MK uses (the DSM-5), I gather because it was decided that it didn’t differ from other autism spectrum conditions enough to merit a whole separate name. I’m sure I’ve also seen it noted somewhere that the symptoms of Asperger syndrome were noted based solely on observations of men. Which leads on to:
• Sex differences in rates of ASD/diagnoses of ASD. The view nowadays seems to be that women and girls are under-diagnosed, and that a female with the same degree of autistic symptoms as a male will often mask them better, possibly because of social conditioning that makes girls and women more concerned to fit in with their peers. That sounds potentially plausible, and I’d also perhaps add, less likely to be of a mindset that thinks they’re perfectly OK as they are so don’t need to change anything. I’m being slightly tongue-in-cheek on the latter bit, but I do think there’s something in both of those points. There’s a NAS page on ‘gender and autism’ – though it unfortunately branches off into talking about ‘gender identity’ which is a whole other can of worms. This page, though, is quite good, particularly the piece “How the public misunderstand autistic women” where some of the writer’s experiences chime with me. Also this is good, especially the bit ‘Girls blend in’. Also this.
• Involvement of parents. As a middle-aged adult, this can be difficult for a number of reasons. One obvious one is that although I am lucky enough to have both parents still living, this isn’t going to be the case for every 50-something. Another more nuanced issue is how much frank use they would be if you took them along. This is partly due to what I suspected would be my mother’s (probably natural) reluctance to remember anything from my childhood as symptomatic of anything other than shyness, and partly because – not wanting to upset her – I would have been reluctant to remind her of specific behaviours and incidents which it’s pretty clear to me now did indicate autistic tendencies, but which she might not care to (or perhaps be able to) recall. Thankfully The Practice MK is geared towards diagnosing adults and didn’t require this. Not being a parent myself this is only speculation, but I’d guess that this sort of thing is difficult for parents as they have so much invested in the health and ‘normality’ of their children – or certainly for people of my parents’ generation; being diagnosed with this sort of stuff is a lot more familiar nowadays.
• Savant syndrome. I wish. Rain Man has a lot to answer for. The term ‘autistic savant’ is no longer current as apparently only about half of cases of savant syndrome are also reckoned to be autistic, and SS itself is incredibly rare. It’s a nice thought, but no.
• Great ability in maths, computer hacking etc. I was moderately good at maths at school – as in, I passed my O-level with a reasonable grade – but certainly no genius. Coding – now there’s something I do wish I’d been exposed to at school, but in my day (the 1980s) computer programming classes were a) much harder to access; b) dominated by boys of a particularly irritating know-it-all bent, if my school was anything to go by (it’s highly unlikely Simon Lyons and Nicholas Andrews are reading this blog, but I’ll refrain from naming them just in case. Oh. Whoops.). Thankfully for the sake of today’s girls, things have changed.
• The view that We’re All On The Spectrum. I have some sympathy with this up to a point, as certain individual autistic traits have become well known (though several, like the supposed lack of empathy, are widely misinterpreted) and autism/ASD has acquired such a much higher profile over the last 20 years or so that it can seem as though everyone’s being diagnosed with it. Indeed, it can seem as though every second family has at least one autistic child, though obviously that’s not the case in reality. It’s much the same thing as saying “he’s a bit OCD”, in that it reflects a layman’s perception of what being OCD involves. (Just to clarify: ‘the spectrum’ refers to the spectrum of severity of symptoms displayed by people diagnosable with an autistic condition, not by everyone in the world.) 

Reactions from others

I’ve spoken about it directly with comparatively few people but generally, I’d say reaction of mild surprise but openness to the idea. Only one mildly irritating reaction, from a former colleague who launched into a speech about a former boss of hers at the OU who was DEFINITELY (in her view) ‘on the spectrum’ and who later challenged something I said with “Aha, but you’re not supposed to have empathy, are you?”.

The only quarter where there seems to have been no surprise whatsoever was Ray and his family. Before I got the official diagnosis, Ray said that he didn’t reckon there was any doubt about it, while his sister – the mother of the teen mentioned in the next section – evidently reacted to news of my diagnosis with something along the lines of “Well, duh”. Suspect it helps that they have direct experience of an autistic female themselves.

Late diagnosis

Was it worth going for an ASD assessment at 50? I’d say unequivocally yes – it’s mildly annoying that I had to pay for it in order to speed things up, but with hindsight I don’t begrudge the money.

It’s difficult not to have some envy for today’s youth whose ASD was spotted early on. One of Ray’s nieces, now in her mid-teens, was diagnosed in infants school and has attended ASD support groups from a young age and apparently has a support worker at her secondary school to whom she can go with any worries. By all accounts she seems to have turned out pretty well-adjusted, has some friends and has just taken her GCSEs.

But it’s highly unlikely I would have got a diagnosis as a child even if my parents had been concerned enough to have asked questions of professionals. My understanding from reading is that before the diagnostic criteria were widened and autism was re-classified as a spectrum condition, it would only have been children and young people with severe symptoms and, most likely, comorbid conditions (and most likely boys) who would have been diagnosed. This has it that the DSM-IV was the first version of the DSM to classify autism as a spectrum, and the DSM-IV was released in 1994, by which time I was 26.

Any annoyance surrounding my late diagnosis is directed mainly at the sequence of – in the main - half-arsed counsellors I’ve seen over the years, particularly those I’ve seen more recently when ASD was reasonably in the public consciousness. I’d seriously like to know what the hell qualifications most of them possess. After giving me my diagnosis, Katherine noted that some counselling might be helpful to assist me in processing it, but stressed that if I went for any more counselling, it should be with a counsellor who has experience of counselling people on the autism spectrum – the differences are I believe including around how questions should be phrased, etc. Of course, that meant that the easiest thing for me to do was to see one of The Practice’s own counsellors (they offer other services besides autism assessments) so it may have been in part a way of drumming up business for her own practice, but I have to say that the girl-woman with whom I’ve now had a number of sessions is one of a VERY small number of the counsellors I’ve seen whom I haven’t wanted to punch in the face. Which is a good start.

Greensand Ridge walk, 16.7 miles

22 June 2019

Hai came up with the idea a while back of walking the Greensand Ridge, a 40-mile long distance trail that runs from Leighton Buzzard to the village of Gamlingay in Cambridgeshire. A small group of us – me, Matt, Hai and two of Hai’s friends from King’s College – tackled the first stretch on a Saturday in late June, intending to walk from Leighton Buzzard as far as the little station at Millbrook (slightly off the trail but we wanted to do the thing by public transport). It was a reasonably hot day and was in the peak of the hayfever season, making it a dubious decision on my part to go at all. Anyway. I fancied getting out for a walk with friends to reduce time spent sitting around, scrolling through social media etc, so went.

We took the train to Leighton Buzzard and walked the short distance to the canal to join the beginning of the trail. The route follows the canal for a bit before branching off across a meadow towards Heath and Reach and the Rushmere Country Park (where we got slightly lost). We passed Rammamere farm (where there was some particularly b*stard pollen) and scuttled across the A5. The trail passes through more fields and woods and turns east towards the village of Woburn. By the time we reached Woburn my hayfever was kicking in and I was becoming less enthusiastic about the whole idea. The trail branches off through a horrid field (not pictured) which was full of cut grass at the time we crossed it and where, to add insult to injury, Matt and Hai stopped in full sun for several minutes to have a look at the route.

We walked through many fields of this type

The trail crosses the Woburn estate, where we got good views of Woburn Abbey and the lake. After leaving the deer park, we sat down by a field to eat our lunch and apply suncream. We started up again and walked on through Eversholt and along some interminable-seeming bridleways. I was losing enthusiasm by this time and took advantage of a map stop to moot the idea that I might cut the walk short and walk to Ridgmont station, the nearest station on the Bletchley to Bedford line. I ended up being persuaded to continue as far as Lidlington, though by the time we got there I was lagging some way behind the others and feeling somewhat dehydrated, as well as itchy. Everyone else decided they were OK with finishing at Lidlington too, so we headed for the station, after having walked around 16.5 miles.

I was delighted to find that Lidlington has a village shop, where I bought more water and an ice cream, though none of the others seemed in need of either (curious, surely). We then unfortunately had about an hour’s wait for a train, though I suppose we were at least sitting down.

Woburn Abbey and lake

There turned out to have been a re-routing of the Greensand Ridge a few years ago, supposedly to avoid a dangerous road crossing on the A507, which means the current route, through Ridgmont, diverges from the route on the OS map. My companions were sufficiently purist to want to follow the original route, though this proved less than ideal and included a struggle through a particularly trying overgrown field and then a scramble through a hedge.

The walk pretty much knocked me out for the rest of the weekend – I don’t think I stopped feeling pollen-infested until Monday morning. Spent Sunday in my flat with the curtains drawn.

Our route shown in red - starting point in Leighton Buzzard at the bottom:

Kelly's Kitchen

My eye was caught by a recent Motorway Services Online tweet referring to Kelly’s Kitchen, as I’d idly wondered how Kelly’s Kitchen roundabout, on the southern edge of MK had come by its name.

Kelly’s Kitchen was evidently a short-lived chain of roadside eateries, I assume along the lines of the Happy Eater and the Little Chef. The logo was evidently this cheery-looking lady. I’ve no memory of them, though that’s probably not surprising as it doesn’t sound as though they existed for very long. It sounds from the Motorway Services online article as though they were created as a rival to Little Chef, albeit not a very successful one as they were rapidly taken over and became LCs.

I had a look at Google Maps to see where this restaurant would have been. It was on the 'island' formed by the old alignment of the A5 (Watling Street), which goes through Fenny Stratford, and the newer dual carriageway, which bypasses it.

Kelly's Kitchen roundabout; black line shows alignment of old A5

As of today, Street View is still showing the boarded-up former Little Chef (and even more former Kelly's Kitchen) building, which was apparently closed and demolished in 2012 (according to this, it stopped being a Kelly's Kitchen in 1991). In reality, the building has now gone and there's a double-decker McDonalds on the site.

Disused tube station outing

1 June 2019

Disused tube stations, eh? Who doesn’t love those. And disused railways, roads etc. Luckily Ray does too, so in early June we had a day in London checking out former tube station buildings. There are evidently all manner of below ground disused bits, but you have to go on special tours to see those, organized by the London Transport Museum’s ‘Hidden London’ programme.

We’d both watched a number of YouTube videos on the topic of old tube stations, in particular two engaging short films by Geoff Marshall (Part 1 below).



We got round five former stations over the course of the day, with stops/travelling in between.

1.   Marlborough Road 
In St John's Wood, on the junction of Finchley Road and Queen's Grove. We started the day with a second breakfast at Bill’s on Baker Street, and then walked north-west past Regents' Park and Lord's to locate this building. This station was closed in 1939 following the construction of some new deep-level then-Bakerloo (now Jubilee) Line tunnels and subsequent re-routing of trains through them. This page has a photo of the station when it was in use as a passenger station, and in its later incarnation as a Chinese restaurant. According to the Wikipedia entry, it now houses some sort of substation; Geoff Marshall's video also notes that it's used as an emergency escape route from the Underground (as many of these old buildings seem to be).

2.  Hyde Park Corner
HPC tube station does obviously still exist, but it no longer has any above-ground buildings. The building went out of use in the early 1930s when a sub-surface ticket hall was built. It's now part of the Wellesley Hotel. Apparently, there's an emergency stairway inside that connects to the platforms. Difficult to find a photo of the old station building in use, but someone has posted on Flickr a still from a 1930 film showing it.

The building, like a number of tube stations, was designed by architect Leslie Green. The 'ox-blood' red tiles are characteristic of Green's stations.

3. Brompton Road
Further down Knightsbridge. It's on a quiet side street near the Brompton Oratory - took us a while to locate it. This one was closed in 1934. It was subsequently owned by the Ministry of Defence up until 2014, when it was apparently sold to a private buyer.

4.  Down Street
Down another side street, this one off Piccadilly. Closed in 1932. Apparently used as a bunker by Churchill and his War Cabinet during WWII.

5. York Road 
This one's behind King's Cross, so a bit of a journey from the previous three. Before visiting it, we had a delicious lunch in Kimchee, part of the posh new development there.

Amazing what you don't notice. I must have walked past this building before, but clearly never clocked that it was a former station. This one closed in 1932. Its re-opening seems to have been discussed as part of the King's Cross Central project, but it's hard to imagine that this is likely in reality.

All five of the stations we visited - or station building, in the case of Hyde Park Corner - were closed in the 1930s, so there was evidently some sort of programme of changes that went on then.

The day we went was a particularly fine day – in fact so warm that I tried out my first ever iced latte.