I've been reading a lot of articles recently about the season length and injury attrition, and its got me thinking about just why I agree so much with Billy V and Christian Day.
See, I have the type of life where I can fully understand burn-out and attritional damage. The way being autistic affects me is similar to what Billy and Christian describe when talking about little niggles and injuries that don't heal properly. Only mine is mostly in my head, where the outcome isn't needing surgery or physio, but needing dark and quiet to stop the immense pressure building inside my skull.
Autism Fatigue is a term I talk a lot about so I'm not going to rehash everything I've said before (especially as I'm trying to write a book about it right now!) but the one thing I will say is that the "little and often" approach to breaks only really work when they're in tandem with a longer more complete break.
Days here and there when I don't speak to anyone and don't have to mask are what keep me ticking over week after week, but without that knowledge that I have a longer break on the horizon the mental health aspect kicks in and I spiral into a depressive cycle.
And this is what I fear for our players; that without an appropriate length break/pre season period their mental health will suffer and the knocks/niggles will take longer to shake off when it's so much harder to convince yourself to do the rehab work required.
I don't want to be hearing that players aren't available for selection because they're fighting depression and anxiety as well as injuries, it's bad enough that these guys will suffer through those dark days after they retire, don't put them through it while they're still playing!!
My support of my club and country doesn't wane during off-season, I don't forget about rugby as a sport if it's not on TV every weekend. Yes I miss it fiercely, enough that when it comes back I'm positively chomping at the bit to get over to Twickenham for the LDH, but not to the point where I go looking for another sport to replace it! (Wimbledon and Le Tour don't count, they are events that happen during the day that I watched every year long before I got back into rugby!)
The rugby head honchos don't need to find ways to "keep viewers" around in summer months by stretching the season - a concept that doesn't reduce player work load but actually increases it for the international stars as they will have their post competition rest on a rest week with everyone else and so be available for more club games selection than currently!
Rugby needs to be leading the way in sport in demonstrating to children how to have a healthy relationship with exercise; to not start leading impressionable minds down the garden path to the "must go to the gym everyday" mentality that can cause body image difficulties in young men and women. Rugby union is a shining example of how a sport can be family friendly and still attract the adults, can be home grown and exciting, can be world class and still relatable.
So, to Billy, Christian, and any of the other players saying the same thing, I support you 100% in whatever action you as players choose to take, upto and including a full strike.
I stand with the players, now and always, in saying that player health and welfare must come first in these discussions. Now is the time to take this stand, to protect current and future generations of players and role models while protecting the spirit and ethos of the game we love so much.
#RugbyFamily
Showing posts with label Stress. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Stress. Show all posts
Monday, 2 October 2017
Thursday, 21 September 2017
Sarries in Philly!!!!!
There was a lot said about this fixture when it was first announced, mostly negative and critical. And yes, the crowd was a bit thin on the ground and the boys had to work incredibly hard in the humid heat of Pennsylvania but that's not the core of this fixture.
The heart of what the Premiership were trying to do was, in my opinion, achieved.
I spent time before the match with Sarries fans from New York and Virginia Beach, with Newcastle fans who'd struggled with JFK C&I even worse than me, with life long rugby fans and relatively new ones.
I was lucky enough to be in contact with BT Sport this weekend, and thus got asked to be a part of the pre-game filming with Sarra Elgan. She made sure to speak to two of the USA based Sarries fans who were with us before the 'lone' Falcon in the group (he wasn't, just the only one willing and around to be filmed!) and then lil ole me!
I'd already talked to Sarra earlier in the day when we'd encountered her at the famous Rocky steps by the Philadelphia Museum of Art and had had the chance to have a decent chat with the BT Sport team and even a quick photo with ref JP Doyle when he randomly appeared!
Consequently I found myself kinda becoming the face of Sarries support in Philly - even more so when the Saracens social media team got me to do a good luck message to the boys on Instagram because Paul told them I could "talk for England"!!
I'm happy to do these things though because it's a subject I'm comfortable with, my public speaking reputation is good because I know the topics I talk about - autism, Saracens, space, physics, maths, working in a school, PRUs, all that is in my comfort zone. Ask me to talk about anything else and, well, it may not be pretty!
Back to the topic at hand now!
The match itself was not what you'd call the epitome of English rugby but it was very hot, bright, slippery ball conditions as the sun was setting across the stadium, and to be perfectly honest you're never gonna get the gold standard match in round 3! Maybe the next stage for the great American conversion is to get live showings of the ECC games and play-off matches going in big stadiums, sending a retired player or two over to do Q&As pre game.
My weekend wasn't just about the match though! I've detailed my Friday nightmare in this post: http://hjellis.blogspot.co.uk/2017/09/how-many-ways-can-one-journey-go-wrong but once on Philly my attention shifted from my complaining to having a great time in a new and exciting city!
Friday night was spent at the Hard Rock Cafe in my new Wal-Mart dress whilst Saturday morning was taken up with lots of laughter and photographs at the Rocky steps - particularly once Flats got there and had to don a fleece lined tracksuit to copy Sly's famous scenes!
We chose to head to the stadium really early as we wanted to witness the American phenomenon of "tailgating" - an interesting experience I must say!
We covered the car with Sarries flags to let everyone know who we were (Champions of Europe, we know who we are!) and waited to see who showed up. We knew of at least 3 groups headed our way, one of whom pitched up a gazebo so we quickly transferred the flags to the sides and made it Camp Sarries!
The next hour or so was spent sharing drinks and swapping stories of how we started following Saracens along with some interesting tales from the US Navy! We were joined by some Falcons fans and I had some sympathetic ears to my tale of horror and woe from my journey out as they had missed a connection at JFK thanks to the ridiculous chaos that is US Customs & Immigration!!
We were invited to join the BT crew again and so wandered over to the fan zone they were setting up, where I got to have my 5 minutes of fame on camera! (And then get inundated with notifications going "was that you?" "You were on my TV!")
Heading in to the stadium it was a strange place that distinctly reminded us of several prem stadiums, predominately the AJ Bell and the Stoop to me.
The merchandise shop showcased just what some of us are crying out for Sarries to do - women's jewellery!! I picked up one of the official match day t-shirts as a souvenir but was disappointed not to find any of the 'America Series' rugby balls that had been used in the online advertising. We did however manage to find pins which kept Adam happy!
I also struggled with finding a drink that wasn't a soft drink or beer! Having had 2 bottles of peach cider courtesy of our naval friend I was in the mood for another drink. It took a complete circuit of the stadium to find the one bar that did a bottled cider - no wine or spirits options anywhere!! And even then I was given my bottle of cider poured into a massive larger-than-a-pint plastic glass that every time I drank from took up my entire face so I couldn't see anything!!
During the match it was a bizarrely quiet experience, I've grown used to the Sarries fans getting the chants going and there not being many of us meant anything we tried starting never really went anywhere which was a bit embarrassing!
The second half of the game saw several of the non-playing squad wander past us up the steps to their box area, Loz seemed positive about his shoulder injury when I asked him how it was doing which is good! There were some moments of Sarries brilliance showing through, I nearly killed my vocal chords screaming for Wiggy when he went sprinting towards the try line at one point!
Towards the end of the game I head over to the guys to see if they would be willing to have a quick photo with us and the flags, seeing as we had travelled rather a long way to support the club!! At this point the lovely Duncan Taylor was an absolute gent and got the others to hold fire for a few minutes on the final whistle to let us get a few snaps off quickly before they 'll hurtled down to the changing rooms for the tiki tonga session!
Sadly the game had been so hot, humid and exhausting that the lads only briefly waved and applauded the crowd on their quick circuit of the pitch, leaving me fairly deflated and my mind crashing back to that dark place I'd been in after the Edinburgh game in May.
We got out of the stadium fairly quickly after we realised they weren't going to be around any time soon due to PR commitments and probably a vast need for ice baths and physio treatments! Heading back to the hotel fairly knackered and finally reunited with a phone charger I was taken aback when the humid heat very suddenly gave way to a torrential downpour, the likes of which I've only ever seen once in Florida!
Getting back to the hotel I couldn't actually get out my side of the car due to the mini lake forming and had to slide over out the other door instead, suddenly encountering the strangest of sensations - hot rain! The air was still so warm and yet the water was pouring down at a rate of knots!! Very bizarre to an English girl used to rain meaning grey miserableness!
The return to the hotel also brought the unwelcome news that my suitcase hadn't shown up and so a call to the lost baggage number was needed in order to discover that it was in New York and should be getting to me that evening.
After a few hours of unwinding, dreading all the social media messages I'd received about my starring role and generally sorting out plans for the next day I headed off to bed via a quick check with downstairs that my bag still hadn't arrived.
The next morning dawned cooler and grey than before and there was a distinct feeling of dread in my stomach as I woke. Checking my Virgin Atlantic app to confirm when I needed to be at the airport I was horrified to see that my flight home was no longer what I had expected to see!
The flights I'd been booked on for months going home via JFK were no longer there and suddenly I was being flown home via Atlanta Georgia with Delta the whole way getting to Heathrow at 11am!!!
What the hell!!!
A frantic call to Virgin discovered that Delta had inexplicably changed my flights for me and just hadn't bothered to let me know! In tears and furious I demand it be changed back only to be told that my flight to Heathrow was now fully booked!! So in the 48hours between me last checking my homeward bound flight and that morning they'd sold on my seat!!!
I was beyond furious and internally panicking like a man at the gallows, how the hell was I getting home?!? I didnt want to go via Georgia, i barely wanted to go via JFK but had accepted it as a forgone conclusion. The last thing I wanted was more changes, more crap moving me about! I was supposed to go straight to work from landing at Heathrow which is why I'd picked at flight landing at 8am!!
Well, actually originally I'd picked one landing at 7.20am only for Delta to move the first flight later meaning I wouldn't have enough of a connecting time so I'd had to call Virgin back in July to switch to a slightly later departure. And now the bastards at Delta had changed things again!
Eventually we managed to get me on to a flight leaving JFK at 9.30pm, due to get to London around 9.30am. Okay, sorted. Now to find out where the hell my suitcase was!
It turns out it was still (this is Sunday 8am) in frigging JFK having gotten waylaid in customs and missed the last flight on Saturday!! So now my choice was to either ask for it to be returned to London and buy a new hold bag to put all my newly purchased items into to come home or to travel to the airport after 11am to collect it from there in person as there was now no time for it to be delivered to the hotel and me to pack it before we had to check out at 1pm!! I told them to hold it at Philly airport and we would come collect it before midday.
Flights and luggage now sorted we had breakfast and then got on the road to go see the Liberty Bell. It wasn't something that particularly interested me, I look on the independence stuff as historical proof of treason against the crown by a bunch of rebels but that's just me!
We spent some time wandering around the area and I found a way to spend some money in the Liberty hall shop - only I could go all the way to America to their most historical sites and come back with a glitter timer and a maths pendant!
Still, I did have a good laugh at this sign on one of the walls - I've found things older than that in my garden at home!!
A quick visit to the airport to collect my suitcase and we were back to the hotel to change and pack up. I could finally wear one of the outfits I had packed for the trip as everything else got thrown in and locked up again ready to go back to the airport!!
Dennys was our lunch stop choice and it was an interesting experience although I am very glad I went for the big meal of steak and mash given what was to come still!
I got dropped at the airport just after 2pm by the Feaseys as they were off to the British Airways terminal for international departure as they had just the one flight home, where as I was on an internal to JFK where I had a 3hr layover waiting for me!
The check in for my Delta flight threw up an unexpected problem however as their system was still showing me as on the Atlanta bound flight!! Another call to Virgin and handing my phone over to the Delta staff and eventually I got my boarding passes for the right flights!
Suitcase was now back out of my hands less than 4 hours after I'd been reunited with it and I was through security and sat at the gates bored.
Really really bored.
After all the stress and problems last time I'd given myself so much slack time that I was now left with over 90mins to my flight departure and nothing to do! I managed to waste a fair amount of time by finding a charge point and hooking my phone in before calling my mum and then my dad for long chats about the match but that would only work for this wait, by the time I got to JFK they would all be in bed.
The flight to New York was uneventful really, apart from being unexpectedly placed on an exit row! When we landed there was a delay with getting the connecting gate bridge thing to us and I joked to my neighbour that we were spending more time in the plane on the ground at JFK than we did in the air! He was headed for a Heathrow flight to as he was taking a trip to the UK so I shared some suggestions with him of historical sites to visit while there which he seemed to appreciate.
Finally off the plane I found myself at the gate for my next flight in about 30 minutes as there was no security to go through! Now I could see that the flight was already saying a 10pm departure so I had even longer to wait!
And this is where my luck changed.
Wandering around the gate area for the London departing flights who should I see in front of me but one Chris Wyles!
Oh my God, the team are here to fly home!!!
I couldn't believe it, suddenly I'm seeing and saying hi to guys like Wyles, Ben Spencer, Sean Maitland! I even had a brief chat with Sean saying how I thought it's unfair that he doesn't get the try to his tally as JP gave the penalty try because he could see Sean was clearly going to score when the illegal move was made! He agreed and told me he'd been screaming at Goodey to get it to him as he could see he could score it!
I had thought I was going to be so lonely and bored but instead I got this amazing gift of being able to casually spend some time with my favourite people!!
I didn't take any pictures that evening, I made a concious choice to not be a selfie fan who hassled them at that stage but to just talk to them for as long as they let me. Any time one of them said "take care" or "see you later" I would wander off again and leave that person alone. I think one or two of them found it bizarre and I know that a few found it amusing, I was outrightly saying that I was on my own and starved for conversation so was desperate just to see familiar faces! It was quite nice though when some of those faces recognised me back, I'd had a great conversation with Wiggy and his missus at the Bedford game so he recognised me as we chatted briefly, Brad also recognised me from holding the flag up at the end of the game, even saying sorry for not coming over but he was too sore to try to jump the electronics barrier the stadium had separating us from the pitch!
One of the best moments of my whole weekend came though when I saw Billy walking towards me. I asked him directly why he couldn't have released his new book in time for me to read on the flight to which he replied that he thought it was already out!!! No Bill, it's on sale next week! Then, the legend that he is goes and finds me one from one of the lads as they've all been given a copy!! I have Billy's book and it was given to me by the man himself!!!
I was so happy with this and even more so when some of the other players saw me carrying it and struck up conversation about it with me!! George Kruis even joked that it wouldn't take me long to read as it was in big font! Maro was also interested in it when I asked to shake his hand, as I told him, I didn't want to hassle any of them but I'd been trying to shake his hand for well over a year now with little success due to the massive crowds everywhere he goes!!
Maro was an absolute gentleman and had a wry, slightly embarrassed smile when I said that but was really chilled out about me being there talking to him and the others. Most of the team had started filtering through the gate by this point as their flight left ages before mine (Wiggy and Sean had both asked if I was on their flight which I was a bit gutted to say no to!) I made the mistake of asking for "tries to win next week please" in jest to Wyles and Liam as they were going to board and ahead in the queue Owen suddenly turned around to look at me - I'm not sure if he was just surprised by a non-teammate voice or took offence to what I said - I didn't mean anything against him scoring points from penalties!!
Watching some of the huge guys like Will Skelton put flight socks on and line up for sleeping tablets from the harried Laura was amusing, Goodey seemed in an especially happy mood given the lengthy flight ahead!
The funniest moment though was right at the end, I had thought the whole squad had been through by that point and I'd just missed seeing a few, the staff were looking like they were moving to close when suddenly several of them appear armed with McDonald's!! Schalla seemed to recognise me immediately as he sat down with his meal, joking away about the queue for food and laughing when I asked if they hadn't used the "don't you know who I am?" move! Apparently that barely works in England for our rugby boys!! The guys suddenly seemed to realise they were holding up the flight leaving when a staff member came to tell them that they could take their food on board if they wanted to! That didn't stop Schalla trying to give away his fries to the cleaner/me/the gate staff however!!!
As their gate finally closed and that flight departed I was left alone again but with rich, treasured memories of the past hour.
Unfortunately by this point it was far too late to call anyone in England to share them with!! A few dashed off tweets expressing my gratitude to the team before I turned my attention to Billy's book! It kept me entertained for quite a while before restlessness got to me and I had to start wandering again. Annoyingly my flight was now saying it was delayed again, with boarding not due to start until 9.45pm! I was getting rather frustrated at this point, especially as the main reason I wasn't on the team's flight was because I'd been told back in July that I wouldn't have enough time between the flights to make it . . . I clearly would have had plenty!!!!!
Eventually we boarded and then taxied. And taxied. And taxied. Just after 11pm we finally took off and left America!!
I had hoped for a good flight that I could sleep on seeing as I was going straight to work but no. I had a guy in front put his chair back straight away leaving me with restricted room, the guy next to me immediately put in earplugs/eye mask/blanket and go to sleep so I couldn't get out at all and two rows back in the aisle a screaming baby!!
By 9am BST, when I should have started work, when I would have been clearing Heathrow baggage claim originally I was still 617miles from landing and really rather grouchy!!
Still, as the rather stressful trip drew to a close I can look back on some incredible memories and, once my various complaints have been made and settled, forget all about the crap that happened and just remember that I was there and no-one can every take that away from me.
#SarriesStateside
#SarriesInPhilly🇺🇸🖤❤
The heart of what the Premiership were trying to do was, in my opinion, achieved.
I spent time before the match with Sarries fans from New York and Virginia Beach, with Newcastle fans who'd struggled with JFK C&I even worse than me, with life long rugby fans and relatively new ones.
I was lucky enough to be in contact with BT Sport this weekend, and thus got asked to be a part of the pre-game filming with Sarra Elgan. She made sure to speak to two of the USA based Sarries fans who were with us before the 'lone' Falcon in the group (he wasn't, just the only one willing and around to be filmed!) and then lil ole me!
Consequently I found myself kinda becoming the face of Sarries support in Philly - even more so when the Saracens social media team got me to do a good luck message to the boys on Instagram because Paul told them I could "talk for England"!!
Back to the topic at hand now!
The match itself was not what you'd call the epitome of English rugby but it was very hot, bright, slippery ball conditions as the sun was setting across the stadium, and to be perfectly honest you're never gonna get the gold standard match in round 3! Maybe the next stage for the great American conversion is to get live showings of the ECC games and play-off matches going in big stadiums, sending a retired player or two over to do Q&As pre game.
My weekend wasn't just about the match though! I've detailed my Friday nightmare in this post: http://hjellis.blogspot.co.uk/2017/09/how-many-ways-can-one-journey-go-wrong but once on Philly my attention shifted from my complaining to having a great time in a new and exciting city!
Friday night was spent at the Hard Rock Cafe in my new Wal-Mart dress whilst Saturday morning was taken up with lots of laughter and photographs at the Rocky steps - particularly once Flats got there and had to don a fleece lined tracksuit to copy Sly's famous scenes!
We chose to head to the stadium really early as we wanted to witness the American phenomenon of "tailgating" - an interesting experience I must say!
We covered the car with Sarries flags to let everyone know who we were (Champions of Europe, we know who we are!) and waited to see who showed up. We knew of at least 3 groups headed our way, one of whom pitched up a gazebo so we quickly transferred the flags to the sides and made it Camp Sarries!
The next hour or so was spent sharing drinks and swapping stories of how we started following Saracens along with some interesting tales from the US Navy! We were joined by some Falcons fans and I had some sympathetic ears to my tale of horror and woe from my journey out as they had missed a connection at JFK thanks to the ridiculous chaos that is US Customs & Immigration!!
We were invited to join the BT crew again and so wandered over to the fan zone they were setting up, where I got to have my 5 minutes of fame on camera! (And then get inundated with notifications going "was that you?" "You were on my TV!")
Heading in to the stadium it was a strange place that distinctly reminded us of several prem stadiums, predominately the AJ Bell and the Stoop to me.
The merchandise shop showcased just what some of us are crying out for Sarries to do - women's jewellery!! I picked up one of the official match day t-shirts as a souvenir but was disappointed not to find any of the 'America Series' rugby balls that had been used in the online advertising. We did however manage to find pins which kept Adam happy!
I also struggled with finding a drink that wasn't a soft drink or beer! Having had 2 bottles of peach cider courtesy of our naval friend I was in the mood for another drink. It took a complete circuit of the stadium to find the one bar that did a bottled cider - no wine or spirits options anywhere!! And even then I was given my bottle of cider poured into a massive larger-than-a-pint plastic glass that every time I drank from took up my entire face so I couldn't see anything!!
During the match it was a bizarrely quiet experience, I've grown used to the Sarries fans getting the chants going and there not being many of us meant anything we tried starting never really went anywhere which was a bit embarrassing!
The second half of the game saw several of the non-playing squad wander past us up the steps to their box area, Loz seemed positive about his shoulder injury when I asked him how it was doing which is good! There were some moments of Sarries brilliance showing through, I nearly killed my vocal chords screaming for Wiggy when he went sprinting towards the try line at one point!
Towards the end of the game I head over to the guys to see if they would be willing to have a quick photo with us and the flags, seeing as we had travelled rather a long way to support the club!! At this point the lovely Duncan Taylor was an absolute gent and got the others to hold fire for a few minutes on the final whistle to let us get a few snaps off quickly before they 'll hurtled down to the changing rooms for the tiki tonga session!
Sadly the game had been so hot, humid and exhausting that the lads only briefly waved and applauded the crowd on their quick circuit of the pitch, leaving me fairly deflated and my mind crashing back to that dark place I'd been in after the Edinburgh game in May.
We got out of the stadium fairly quickly after we realised they weren't going to be around any time soon due to PR commitments and probably a vast need for ice baths and physio treatments! Heading back to the hotel fairly knackered and finally reunited with a phone charger I was taken aback when the humid heat very suddenly gave way to a torrential downpour, the likes of which I've only ever seen once in Florida!
Getting back to the hotel I couldn't actually get out my side of the car due to the mini lake forming and had to slide over out the other door instead, suddenly encountering the strangest of sensations - hot rain! The air was still so warm and yet the water was pouring down at a rate of knots!! Very bizarre to an English girl used to rain meaning grey miserableness!
The return to the hotel also brought the unwelcome news that my suitcase hadn't shown up and so a call to the lost baggage number was needed in order to discover that it was in New York and should be getting to me that evening.
After a few hours of unwinding, dreading all the social media messages I'd received about my starring role and generally sorting out plans for the next day I headed off to bed via a quick check with downstairs that my bag still hadn't arrived.
The next morning dawned cooler and grey than before and there was a distinct feeling of dread in my stomach as I woke. Checking my Virgin Atlantic app to confirm when I needed to be at the airport I was horrified to see that my flight home was no longer what I had expected to see!
The flights I'd been booked on for months going home via JFK were no longer there and suddenly I was being flown home via Atlanta Georgia with Delta the whole way getting to Heathrow at 11am!!!
What the hell!!!
A frantic call to Virgin discovered that Delta had inexplicably changed my flights for me and just hadn't bothered to let me know! In tears and furious I demand it be changed back only to be told that my flight to Heathrow was now fully booked!! So in the 48hours between me last checking my homeward bound flight and that morning they'd sold on my seat!!!
I was beyond furious and internally panicking like a man at the gallows, how the hell was I getting home?!? I didnt want to go via Georgia, i barely wanted to go via JFK but had accepted it as a forgone conclusion. The last thing I wanted was more changes, more crap moving me about! I was supposed to go straight to work from landing at Heathrow which is why I'd picked at flight landing at 8am!!
Well, actually originally I'd picked one landing at 7.20am only for Delta to move the first flight later meaning I wouldn't have enough of a connecting time so I'd had to call Virgin back in July to switch to a slightly later departure. And now the bastards at Delta had changed things again!
Eventually we managed to get me on to a flight leaving JFK at 9.30pm, due to get to London around 9.30am. Okay, sorted. Now to find out where the hell my suitcase was!
It turns out it was still (this is Sunday 8am) in frigging JFK having gotten waylaid in customs and missed the last flight on Saturday!! So now my choice was to either ask for it to be returned to London and buy a new hold bag to put all my newly purchased items into to come home or to travel to the airport after 11am to collect it from there in person as there was now no time for it to be delivered to the hotel and me to pack it before we had to check out at 1pm!! I told them to hold it at Philly airport and we would come collect it before midday.
Flights and luggage now sorted we had breakfast and then got on the road to go see the Liberty Bell. It wasn't something that particularly interested me, I look on the independence stuff as historical proof of treason against the crown by a bunch of rebels but that's just me!
We spent some time wandering around the area and I found a way to spend some money in the Liberty hall shop - only I could go all the way to America to their most historical sites and come back with a glitter timer and a maths pendant!
A quick visit to the airport to collect my suitcase and we were back to the hotel to change and pack up. I could finally wear one of the outfits I had packed for the trip as everything else got thrown in and locked up again ready to go back to the airport!!
Dennys was our lunch stop choice and it was an interesting experience although I am very glad I went for the big meal of steak and mash given what was to come still!
I got dropped at the airport just after 2pm by the Feaseys as they were off to the British Airways terminal for international departure as they had just the one flight home, where as I was on an internal to JFK where I had a 3hr layover waiting for me!
The check in for my Delta flight threw up an unexpected problem however as their system was still showing me as on the Atlanta bound flight!! Another call to Virgin and handing my phone over to the Delta staff and eventually I got my boarding passes for the right flights!
Suitcase was now back out of my hands less than 4 hours after I'd been reunited with it and I was through security and sat at the gates bored.
Really really bored.
After all the stress and problems last time I'd given myself so much slack time that I was now left with over 90mins to my flight departure and nothing to do! I managed to waste a fair amount of time by finding a charge point and hooking my phone in before calling my mum and then my dad for long chats about the match but that would only work for this wait, by the time I got to JFK they would all be in bed.
The flight to New York was uneventful really, apart from being unexpectedly placed on an exit row! When we landed there was a delay with getting the connecting gate bridge thing to us and I joked to my neighbour that we were spending more time in the plane on the ground at JFK than we did in the air! He was headed for a Heathrow flight to as he was taking a trip to the UK so I shared some suggestions with him of historical sites to visit while there which he seemed to appreciate.
Finally off the plane I found myself at the gate for my next flight in about 30 minutes as there was no security to go through! Now I could see that the flight was already saying a 10pm departure so I had even longer to wait!
And this is where my luck changed.
Wandering around the gate area for the London departing flights who should I see in front of me but one Chris Wyles!
Oh my God, the team are here to fly home!!!
I couldn't believe it, suddenly I'm seeing and saying hi to guys like Wyles, Ben Spencer, Sean Maitland! I even had a brief chat with Sean saying how I thought it's unfair that he doesn't get the try to his tally as JP gave the penalty try because he could see Sean was clearly going to score when the illegal move was made! He agreed and told me he'd been screaming at Goodey to get it to him as he could see he could score it!
I had thought I was going to be so lonely and bored but instead I got this amazing gift of being able to casually spend some time with my favourite people!!
I didn't take any pictures that evening, I made a concious choice to not be a selfie fan who hassled them at that stage but to just talk to them for as long as they let me. Any time one of them said "take care" or "see you later" I would wander off again and leave that person alone. I think one or two of them found it bizarre and I know that a few found it amusing, I was outrightly saying that I was on my own and starved for conversation so was desperate just to see familiar faces! It was quite nice though when some of those faces recognised me back, I'd had a great conversation with Wiggy and his missus at the Bedford game so he recognised me as we chatted briefly, Brad also recognised me from holding the flag up at the end of the game, even saying sorry for not coming over but he was too sore to try to jump the electronics barrier the stadium had separating us from the pitch!
One of the best moments of my whole weekend came though when I saw Billy walking towards me. I asked him directly why he couldn't have released his new book in time for me to read on the flight to which he replied that he thought it was already out!!! No Bill, it's on sale next week! Then, the legend that he is goes and finds me one from one of the lads as they've all been given a copy!! I have Billy's book and it was given to me by the man himself!!!
I was so happy with this and even more so when some of the other players saw me carrying it and struck up conversation about it with me!! George Kruis even joked that it wouldn't take me long to read as it was in big font! Maro was also interested in it when I asked to shake his hand, as I told him, I didn't want to hassle any of them but I'd been trying to shake his hand for well over a year now with little success due to the massive crowds everywhere he goes!!
Maro was an absolute gentleman and had a wry, slightly embarrassed smile when I said that but was really chilled out about me being there talking to him and the others. Most of the team had started filtering through the gate by this point as their flight left ages before mine (Wiggy and Sean had both asked if I was on their flight which I was a bit gutted to say no to!) I made the mistake of asking for "tries to win next week please" in jest to Wyles and Liam as they were going to board and ahead in the queue Owen suddenly turned around to look at me - I'm not sure if he was just surprised by a non-teammate voice or took offence to what I said - I didn't mean anything against him scoring points from penalties!!
Watching some of the huge guys like Will Skelton put flight socks on and line up for sleeping tablets from the harried Laura was amusing, Goodey seemed in an especially happy mood given the lengthy flight ahead!
The funniest moment though was right at the end, I had thought the whole squad had been through by that point and I'd just missed seeing a few, the staff were looking like they were moving to close when suddenly several of them appear armed with McDonald's!! Schalla seemed to recognise me immediately as he sat down with his meal, joking away about the queue for food and laughing when I asked if they hadn't used the "don't you know who I am?" move! Apparently that barely works in England for our rugby boys!! The guys suddenly seemed to realise they were holding up the flight leaving when a staff member came to tell them that they could take their food on board if they wanted to! That didn't stop Schalla trying to give away his fries to the cleaner/me/the gate staff however!!!
As their gate finally closed and that flight departed I was left alone again but with rich, treasured memories of the past hour.
Unfortunately by this point it was far too late to call anyone in England to share them with!! A few dashed off tweets expressing my gratitude to the team before I turned my attention to Billy's book! It kept me entertained for quite a while before restlessness got to me and I had to start wandering again. Annoyingly my flight was now saying it was delayed again, with boarding not due to start until 9.45pm! I was getting rather frustrated at this point, especially as the main reason I wasn't on the team's flight was because I'd been told back in July that I wouldn't have enough time between the flights to make it . . . I clearly would have had plenty!!!!!
Eventually we boarded and then taxied. And taxied. And taxied. Just after 11pm we finally took off and left America!!
I had hoped for a good flight that I could sleep on seeing as I was going straight to work but no. I had a guy in front put his chair back straight away leaving me with restricted room, the guy next to me immediately put in earplugs/eye mask/blanket and go to sleep so I couldn't get out at all and two rows back in the aisle a screaming baby!!
By 9am BST, when I should have started work, when I would have been clearing Heathrow baggage claim originally I was still 617miles from landing and really rather grouchy!!
Still, as the rather stressful trip drew to a close I can look back on some incredible memories and, once my various complaints have been made and settled, forget all about the crap that happened and just remember that I was there and no-one can every take that away from me.
#SarriesStateside
#SarriesInPhilly🇺🇸🖤❤
Saturday, 16 September 2017
How many ways can one journey go wrong?!?!
I dont know what deity I pissed off recently to deserve a day like today!
My day started smoothly, I woke in the Park Inn hotel near Heathrow where I'd checked in last night, the room was an upgrade to the one of reserved (yay) but seemed to have the remnants of someone's coffee in it (boo). Still I'd had food (at the bar as the restaurant had a 45min wait for a table for one!) and had a lovely bath before painting my nails the Sarries colours and finalising what was in suitcase or hand luggage.
I'd missed a hotel hoppa bus by a minute due to the check out desk being busy but I thought with over 2 hours to departure I would be fine.
I'd tried the night before to check in using the Virgin Atlantic app on my phone but had failed so I needed to check in at the main desks, this didn't really bother me until the kiosk rejected my check in and told me to speak to someone.
That someone then typed in my details, got a confused look and took me over to the customer service helpdesk where things got, uh, difficult.
It's turns out that despite lengthy conversations with Virgin Atlantic over the past 4 months (since I changed my flight from an L.A. holiday to this trip to Philly) including one as recently as this week via their websites 'chat' function about using my airmiles to fly home premium economy (they told me there was no availability) no-one mentioned that there was an outstanding balance to pay still!!
Now, bare in mind that I had booked these flights by phone in May, at the time I called to change my reservations I distinctly remember being told a figure (the different in flight prices plus and admin fee) and giving the person my card details!!
And yet I'm standing in Heathrow with my flight leaving in less than 2hours being told my ticket won't print as I haven't paid for all of it!!
I was not happy. In fact I very nearly tumbled straight into a panic induced meltdown on the spot!
I stammered about having paid at the time but in the end just handed over my card knowing that the only way I was getting to America today was to pay and argue for a refund later when I can get a May bank statement.
Of course this brought the usual panic around whether my card would go through! Even knowing I had enough in the account I still really sorry with large amounts and get super nervous that it will reject if my bank thinks it's fraud!
So, card handed over should be end of story right?
No
The lady on the desk was coordinating the problem with another member of the Virgin team off site somewhere (their HQ I think) and was being put on hold constantly, told to cancel things she had done until they'd done something, I got very confused and distressed at this point so don't remember clearly.
What I do remember is looking at the clock constantly with the lovely first lady reassuring me that there was plenty of time. By 7.55am I could see she was starting to worry about making my 9.05 flight though. She very helpfully went to get me a glass of water to take a painkiller with as I'd ditched my liquids already!
Bag drop was due to close at 8.10am. The clock kept ticking as this hold music played . . .
Eventually the person on the line gave the go ahead for me tickets to be printed and the lovely desk lady did them as quickly as possible for me, printing at 8.12!
A dash to bag drop then with the first lady, she'd called over to a colleague to not close my flight for me! I then left my suitcase sat next to a check in desk with 2 others and some Heathrow staff who were to take them to my flight as late arrivals authorised to go on.
I was then hurried through to the First Class security where I said goodbye to the wonderful woman who'd been with me for almost an hour at this point, having got me through security in less than 5 minutes!
A quick march to the already open gate with no time to stop to have breakfast, use the ladies or even buy a bottle of water and I was in a queue to board!!
The staff on the flight could not have been nicer to me! They spotted my obvious distress (I'd been crying for close to 45 minutes on and off) and when I told them I'm autistic they just asked what I needed - I replied a drink to which they asked what I wanted!
After that the main staff member for my section in economy (a lady called Jemma) came over to say hi and have a chat before take-off. We discussed the mornings events and how I was still fairly shaky at this point but that I loved flying so was hoping to be okay soon.
By this point boarding had finished and the doors were locked . . . No-one was sat next to me!!! The day is looking up!!
The flight itself was lovely, the first staff member I spoke to brought me my vodka cranberry almost immediately and I started to settle down.
6 hours of in-flight wi-fi goodness later and I was starting to get nervous again though.
I had to change to a connecting flight at JFK, something I'd never done before, as Virgin don't fly to Philadelphia direct. Jemma again was brilliant in reassuring me and talking through what I would have to do once off the plane, she even offered to get some of the ground staff to meet me and guide me through.
Getting off the plane (and leaving my iPad in the seat pocket as I would realise hours later!) I was a bit nervous, being at the back of the plane is great for my wing watching habit but not so good for a speedy exit on disembarking!!
Eventually I got off the plane but discovered that the ground staff were not nearly as helpful as Jemma was, she tried to get the "assist" staff to help me but was told they "only do wheelchairs" and wouldn't help me. After a few minutes I decided to just give up and thanked Jemma for her efforts saying I was going to give it a go by myself.
Well, Jemma had said to follow certain signs as I had a connecting flight in under 2 hours but when I got to the C&I hall is was utter chaos!
I tried to ask staff members for help but they were so ridiculously unhelpful! On man I asked for help just told me to "go elsewhere"!
Eventually I figured out the machines system and then had to join a long snaking queue that was merging with queues of people trying to use the machines! I end up stood for ages near a family with a toddler and a baby, both of whom were being rather grizzly.
As we slowly shuffled about I got to a point where I could see a staff member manning the queue. I tried to speak to him to ask the estimated time to get through but ended up catching the attention if a female staff member instead.
By this point I was very stress and on the verge of tears and close to losing my words completely.
I tried to ask her what the chances of me making my flight we're, holding my boarding pass to display the boarding/departure times as I was getting so flustered.
I was met with a distinctly snide "ma'am if you want me to help you jump the queue then get that boarding pass outta my face"
I tried to say I wasn't asking to jump just for a time approximation and that I was autistic. She turned her back on me, opened the tape and pointed me to a queue at customs kiosk saying "go"
So I joined that queue, now with tears trickling and my stress scratching moving from my arms to my upper chest/neck.
I was then joined almost immediately by the bloody family with the young kids who stood behind me talking in their language (one of the Slavic languages I think) while the baby did that half-whimper, half-cry thing.
I was sensory flinching every few minutes at this point and whispering to myself to stay calm and not react but it was getting harder and harder.
Over an hour after getting off the plane and having skipped huge chunks of queues, I was next in line for the customs officer. The lady at the desk completed her business and moved through but the officer was typing on his computer so I didn't move. I felt a nudge in my back. I didn't move. I've been shouted at by American officers before for moving forward before called! The officer then looked up and beckoned me forward so I went.
At his desk he was fairly sunny and pleasant but he made the mistake of asking me if I was okay and the flood gates opened then and soon I was crying nearly uncontrollably as I explained my flight was already boarding!
He got me to redo the fingerprints and photo as the machine I used hadn't registered them properly so my C&I official entry to the country photo has tears rolling down my cheeks!!
He quickly processed me and told me where to go to collect my baggage. In the USA all baggage must be collected at your first entry point and re-checked for the connecting flight which to me seems insane, my ticket is for the whole journey so why doesn't my luggage just go the whole way before I get it back?!?!
So I went to the conveyor belt my flight was coming out of, there was huge amounts of baggage everywhere, stacks of it on the floors between the belts and the one I was at had two flights on it, mine and another.
After close to 15 minutes of waiting and watching the luggage come down and join the belt I asked a staff member who was pulling bags off the belt to stack on the floor. He told me that all the Heathrow bags were off the belt now and on the floor the other side - between 5 and 6, not 6 and 7 where I'd been checking!!
Going round I scanned the bags left. No bag. I check with another staff member, that's all of them she said, if it's not there then it wasn't on the plane.
Great. I now had to run to my next flight with no suitcase!
Getting to the Delta desk to check in for my next flight I was told to hurry as it was boarding and wouldn't wait.
Struggling to rush after 7 hours on a flight and with my dodgy back I walked as briskly as I could to security where luckily (as I asked a staff member there about my chances of making the flight) I was queue skipped again right to the x-ray machines/body scanner.
Of course I'd had no time to sort my hand luggage again so it was a scramble to get my liquids back into a bag and separated from my hand luggage bag before I joined the metal detector queue.
I was then told to take my flip flops off. Now London and most Europe airports have for a long time now said you only have to remove shoes at security if they are closed shoes (trainers/boots/loafers etc) not flip flops. But not JFK. No so I had to go back, grab another tray and throw my flip flops in and then join a queue again that was being held up by a deeply stupid/confused old man who kept setting off the metal detector as he had all sorts of crap still in his pockets!
Finally through and reunited with my things (in such a rush I wasn't registering there was no iPad anywhere) I shoved my feet back into the flipflops and set off as quickly as I could go to gate B42. Of course, as at Heathrow it was a gate pretty much as far from security as possible!!
I tried to go fast but a lower back spasm and shin splints slowed me down so much. I walked as quickly as possible and literally made it to the gate as the staff member was announcing "final call for passenger Ellis"!
On to the plane I had a bit of a shock - it was tiny!! I'd just come off a huge transatlantic flight to to get on to a plane that had 75 seats max was a bit 'woah!'
I changed my seat as I was due to sit next to someone but didn't see the point of making them move to let me in when there were so many free rows as the plane was 1/3rd full!
Well, I knew it would be a short flight but we were in the air less than 40 minutes by my estimation!!
The attendant actually said she thinks we were taxi-ing longer than we were flying!!
Finally at my destination I was united with the lovely Feasey family and got to spill my story and tears on to Sue's shoulder!
A trip to the Delta baggage collection desk followed with an explanation of the situation. Apparently my suitcase was still in London!
Now armed with the information that it would be delivered to my hotel the next day around lunchtime, we received a pack of 'essentials' and departed for the car, where Paul drove us to Wal-Mart for me to buy some clothes!!
I'm a pragmatic hand-luggage packer so had put my match outfit in my hand-luggage with 2 sets of contact lenses so I had all of that with me thankfully, but I was missing essentials like pyjamas and something to wear to go to dinner in that evening as I did not want to spend another minute in my flight outfit!
A $90 credit card payment later and I had a selection of clothes and toiletries to sort me out. The Delta essentials kit was nice but only had the basics - a razor, toothbrush and paste, a folding comb, stick deodorant and a thin white tshirt. I needed face wipes, a roll-on (I hate stick deodorant), some eye liner (all my make up was in my suitcase bar my sun cream stick and perfume) and a proper hairbrush!
Finally to the hotel I could have a shower and put on clean (new) clothes to go out to dinner, having first drunk nearly my body weight in water as I was so dehydrated and hungry! No time at either airport post security meant I hadn't been able to pick up snacks or bottled water anywhere and was only surviving because the transatlantic flight gave out drinks all through the flight!
It was a bit of a horrific day all told and I have lots of complaints and lost property procedures to follow now but I'm finally in Philadelphia!!!
#SarriesStateside
#SarriesInPhilly🇺🇸🖤❤
My day started smoothly, I woke in the Park Inn hotel near Heathrow where I'd checked in last night, the room was an upgrade to the one of reserved (yay) but seemed to have the remnants of someone's coffee in it (boo). Still I'd had food (at the bar as the restaurant had a 45min wait for a table for one!) and had a lovely bath before painting my nails the Sarries colours and finalising what was in suitcase or hand luggage.
I'd missed a hotel hoppa bus by a minute due to the check out desk being busy but I thought with over 2 hours to departure I would be fine.
I'd tried the night before to check in using the Virgin Atlantic app on my phone but had failed so I needed to check in at the main desks, this didn't really bother me until the kiosk rejected my check in and told me to speak to someone.
That someone then typed in my details, got a confused look and took me over to the customer service helpdesk where things got, uh, difficult.
It's turns out that despite lengthy conversations with Virgin Atlantic over the past 4 months (since I changed my flight from an L.A. holiday to this trip to Philly) including one as recently as this week via their websites 'chat' function about using my airmiles to fly home premium economy (they told me there was no availability) no-one mentioned that there was an outstanding balance to pay still!!
Now, bare in mind that I had booked these flights by phone in May, at the time I called to change my reservations I distinctly remember being told a figure (the different in flight prices plus and admin fee) and giving the person my card details!!
And yet I'm standing in Heathrow with my flight leaving in less than 2hours being told my ticket won't print as I haven't paid for all of it!!
I was not happy. In fact I very nearly tumbled straight into a panic induced meltdown on the spot!
I stammered about having paid at the time but in the end just handed over my card knowing that the only way I was getting to America today was to pay and argue for a refund later when I can get a May bank statement.
Of course this brought the usual panic around whether my card would go through! Even knowing I had enough in the account I still really sorry with large amounts and get super nervous that it will reject if my bank thinks it's fraud!
So, card handed over should be end of story right?
No
The lady on the desk was coordinating the problem with another member of the Virgin team off site somewhere (their HQ I think) and was being put on hold constantly, told to cancel things she had done until they'd done something, I got very confused and distressed at this point so don't remember clearly.
What I do remember is looking at the clock constantly with the lovely first lady reassuring me that there was plenty of time. By 7.55am I could see she was starting to worry about making my 9.05 flight though. She very helpfully went to get me a glass of water to take a painkiller with as I'd ditched my liquids already!
Bag drop was due to close at 8.10am. The clock kept ticking as this hold music played . . .
Eventually the person on the line gave the go ahead for me tickets to be printed and the lovely desk lady did them as quickly as possible for me, printing at 8.12!
A dash to bag drop then with the first lady, she'd called over to a colleague to not close my flight for me! I then left my suitcase sat next to a check in desk with 2 others and some Heathrow staff who were to take them to my flight as late arrivals authorised to go on.
I was then hurried through to the First Class security where I said goodbye to the wonderful woman who'd been with me for almost an hour at this point, having got me through security in less than 5 minutes!
A quick march to the already open gate with no time to stop to have breakfast, use the ladies or even buy a bottle of water and I was in a queue to board!!
The staff on the flight could not have been nicer to me! They spotted my obvious distress (I'd been crying for close to 45 minutes on and off) and when I told them I'm autistic they just asked what I needed - I replied a drink to which they asked what I wanted!
After that the main staff member for my section in economy (a lady called Jemma) came over to say hi and have a chat before take-off. We discussed the mornings events and how I was still fairly shaky at this point but that I loved flying so was hoping to be okay soon.
By this point boarding had finished and the doors were locked . . . No-one was sat next to me!!! The day is looking up!!
The flight itself was lovely, the first staff member I spoke to brought me my vodka cranberry almost immediately and I started to settle down.
6 hours of in-flight wi-fi goodness later and I was starting to get nervous again though.
I had to change to a connecting flight at JFK, something I'd never done before, as Virgin don't fly to Philadelphia direct. Jemma again was brilliant in reassuring me and talking through what I would have to do once off the plane, she even offered to get some of the ground staff to meet me and guide me through.
Getting off the plane (and leaving my iPad in the seat pocket as I would realise hours later!) I was a bit nervous, being at the back of the plane is great for my wing watching habit but not so good for a speedy exit on disembarking!!
Eventually I got off the plane but discovered that the ground staff were not nearly as helpful as Jemma was, she tried to get the "assist" staff to help me but was told they "only do wheelchairs" and wouldn't help me. After a few minutes I decided to just give up and thanked Jemma for her efforts saying I was going to give it a go by myself.
Well, Jemma had said to follow certain signs as I had a connecting flight in under 2 hours but when I got to the C&I hall is was utter chaos!
I tried to ask staff members for help but they were so ridiculously unhelpful! On man I asked for help just told me to "go elsewhere"!
Eventually I figured out the machines system and then had to join a long snaking queue that was merging with queues of people trying to use the machines! I end up stood for ages near a family with a toddler and a baby, both of whom were being rather grizzly.
As we slowly shuffled about I got to a point where I could see a staff member manning the queue. I tried to speak to him to ask the estimated time to get through but ended up catching the attention if a female staff member instead.
By this point I was very stress and on the verge of tears and close to losing my words completely.
I tried to ask her what the chances of me making my flight we're, holding my boarding pass to display the boarding/departure times as I was getting so flustered.
I was met with a distinctly snide "ma'am if you want me to help you jump the queue then get that boarding pass outta my face"
I tried to say I wasn't asking to jump just for a time approximation and that I was autistic. She turned her back on me, opened the tape and pointed me to a queue at customs kiosk saying "go"
So I joined that queue, now with tears trickling and my stress scratching moving from my arms to my upper chest/neck.
I was then joined almost immediately by the bloody family with the young kids who stood behind me talking in their language (one of the Slavic languages I think) while the baby did that half-whimper, half-cry thing.
I was sensory flinching every few minutes at this point and whispering to myself to stay calm and not react but it was getting harder and harder.
Over an hour after getting off the plane and having skipped huge chunks of queues, I was next in line for the customs officer. The lady at the desk completed her business and moved through but the officer was typing on his computer so I didn't move. I felt a nudge in my back. I didn't move. I've been shouted at by American officers before for moving forward before called! The officer then looked up and beckoned me forward so I went.
At his desk he was fairly sunny and pleasant but he made the mistake of asking me if I was okay and the flood gates opened then and soon I was crying nearly uncontrollably as I explained my flight was already boarding!
He got me to redo the fingerprints and photo as the machine I used hadn't registered them properly so my C&I official entry to the country photo has tears rolling down my cheeks!!
He quickly processed me and told me where to go to collect my baggage. In the USA all baggage must be collected at your first entry point and re-checked for the connecting flight which to me seems insane, my ticket is for the whole journey so why doesn't my luggage just go the whole way before I get it back?!?!
So I went to the conveyor belt my flight was coming out of, there was huge amounts of baggage everywhere, stacks of it on the floors between the belts and the one I was at had two flights on it, mine and another.
After close to 15 minutes of waiting and watching the luggage come down and join the belt I asked a staff member who was pulling bags off the belt to stack on the floor. He told me that all the Heathrow bags were off the belt now and on the floor the other side - between 5 and 6, not 6 and 7 where I'd been checking!!
Going round I scanned the bags left. No bag. I check with another staff member, that's all of them she said, if it's not there then it wasn't on the plane.
Great. I now had to run to my next flight with no suitcase!
Getting to the Delta desk to check in for my next flight I was told to hurry as it was boarding and wouldn't wait.
Struggling to rush after 7 hours on a flight and with my dodgy back I walked as briskly as I could to security where luckily (as I asked a staff member there about my chances of making the flight) I was queue skipped again right to the x-ray machines/body scanner.
Of course I'd had no time to sort my hand luggage again so it was a scramble to get my liquids back into a bag and separated from my hand luggage bag before I joined the metal detector queue.
I was then told to take my flip flops off. Now London and most Europe airports have for a long time now said you only have to remove shoes at security if they are closed shoes (trainers/boots/loafers etc) not flip flops. But not JFK. No so I had to go back, grab another tray and throw my flip flops in and then join a queue again that was being held up by a deeply stupid/confused old man who kept setting off the metal detector as he had all sorts of crap still in his pockets!
Finally through and reunited with my things (in such a rush I wasn't registering there was no iPad anywhere) I shoved my feet back into the flipflops and set off as quickly as I could go to gate B42. Of course, as at Heathrow it was a gate pretty much as far from security as possible!!
I tried to go fast but a lower back spasm and shin splints slowed me down so much. I walked as quickly as possible and literally made it to the gate as the staff member was announcing "final call for passenger Ellis"!
On to the plane I had a bit of a shock - it was tiny!! I'd just come off a huge transatlantic flight to to get on to a plane that had 75 seats max was a bit 'woah!'
I changed my seat as I was due to sit next to someone but didn't see the point of making them move to let me in when there were so many free rows as the plane was 1/3rd full!
Well, I knew it would be a short flight but we were in the air less than 40 minutes by my estimation!!
The attendant actually said she thinks we were taxi-ing longer than we were flying!!
Finally at my destination I was united with the lovely Feasey family and got to spill my story and tears on to Sue's shoulder!
A trip to the Delta baggage collection desk followed with an explanation of the situation. Apparently my suitcase was still in London!
Now armed with the information that it would be delivered to my hotel the next day around lunchtime, we received a pack of 'essentials' and departed for the car, where Paul drove us to Wal-Mart for me to buy some clothes!!
I'm a pragmatic hand-luggage packer so had put my match outfit in my hand-luggage with 2 sets of contact lenses so I had all of that with me thankfully, but I was missing essentials like pyjamas and something to wear to go to dinner in that evening as I did not want to spend another minute in my flight outfit!
A $90 credit card payment later and I had a selection of clothes and toiletries to sort me out. The Delta essentials kit was nice but only had the basics - a razor, toothbrush and paste, a folding comb, stick deodorant and a thin white tshirt. I needed face wipes, a roll-on (I hate stick deodorant), some eye liner (all my make up was in my suitcase bar my sun cream stick and perfume) and a proper hairbrush!
Finally to the hotel I could have a shower and put on clean (new) clothes to go out to dinner, having first drunk nearly my body weight in water as I was so dehydrated and hungry! No time at either airport post security meant I hadn't been able to pick up snacks or bottled water anywhere and was only surviving because the transatlantic flight gave out drinks all through the flight!
It was a bit of a horrific day all told and I have lots of complaints and lost property procedures to follow now but I'm finally in Philadelphia!!!
#SarriesStateside
#SarriesInPhilly🇺🇸🖤❤
Thursday, 14 September 2017
The sensory overload we don't often talk about
There are many things in life that can cause sensory overloads for autistic people and a fair number of them get stereotyped in the media - being touched, loud noises, nasty smells, flashing lights.
But there are so many others that don't get talked about as much - patterned carpets, perfumes & aftershave, background hums.
The one I'm interested in today however is one I really struggle with as a working female.
I'm not sure if it's the female part or the employee part that adds to the strain on my mask with this particular trigger, it could be a combination of both quite easily.
I'm talking about other people's outfits.
Yes, the thing that if you tell someone it's distressing you it's likely to cause all sorts of problems!!
Telling someone that youre near meltdown because of some drilling outside or too much information coming visually from busy displays is reaching a point of social acceptability.
Telling someone their dress is giving you a migraine-level headache is not so acceptable!
And yet I find more and more that that is a huge source of discomfort to me regularly.
Stripes, spots, animal prints, clashing colours, 'unfinished' clothing . . . The list is essentially a guide to "current fashion"!!
If I encounter someone with what I consider to be vile colours on (mustard, lime green etc) I will feel queasy and off-balance for a short while. If I encounter someone with those colours in an pattern or random design it will be ten times as bad!
Trying to work or concentrate when people around you are dressed in outfits that visually make your stomach turn is incredibly hard, I've really struggled at times to cope when having to be in the same space as someone dressed in "non-matching" colours or clashing styles.
I try very hard not to judge people when it comes to fashion choices and in fact my best friend is one of those people who will wear whatever she feels like - grey tights, brown boots, green skirt and black top has been an outfit I've seen her in many times and I've chosen (out of my love and respect for her) to 'ride' the wave of mild distress I get (particularly when her hair is dyed red and she wears lots of multi-coloured jewellery!) when I see her. The outfits always look so good on her and yet the back of my brain itches at me the whole time telling me that "Brown and grey don't go together" and "boots and a vest top, is it winter below the waist and summer above?!"
And this is why it's such a hard and not-talked about concept. It's so easy to offend people when talking about clothes and outfit choices. Unless it's a uniform, that person has chosen to put those items together that day and so to mention them in any way that isn't a compliment is to insult their decision.
Which is why I try to stick to not saying anything!
But there are so many others that don't get talked about as much - patterned carpets, perfumes & aftershave, background hums.
The one I'm interested in today however is one I really struggle with as a working female.
I'm not sure if it's the female part or the employee part that adds to the strain on my mask with this particular trigger, it could be a combination of both quite easily.
I'm talking about other people's outfits.
Yes, the thing that if you tell someone it's distressing you it's likely to cause all sorts of problems!!
Telling someone that youre near meltdown because of some drilling outside or too much information coming visually from busy displays is reaching a point of social acceptability.
Telling someone their dress is giving you a migraine-level headache is not so acceptable!
And yet I find more and more that that is a huge source of discomfort to me regularly.
Stripes, spots, animal prints, clashing colours, 'unfinished' clothing . . . The list is essentially a guide to "current fashion"!!
If I encounter someone with what I consider to be vile colours on (mustard, lime green etc) I will feel queasy and off-balance for a short while. If I encounter someone with those colours in an pattern or random design it will be ten times as bad!
Trying to work or concentrate when people around you are dressed in outfits that visually make your stomach turn is incredibly hard, I've really struggled at times to cope when having to be in the same space as someone dressed in "non-matching" colours or clashing styles.
I try very hard not to judge people when it comes to fashion choices and in fact my best friend is one of those people who will wear whatever she feels like - grey tights, brown boots, green skirt and black top has been an outfit I've seen her in many times and I've chosen (out of my love and respect for her) to 'ride' the wave of mild distress I get (particularly when her hair is dyed red and she wears lots of multi-coloured jewellery!) when I see her. The outfits always look so good on her and yet the back of my brain itches at me the whole time telling me that "Brown and grey don't go together" and "boots and a vest top, is it winter below the waist and summer above?!"
And this is why it's such a hard and not-talked about concept. It's so easy to offend people when talking about clothes and outfit choices. Unless it's a uniform, that person has chosen to put those items together that day and so to mention them in any way that isn't a compliment is to insult their decision.
Which is why I try to stick to not saying anything!
Monday, 3 April 2017
I'm autistic, what does that mean?
My 'Autism journey' started back in 2002 when I was a stubborn, hormonal, exam-stressed, self-centred 15 year old girl - which if you exchange 15 for 30 is still a pretty accurate description of me!
My mother had attended a course that featured Ros Blackman speaking about being an autistic female and a lot of things she had said were ringing true about our home life. So, over the next few weeks she put in place some of the suggested strategies for autistic people (at the time) and then broached the subject with me after I mentioned how much better things had been recently.
It took a long time for me to process the resulting conversation. At this point in my life my only reference points for Autism were the film Rain Man and the 'classic' autism of those in long-term institutions. My fear was huge, this was 2002, pre-Twitter and definitely pre the current availability of role models and positive messages.
Luckily for me I had been brought up by teachers, maths and science to be precise, so I dealt with the issue the same way I did anything I encountered that I didn't understand - my beloved set of encyclopaedias! Of course they didn't exactly have much in the way of comforting information there but I did end up learning a lot about the way the brain works and the chemistry of the body and briefly entertained the notion of becoming a neurologist . . .
Ultimately I forged my own path with understanding what the word 'autism' meant to me, I already had a lot of coping strategies and masking methods in place so continuing them on with conscious knowledge wasn't that difficult. Well, at that point in my life it wasn't. Between that conversation at 15 and going to my GP at 17 as far as I recall it was business as usual at home, which naturally mean lots of loud and emotionally charged rows, lots of stress at school, lots of mistakes and lots of spending time on my own - not always out of choice.
My biggest mistake came on the day of my GP appointment - I decided at the last minute to go alone and barred my mum from coming with me. To this day I cant remember my reasoning or why on earth I thought that would be a good idea.My GP (a lovely man that I hold no ill-will to) did exactly what any GP would do at that point when presented with an emotional, tongue-tied 17 year old girl - he asked me about school and home and concluded that it was just normal life, growing up and hormones and exam stress.
Of course I didn't take this very well but the reaction didn't come out until I was long left the surgery and so in no position to show him that he was wrong and that there was more to my problems than just the standard worries of a teenager.I avoided going back to the doctors for quite a while after that and quickly stopped mentioning to other people what we had self-diagnosed me as. Looking back there are moments I wish I had been diagnosed or on the referral pathway already by that point, times when teachers caused me problems or social situations got very difficult.
I remember one instance that still makes me burn with anger when I think of it - my A-level chemistry teacher had informed us before the Easter break that we needed to get our coursework to her before we came back to school for the Summer Term so she could mark them and send them off in time. Not a problem, she even gave us her home address to post them to over the holidays. In the final week of term she also mentioned that as the school had an INSET day on Friday we could go in to use the school space to finish off our coursework and hand it in then if we wanted to. I didn't want to, I already had plans with my family that day as we'd known we had an INSET day off that day for weeks. So I didn't go in, instead I laboured on with the coursework over the first week of the holiday (I really hated my project by that point!) and sent it off to her home address from my dad's house in the second week. When we returned to school for the Summer Term she pulled me aside at the end of our first Chem lesson to basically have a massive go at me. She very sarcastically and (in my opinion) nastily asked me why she had had to wait until the end of the holiday to complete her marking and assessment of the classes work when every other person in the class had come in on the INSET day to hand in their work then?! She concluded by stating that she was not happy with me and that she expected better - all of this in-front of the students who had filled in for the next lesson with her! To be honest it was probably only the fact that she was heavily pregnant saved her from my explosion of rage, instead I meekly turned and exited as fast as I could with my face burning with shame and ran for cover in the girls loos. I never confronted her about her inconsistency or way of handling the situation. I'm pretty sure she knew I hated her from that moment on as I'm not exactly a subtle person when angry but it was mostly passive aggressive and fairly pointless as we only had 6 weeks left before the exams by that time. But I still have a burning anger buried in my memories because of her, I still have a strong desire to verbally rip her to shreds in front of colleagues and family, I still wish to hear her grovel an apology to me for the way she made me feel like a piece of shit on her shoe that day.
As I've got older and have understood my emotional reactions to situations more I've gotten a better handle on how to process and respond to those sort of scenarios; I even practise them in my dreams! The sub-conscious mind is a phenomenal place and can process and figure out things so much more quickly than my waking mind can. In my dreams I'm still autistic, I still experience sensory overload and processing delay but I can 'hit pause' on things (well, in dreams anyway, nightmares are a totally different topic!) My dreams allow me to consider different ways I might react to things and how best to approach situations. I have dreamt of receiving the news of family members deaths, of being caught up in a terror attack, of being assaulted, of finding myself under arrest, of being fired, of pretty much any situation where my immediate reaction is going to need to be controlled and managed. I need to dream these scenarios so if, god forbid, they ever occur the freeze-shock hopefully wont be as powerful, wont be as debilitating, wont be as damaging.
I never like planning for the worst, I don't think I'm a naturally pessimistic person, but I do believe in the pragmatism of being prepared for all eventualities. Well, maybe not all, I haven't dream-rehearsed a zombie invasion or alien attack - Hollywood covers that well enough anyway! But the principle I adhere to is that I need to be able to predict my own reactions to things - how can I possibly hope to understand other peoples actions and reasonings if I cant work out my own?
I often think of Tony Attwood's wonderful phrase about autistic boys and girls where, to paraphrase, he states that while Asperger describe his boys as 'little professors' that autistic girls are more like 'little psychologists' - in short, we *want* to learn about other human beings, we *want* to understand this world we live in. I actually slightly disagree with Attwood in that I believe autistic females are 'little anthropologists' - we study the environment to learn from it, looking abstractly at why certain interactions happen but doing it in a range of ways, some of us immerse ourselves in the culture we are trying to learn from where as others maintain an observational distance.
I've always been fascinated with other people and with learning more about people in general. As a small child my obsession was my own fingers - the movement of the bones and muscles/tendons, the different ways they could be manipulated and move, how different peoples hands look to each other. As I grew my focus shifted more to peoples differences in general, I always notice height, skin tone, hair colour and type, face set and finger length in strangers. I'm not discriminatory in what I notice, I just mentally record it as a way of identifying an individual, taking note of how their hair reminds me of my Grandma or their hands look like a pianists or their torso is longer than my legs! Leg length is another thing that fascinates me, shaving my legs always takes forever because I inevitably become distracted by thoughts of how long my legs are and how did they ever get to be that length from the tiny baby legs I was born with! (and I've not exactly got long legs at only 5ft3" tall!)
At times I wonder if I should have used this keen interest to pursue a career in medicine or physiology. But I think my fascination with the human mind will always overrule my wonderings about how tendons make bones move. I *need* to understand why people think the way they do, why we interact in the social grouping manners we do, why we have desires for communities and social structures in our lives.
Being autistic gives me an added desire to learn about these things, I will never able to know what its like to not be autistic, to truly understand just how instinctive the understandings and reactions are to those who are not autistic.
When I went off to university aged 18 I was full of ideas and passions, I wanted to understand not people but the universe as a whole. My degree was Astrophysics, I wanted to become a theoretical physicist like Stephen Hawking, Galileo Galilei, James Clerk Maxwell, Robert Oppenheimer. I wanted to change the way we understood the world we exist in and learn more about *why* we exist.
This state of mind lasted until about halfway through my second year. By that point I'd immersed myself in the student union, learning through observation and casual interaction, finding out that it was (for me) the perfect way to test the waters of social activity, taking part in structured meetings and events before dipping into the more alcohol-based aspects of the post-meeting hitting the bar. I was surrounded by likeminded people who were passionate about helping others and doing things for the right (sometimes righteous!) reasons and more than anything they were accepting of me for who I was - quirks and all!
The more time I spent in this crazy bubble world that was, as a friend put it, 'Blue Peter on speed' I started to realise that my ideas for my future and career were starting to look very dull and miserable. Suddenly the idea of spending the next 40 years of my life in a lab with the same dozen people endlessly staring at numbers and fuzzy images seemed like the worst kind of hell. I'd not enjoyed much of my second year of studies anyway, my modules 'choices' were not exactly what I had wanted to study - the module of 'Multimedia Image Processing' (or something similar I've erased the knowledge from my memory!) was the beginning of the end for me. The module started with an introductory lecture, well, it should have done, instead what it started with was the professor going over the module aims and then launching into an overview of what we already knew. Except I didn't. I hadn't spent my teenage years playing computer games and fiddling with images and computer graphics and all that sort of thing, I literally understood the word pixel in the spiel he reeled off. So from day one I was massively behind my fellow peers and completely adrift in the module with no real desire to catch up as I found the subject mind-numbingly boring and not at all related to what I wanted to learn!
Things came to an apex in my mind whilst on a once-in-a-lifetime holiday with my mum and brother in Egypt. It was a place all three of us had wanted to go for years, an ancient civilisation we were fascinated with. Sitting on the top of the cruise boat on the River Nile looking out at miles of desert and historical temples and monuments I found myself realising the truth behind my feelings; I wanted to do something worthwhile with my life, something were I could affect other people's happiness in the here and now, not some abstract concept of improving human knowledge but a tangible legacy of impact on real people.
It was in this moment I also realised that I had truly come to terms with my identity as an autistic person and that I was ready to try again with the diagnosis process and commit to seeing it through to the end no matter what.
Those 10 days in the African sun were genuinely life-changing for me, I found a piece of myself that I hadn't known was missing and I started to put together a quantifiable image of my future. Within a few days of returning to university I had started the paperwork required to switch Faculties (virtually unheard of!) changing my degree from an MSc in Astrophysics to a BA in Social Policy! It would take a lot of work still and I had to restart right at Year One as my A-levels of Maths, Further Maths, Physics and Chemistry weren't exactly applicable to a sociology subject but I knew I was on the right track.
I was lucky in the respect that my parents had always taught me that it was okay to change your mind, that there was nothing wrong with admitting you had made a mistake. By giving me that upbringing they gifted me the skills to be able to take control of a life I was unhappy with and change it into one that had the potential for future happiness.
Now all I needed was that pesky diagnosis . . . .
[To Be Continued]
My mother had attended a course that featured Ros Blackman speaking about being an autistic female and a lot of things she had said were ringing true about our home life. So, over the next few weeks she put in place some of the suggested strategies for autistic people (at the time) and then broached the subject with me after I mentioned how much better things had been recently.
It took a long time for me to process the resulting conversation. At this point in my life my only reference points for Autism were the film Rain Man and the 'classic' autism of those in long-term institutions. My fear was huge, this was 2002, pre-Twitter and definitely pre the current availability of role models and positive messages.
Luckily for me I had been brought up by teachers, maths and science to be precise, so I dealt with the issue the same way I did anything I encountered that I didn't understand - my beloved set of encyclopaedias! Of course they didn't exactly have much in the way of comforting information there but I did end up learning a lot about the way the brain works and the chemistry of the body and briefly entertained the notion of becoming a neurologist . . .
Ultimately I forged my own path with understanding what the word 'autism' meant to me, I already had a lot of coping strategies and masking methods in place so continuing them on with conscious knowledge wasn't that difficult. Well, at that point in my life it wasn't. Between that conversation at 15 and going to my GP at 17 as far as I recall it was business as usual at home, which naturally mean lots of loud and emotionally charged rows, lots of stress at school, lots of mistakes and lots of spending time on my own - not always out of choice.
My biggest mistake came on the day of my GP appointment - I decided at the last minute to go alone and barred my mum from coming with me. To this day I cant remember my reasoning or why on earth I thought that would be a good idea.My GP (a lovely man that I hold no ill-will to) did exactly what any GP would do at that point when presented with an emotional, tongue-tied 17 year old girl - he asked me about school and home and concluded that it was just normal life, growing up and hormones and exam stress.
Of course I didn't take this very well but the reaction didn't come out until I was long left the surgery and so in no position to show him that he was wrong and that there was more to my problems than just the standard worries of a teenager.I avoided going back to the doctors for quite a while after that and quickly stopped mentioning to other people what we had self-diagnosed me as. Looking back there are moments I wish I had been diagnosed or on the referral pathway already by that point, times when teachers caused me problems or social situations got very difficult.
I remember one instance that still makes me burn with anger when I think of it - my A-level chemistry teacher had informed us before the Easter break that we needed to get our coursework to her before we came back to school for the Summer Term so she could mark them and send them off in time. Not a problem, she even gave us her home address to post them to over the holidays. In the final week of term she also mentioned that as the school had an INSET day on Friday we could go in to use the school space to finish off our coursework and hand it in then if we wanted to. I didn't want to, I already had plans with my family that day as we'd known we had an INSET day off that day for weeks. So I didn't go in, instead I laboured on with the coursework over the first week of the holiday (I really hated my project by that point!) and sent it off to her home address from my dad's house in the second week. When we returned to school for the Summer Term she pulled me aside at the end of our first Chem lesson to basically have a massive go at me. She very sarcastically and (in my opinion) nastily asked me why she had had to wait until the end of the holiday to complete her marking and assessment of the classes work when every other person in the class had come in on the INSET day to hand in their work then?! She concluded by stating that she was not happy with me and that she expected better - all of this in-front of the students who had filled in for the next lesson with her! To be honest it was probably only the fact that she was heavily pregnant saved her from my explosion of rage, instead I meekly turned and exited as fast as I could with my face burning with shame and ran for cover in the girls loos. I never confronted her about her inconsistency or way of handling the situation. I'm pretty sure she knew I hated her from that moment on as I'm not exactly a subtle person when angry but it was mostly passive aggressive and fairly pointless as we only had 6 weeks left before the exams by that time. But I still have a burning anger buried in my memories because of her, I still have a strong desire to verbally rip her to shreds in front of colleagues and family, I still wish to hear her grovel an apology to me for the way she made me feel like a piece of shit on her shoe that day.
As I've got older and have understood my emotional reactions to situations more I've gotten a better handle on how to process and respond to those sort of scenarios; I even practise them in my dreams! The sub-conscious mind is a phenomenal place and can process and figure out things so much more quickly than my waking mind can. In my dreams I'm still autistic, I still experience sensory overload and processing delay but I can 'hit pause' on things (well, in dreams anyway, nightmares are a totally different topic!) My dreams allow me to consider different ways I might react to things and how best to approach situations. I have dreamt of receiving the news of family members deaths, of being caught up in a terror attack, of being assaulted, of finding myself under arrest, of being fired, of pretty much any situation where my immediate reaction is going to need to be controlled and managed. I need to dream these scenarios so if, god forbid, they ever occur the freeze-shock hopefully wont be as powerful, wont be as debilitating, wont be as damaging.
I never like planning for the worst, I don't think I'm a naturally pessimistic person, but I do believe in the pragmatism of being prepared for all eventualities. Well, maybe not all, I haven't dream-rehearsed a zombie invasion or alien attack - Hollywood covers that well enough anyway! But the principle I adhere to is that I need to be able to predict my own reactions to things - how can I possibly hope to understand other peoples actions and reasonings if I cant work out my own?
I often think of Tony Attwood's wonderful phrase about autistic boys and girls where, to paraphrase, he states that while Asperger describe his boys as 'little professors' that autistic girls are more like 'little psychologists' - in short, we *want* to learn about other human beings, we *want* to understand this world we live in. I actually slightly disagree with Attwood in that I believe autistic females are 'little anthropologists' - we study the environment to learn from it, looking abstractly at why certain interactions happen but doing it in a range of ways, some of us immerse ourselves in the culture we are trying to learn from where as others maintain an observational distance.
I've always been fascinated with other people and with learning more about people in general. As a small child my obsession was my own fingers - the movement of the bones and muscles/tendons, the different ways they could be manipulated and move, how different peoples hands look to each other. As I grew my focus shifted more to peoples differences in general, I always notice height, skin tone, hair colour and type, face set and finger length in strangers. I'm not discriminatory in what I notice, I just mentally record it as a way of identifying an individual, taking note of how their hair reminds me of my Grandma or their hands look like a pianists or their torso is longer than my legs! Leg length is another thing that fascinates me, shaving my legs always takes forever because I inevitably become distracted by thoughts of how long my legs are and how did they ever get to be that length from the tiny baby legs I was born with! (and I've not exactly got long legs at only 5ft3" tall!)
At times I wonder if I should have used this keen interest to pursue a career in medicine or physiology. But I think my fascination with the human mind will always overrule my wonderings about how tendons make bones move. I *need* to understand why people think the way they do, why we interact in the social grouping manners we do, why we have desires for communities and social structures in our lives.
Being autistic gives me an added desire to learn about these things, I will never able to know what its like to not be autistic, to truly understand just how instinctive the understandings and reactions are to those who are not autistic.
When I went off to university aged 18 I was full of ideas and passions, I wanted to understand not people but the universe as a whole. My degree was Astrophysics, I wanted to become a theoretical physicist like Stephen Hawking, Galileo Galilei, James Clerk Maxwell, Robert Oppenheimer. I wanted to change the way we understood the world we exist in and learn more about *why* we exist.
This state of mind lasted until about halfway through my second year. By that point I'd immersed myself in the student union, learning through observation and casual interaction, finding out that it was (for me) the perfect way to test the waters of social activity, taking part in structured meetings and events before dipping into the more alcohol-based aspects of the post-meeting hitting the bar. I was surrounded by likeminded people who were passionate about helping others and doing things for the right (sometimes righteous!) reasons and more than anything they were accepting of me for who I was - quirks and all!
The more time I spent in this crazy bubble world that was, as a friend put it, 'Blue Peter on speed' I started to realise that my ideas for my future and career were starting to look very dull and miserable. Suddenly the idea of spending the next 40 years of my life in a lab with the same dozen people endlessly staring at numbers and fuzzy images seemed like the worst kind of hell. I'd not enjoyed much of my second year of studies anyway, my modules 'choices' were not exactly what I had wanted to study - the module of 'Multimedia Image Processing' (or something similar I've erased the knowledge from my memory!) was the beginning of the end for me. The module started with an introductory lecture, well, it should have done, instead what it started with was the professor going over the module aims and then launching into an overview of what we already knew. Except I didn't. I hadn't spent my teenage years playing computer games and fiddling with images and computer graphics and all that sort of thing, I literally understood the word pixel in the spiel he reeled off. So from day one I was massively behind my fellow peers and completely adrift in the module with no real desire to catch up as I found the subject mind-numbingly boring and not at all related to what I wanted to learn!
Things came to an apex in my mind whilst on a once-in-a-lifetime holiday with my mum and brother in Egypt. It was a place all three of us had wanted to go for years, an ancient civilisation we were fascinated with. Sitting on the top of the cruise boat on the River Nile looking out at miles of desert and historical temples and monuments I found myself realising the truth behind my feelings; I wanted to do something worthwhile with my life, something were I could affect other people's happiness in the here and now, not some abstract concept of improving human knowledge but a tangible legacy of impact on real people.
It was in this moment I also realised that I had truly come to terms with my identity as an autistic person and that I was ready to try again with the diagnosis process and commit to seeing it through to the end no matter what.
Those 10 days in the African sun were genuinely life-changing for me, I found a piece of myself that I hadn't known was missing and I started to put together a quantifiable image of my future. Within a few days of returning to university I had started the paperwork required to switch Faculties (virtually unheard of!) changing my degree from an MSc in Astrophysics to a BA in Social Policy! It would take a lot of work still and I had to restart right at Year One as my A-levels of Maths, Further Maths, Physics and Chemistry weren't exactly applicable to a sociology subject but I knew I was on the right track.
I was lucky in the respect that my parents had always taught me that it was okay to change your mind, that there was nothing wrong with admitting you had made a mistake. By giving me that upbringing they gifted me the skills to be able to take control of a life I was unhappy with and change it into one that had the potential for future happiness.
Now all I needed was that pesky diagnosis . . . .
[To Be Continued]
Sunday, 5 March 2017
To cut your losses or to keep hoping?
I've been thinking a lot lately about the conundrum of when to continue trying for something unlikely and when to cut your loses and give up.
It's been playing in my mind because of work issues but I've been inspired in my decision making by recent comments by Alex Goode and Chris Ashton.
Goode's interview about being dropped by England was heart wrenching in the fact that it's obvious how much he wants to get back in the shirt, how much he's prepared to sacrifice to be the best he can be and by how much it hurts when it doesn't happen. He's not getting much hope from Camp England right now but he's not ready to walk away from the dream and chase the money instead.
Because, of course, this is what many say Ashton has done.
He hasn't though.
What Chris Ashton has done has been pragmatic and put sense over heart. I was fortunate enough to speak to him last week and you could see in every part of his body language when people mention the Toulon move how much he is struggling with the choice he has made. He didn't want to leave Saracens but he had to make a decision. His situation is not like Goode's. It's not a case of trying and proving that he deserves another shot at the white shirt. Ashton has been through too much with the RFU, the media and the fickle nature of public opinion. His career in this country is forever linked to the disciplinary panels and their outcomes.
I truly believe that the 'biting' incident that occurred during the Northampton game was a cynical play by Saints players to get Ashton in trouble. If you put your arm forcefully up to someone's mouth it's always likely to end certain ways: when a person, any person, feels in danger (like when their airway is being impeded) they react in manners not nessecarily in keeping with their character. Opening the mouth to increase the ability to breathe is a natural reaction to it being covered, and one the Saints player used to his full advantage.
I understand why Ashton has decided that his time playing in this country is over. Would he ever get a fair hearing again should anything else happen? No, I don't think he would, I don't think he did back in the autumn quite frankly.
So I get why he's made the choice he has and as a supporter of the team and the individuals that make up that team I will support his choice and wish him all the best in the world in Toulon.
I hope he, his wife and their child have the best of times living out in France for as long as he is there.
I hope, when all is said and done and Ashton retires, that he comes home to Saracens and can act as a mentor to the academy youngsters who may not realise just how easily the public, media and RFU can turn on a player.
I hope he can pass on to the future the wisdom that his past has taught him.
I hope he can come back with a smile on his face for fond memories and a full and happy career to look back on.
I hope there is still hope for both Chris Ashton and Alex Goode. They both deserve it.
I hope I find some hope soon.
It's been playing in my mind because of work issues but I've been inspired in my decision making by recent comments by Alex Goode and Chris Ashton.
Goode's interview about being dropped by England was heart wrenching in the fact that it's obvious how much he wants to get back in the shirt, how much he's prepared to sacrifice to be the best he can be and by how much it hurts when it doesn't happen. He's not getting much hope from Camp England right now but he's not ready to walk away from the dream and chase the money instead.
Because, of course, this is what many say Ashton has done.
He hasn't though.
What Chris Ashton has done has been pragmatic and put sense over heart. I was fortunate enough to speak to him last week and you could see in every part of his body language when people mention the Toulon move how much he is struggling with the choice he has made. He didn't want to leave Saracens but he had to make a decision. His situation is not like Goode's. It's not a case of trying and proving that he deserves another shot at the white shirt. Ashton has been through too much with the RFU, the media and the fickle nature of public opinion. His career in this country is forever linked to the disciplinary panels and their outcomes.
I truly believe that the 'biting' incident that occurred during the Northampton game was a cynical play by Saints players to get Ashton in trouble. If you put your arm forcefully up to someone's mouth it's always likely to end certain ways: when a person, any person, feels in danger (like when their airway is being impeded) they react in manners not nessecarily in keeping with their character. Opening the mouth to increase the ability to breathe is a natural reaction to it being covered, and one the Saints player used to his full advantage.
I understand why Ashton has decided that his time playing in this country is over. Would he ever get a fair hearing again should anything else happen? No, I don't think he would, I don't think he did back in the autumn quite frankly.
So I get why he's made the choice he has and as a supporter of the team and the individuals that make up that team I will support his choice and wish him all the best in the world in Toulon.
I hope he, his wife and their child have the best of times living out in France for as long as he is there.
I hope, when all is said and done and Ashton retires, that he comes home to Saracens and can act as a mentor to the academy youngsters who may not realise just how easily the public, media and RFU can turn on a player.
I hope he can pass on to the future the wisdom that his past has taught him.
I hope he can come back with a smile on his face for fond memories and a full and happy career to look back on.
I hope there is still hope for both Chris Ashton and Alex Goode. They both deserve it.
I hope I find some hope soon.
Friday, 17 February 2017
Autism Fatigue vs lots of exciting plans!
I've talked about the concept of Autism Fatigue before but it's never been more obvious to me than when I have a period of time like I'm currently in. I'm 9 days into a crazily busy 18 day stretch and already I've had to cancel 3 different plans out of the 18 things I've got in the diary (and that's not including the standard going to work next week!) I should note that I am incredibly lucky to have be given the opportunities I have and I am very grateful for the support of my university tutor, my family and the staff involved in the various work I've been contracted to recently.
I had to cancel certain things this past week because I was having to make choices between standing by plans I'd committed to and the need to protect my own health - mental and physical. It doesn't help that I'm still recovering from a nasty virus last week or that I've managed to pick up a cold along the way to join the fun. My point is that just because I want to do something doesn't mean I should; those decisions have to be made on a day by day basis and that unfortunately means letting people down at the last minute sometimes.
Most people have been fairly understanding recently, having a virus that's leaves you with dizzy spells and nausea is understandable to most people. Certainly a lot more understandable than Autism Fatigue is.
Trying to get people to understand the concept of social overload or the need to conserve energy for a more important commitment the next day is difficult. A lot of people still don't understand how draining social activities can be - even if I'm enjoying them immensely!
It's true that the satisfaction I get from doing things can give a boost to my flagging energy levels it's rarely enough to compensate for the losses due to sensory environment and stress.
I hope as time moves forward and more of us are talking about these concepts that society as a whole becomes more aware and more forgiving of our needs. I've had to plan these few weeks so very carefully to ensure that I make it to the end still in one piece and still able to enjoy my final event - England vs Italy in the 6Nations at Twickenham - a hell of a way to finish off my 30th birthday week!!
I had to cancel certain things this past week because I was having to make choices between standing by plans I'd committed to and the need to protect my own health - mental and physical. It doesn't help that I'm still recovering from a nasty virus last week or that I've managed to pick up a cold along the way to join the fun. My point is that just because I want to do something doesn't mean I should; those decisions have to be made on a day by day basis and that unfortunately means letting people down at the last minute sometimes.
Most people have been fairly understanding recently, having a virus that's leaves you with dizzy spells and nausea is understandable to most people. Certainly a lot more understandable than Autism Fatigue is.
Trying to get people to understand the concept of social overload or the need to conserve energy for a more important commitment the next day is difficult. A lot of people still don't understand how draining social activities can be - even if I'm enjoying them immensely!
It's true that the satisfaction I get from doing things can give a boost to my flagging energy levels it's rarely enough to compensate for the losses due to sensory environment and stress.
I hope as time moves forward and more of us are talking about these concepts that society as a whole becomes more aware and more forgiving of our needs. I've had to plan these few weeks so very carefully to ensure that I make it to the end still in one piece and still able to enjoy my final event - England vs Italy in the 6Nations at Twickenham - a hell of a way to finish off my 30th birthday week!!
Wednesday, 7 September 2016
Routine and Change
School has started back for a new academic year and the rugby season has kicked off!
I am so happy it's ridiculous.
My life can return to what stands for normal in my family. I know what I'm doing from day to day and have a regular routine again!
The thing is, for all I moan about it, I really like working in a school and having a basic timetable I can follow from day-to-day / week-to-week / term-to-term. It gives me structure in a life I deliberately try to keep very open and fluid. I've always been very fearful of having too much routine and becoming compulsive about following it. I worry that my nature is to follow automatic habits and that I would get very distressed if unable to. For this reason I like to mix up my drive home route occasionally (although it's not very long so there's not much option for change!) and vary the days of the week I do my washing/shopping/cleaning. Even following the rugby has variety in locations, days and times so not every weekend becomes repetitive.
I like variety and change and some random chaos in life, it keeps me thinking and more importantly it stops me becoming stagnant and trapped in a mundane cycle that would send me into a spiralling depression - and yes that lesson was learnt through experience!
I feel that people are too afraid of change when it comes to Autism - sometimes it's not the #ActuallyAutistic person that is rejecting the change but the people around them who are worrying about their reaction and can't cope with the additional support we need to manage the transition process.
Change and mistakes along with tears and anxiety have made me the person I am today because I experienced them, survived them and ultimately learned from them.
Don't stifle someone because of your fear, don't 'protect' someone from the normal everyday nature of the world that throws changes and chaos around like fake snow at Christmas. The world will never stop being the way it is and while there is sense in routine and planning there must also be wisdom in recognising that some things cannot be planned for or made to be regular. It will not always be dry when you go to the doctors, the train to work/school will not always arrive at 08.34 precisely, the recipe for Fanta may not always remain the same.
We do not stay the same as human beings throughout life, we grow and change and mature and decay. Life is, by its very nature, never static and never 100% predictable. The human mind, autistic or not, needs to be able to cope with that concept and learn that there are many many things we simply cannot control and the best way to do this is to look to nature. Science teaches us that we don't know more than we know and even what we know now may not be what we know tomorrow.
So my motto for September is very much "lets get back to normal" but also a hefty dose of "embrace the chaos" - let's see what the month brings!
I am so happy it's ridiculous.
My life can return to what stands for normal in my family. I know what I'm doing from day to day and have a regular routine again!
The thing is, for all I moan about it, I really like working in a school and having a basic timetable I can follow from day-to-day / week-to-week / term-to-term. It gives me structure in a life I deliberately try to keep very open and fluid. I've always been very fearful of having too much routine and becoming compulsive about following it. I worry that my nature is to follow automatic habits and that I would get very distressed if unable to. For this reason I like to mix up my drive home route occasionally (although it's not very long so there's not much option for change!) and vary the days of the week I do my washing/shopping/cleaning. Even following the rugby has variety in locations, days and times so not every weekend becomes repetitive.
I like variety and change and some random chaos in life, it keeps me thinking and more importantly it stops me becoming stagnant and trapped in a mundane cycle that would send me into a spiralling depression - and yes that lesson was learnt through experience!
I feel that people are too afraid of change when it comes to Autism - sometimes it's not the #ActuallyAutistic person that is rejecting the change but the people around them who are worrying about their reaction and can't cope with the additional support we need to manage the transition process.
Change and mistakes along with tears and anxiety have made me the person I am today because I experienced them, survived them and ultimately learned from them.
Don't stifle someone because of your fear, don't 'protect' someone from the normal everyday nature of the world that throws changes and chaos around like fake snow at Christmas. The world will never stop being the way it is and while there is sense in routine and planning there must also be wisdom in recognising that some things cannot be planned for or made to be regular. It will not always be dry when you go to the doctors, the train to work/school will not always arrive at 08.34 precisely, the recipe for Fanta may not always remain the same.
We do not stay the same as human beings throughout life, we grow and change and mature and decay. Life is, by its very nature, never static and never 100% predictable. The human mind, autistic or not, needs to be able to cope with that concept and learn that there are many many things we simply cannot control and the best way to do this is to look to nature. Science teaches us that we don't know more than we know and even what we know now may not be what we know tomorrow.
So my motto for September is very much "lets get back to normal" but also a hefty dose of "embrace the chaos" - let's see what the month brings!
Sunday, 21 August 2016
Relying on other people
I find it really difficult when I have to rely on other people in order for me to be able to do something; be that having to wait for authorisation to proceed with something or needing someone to provide me with something.
Its not an uncommon thing amongst autistic people that we dislike being reliant on others - relying on others generally involves interacting with others and that's not something we like being forced to do necessarily!
Thing is, the world we live in means it is very very rare to be able to get through life without having some form of reliance on others - we rely on our employers/the state to provide us with our money regularly, we rely on utility companies to maintain a consistent flow of electricity/water to us, we rely on the emergency services to be there if/when we need them.
And I'm perfectly fine with that. What I dislike is being forced into relying on others in order to achieve my aims because others wont allow me to have the control myself.
I'm not allowed to have keys to my place of work because my manager fears what would happen were I to panic/meltdown when alone (never mind the fact that I live alone and have done successfully for 4 years now . . ) This means that during the school holidays when I'm due to work so many days I am reliant on the key holders opening/closing the building at the right time for me. However, this doesn't often happen. The caretakers, as is their right, want to do all their hours in one go rather than their early morning and evening slots as they do during term time; not particularly helpful to me when I need to work my standard 8am-4pm hours.
The fact that I'm not allowed to have keys to open/lock the building means I'm subject to things not going smoothly; case in point, tomorrow I'm supposed to work my normal hours, however the first key holder wont arrive until 9am. This means to do the hours I'm supposed to (and need to in order to get all my work done) I'll need to carry on working beyond my normal finish time, luckily tomorrow another key holder is planning to stay late so I can do this. Not sure what's happening Tuesday however though as this wont be the case.
And yet, despite the fact that I have raised this as an issue before (my fourth summer with this problem I believe) and despite the fact that my colleagues all know about my Autism and my need to know in advance what's going on I'm still in a situation where things aren't clear to me and I have no way of contacting the people who do know - its the summer holidays, my manager has gone abroad and I don't have the contact details for the caretakers - not that I would have the authority to ask them to switch their working hours even if I did!
Still, at least I'm not relying on others to have done bits of work for me to be able to do mine. Oh, wait a minute . . . .
Its not an uncommon thing amongst autistic people that we dislike being reliant on others - relying on others generally involves interacting with others and that's not something we like being forced to do necessarily!
Thing is, the world we live in means it is very very rare to be able to get through life without having some form of reliance on others - we rely on our employers/the state to provide us with our money regularly, we rely on utility companies to maintain a consistent flow of electricity/water to us, we rely on the emergency services to be there if/when we need them.
And I'm perfectly fine with that. What I dislike is being forced into relying on others in order to achieve my aims because others wont allow me to have the control myself.
I'm not allowed to have keys to my place of work because my manager fears what would happen were I to panic/meltdown when alone (never mind the fact that I live alone and have done successfully for 4 years now . . ) This means that during the school holidays when I'm due to work so many days I am reliant on the key holders opening/closing the building at the right time for me. However, this doesn't often happen. The caretakers, as is their right, want to do all their hours in one go rather than their early morning and evening slots as they do during term time; not particularly helpful to me when I need to work my standard 8am-4pm hours.
The fact that I'm not allowed to have keys to open/lock the building means I'm subject to things not going smoothly; case in point, tomorrow I'm supposed to work my normal hours, however the first key holder wont arrive until 9am. This means to do the hours I'm supposed to (and need to in order to get all my work done) I'll need to carry on working beyond my normal finish time, luckily tomorrow another key holder is planning to stay late so I can do this. Not sure what's happening Tuesday however though as this wont be the case.
And yet, despite the fact that I have raised this as an issue before (my fourth summer with this problem I believe) and despite the fact that my colleagues all know about my Autism and my need to know in advance what's going on I'm still in a situation where things aren't clear to me and I have no way of contacting the people who do know - its the summer holidays, my manager has gone abroad and I don't have the contact details for the caretakers - not that I would have the authority to ask them to switch their working hours even if I did!
Still, at least I'm not relying on others to have done bits of work for me to be able to do mine. Oh, wait a minute . . . .
Thursday, 23 June 2016
Limbo land; waiting to know
Its 11pm on Thursday 23rd June 2016, the EU Referendum polls have been closed for an hour now and counting is happening in earnest around the country. We are now officially in the limbo between voting and results being know.
My anxiety levels have never been so out of control.
I hate the fact that I don't know what will happen tomorrow morning. I hate that I don't know how this is going to affect the country I love. I hate that I can't control how terrified I am of what might happen.
These are the moments when being Autistic really really sucks.
But, from the depths of my fog of fear and trepidation is emerging a new way of coping. Gone are the days when I could rely on alcohol, cynicism or fake apathy to get me through nights like this, instead I find myself reaching previously unknown levels of zen; I have done what I could and can do no more, I must now simply accept and wait.
I'm reminded in these moments of the harrowing line of dialogue from the end of James Cameron's Titanic "had nothing to do but wait... wait to die... wait to live... wait for an absolution... that would never come"
Tonight isn't anywhere near on a par with the events of April 14th 1912 but there is a sense of worlds being shaken, of lives changing in ways that cannot be comprehended yet, of the endless wait to see what morning brings.
I hope whatever the result that my wonderful, amazing, proud country can come together and accept the majority choice. I hope that we will never again see the scenes we saw in the summer of 2011 when parts of London were torn apart by riots. I hope that we remember how lucky we are to be given a choice in our future at all.
I hate not knowing, but I would hate not having a say more.
My anxiety levels have never been so out of control.
I hate the fact that I don't know what will happen tomorrow morning. I hate that I don't know how this is going to affect the country I love. I hate that I can't control how terrified I am of what might happen.
These are the moments when being Autistic really really sucks.
But, from the depths of my fog of fear and trepidation is emerging a new way of coping. Gone are the days when I could rely on alcohol, cynicism or fake apathy to get me through nights like this, instead I find myself reaching previously unknown levels of zen; I have done what I could and can do no more, I must now simply accept and wait.
I'm reminded in these moments of the harrowing line of dialogue from the end of James Cameron's Titanic "had nothing to do but wait... wait to die... wait to live... wait for an absolution... that would never come"
Tonight isn't anywhere near on a par with the events of April 14th 1912 but there is a sense of worlds being shaken, of lives changing in ways that cannot be comprehended yet, of the endless wait to see what morning brings.
I hope whatever the result that my wonderful, amazing, proud country can come together and accept the majority choice. I hope that we will never again see the scenes we saw in the summer of 2011 when parts of London were torn apart by riots. I hope that we remember how lucky we are to be given a choice in our future at all.
I hate not knowing, but I would hate not having a say more.
Monday, 23 May 2016
Punctuality
There's a big issue in life with being on time for things; as a species we are more dominated by time constraints than any of our fellow earth-inhabitants (Alice's White Rabbit aside!)
I would always prefer to sit around having arrived somewhere ridiculously early than to be caught in a situation where time is slipping away from me and I run the risk of being late. This doesn't always go to plan and I have friends who will happily speak of many times I have dashed into a restaurant/bar/party a lot later than I was supposed to arrive - inevitably with words spilling out my lips trying to explain the latest round of Helen vs the world. Truthfully I am just very bad at judging how long things will take; I can massively overestimate how long a journey may take me yet think drying my hair will take just a few minutes despite years of experience telling me it takes at least 10!
The understanding of the passage of time is something that can be linked to executive functioning - something that research tells us Autistic people can struggle with. I find my problems are not so much with the planning part of the process, as a former scientist I still have the numerical brain that makes all plans into Gantt charts and plots the most efficient path to completion of tasks. The trouble arises when the time I assign to each subtask is incorrect wildly knocking my plan out of sync! Even though this happens more often than I would like I still struggle to compensate and can't quite make myself change the next stage of plans quickly enough to gain back the time lost, although this is often because I have trimmed the plans to the point of not being able to loose anything - even if I'm running late for work I can't skip brushing my teeth or putting my shoes on! The few times I have tried to hasten my leaving the house I will find on my return that I have left lights on or my lunch is still sat in the fridge.
As we are forced into tighter and tighter schedules it's not surprising that more and more of my generation are eschewing 'going out' for nights in on out own terms. I feel I spend half my life trying to meet time constraints set for me: work deadlines, train departures, match KOs, assignment hand ins, even trying to remember to return phone calls at appropriate times for other people schedules!
Maybe as a society we need to slow down a bit and realise that not everyone can always keep up with the manic pace that is being demanded. Maybe we need to realise that each and every one of us is a human being who operates on their own processing speed and allow people just a bit of breathing space sometimes. Maybe one day we'll realise that we've made this world just a bit too hard for some people and have lost our way as a progressive society.
Maybe.
Maybe next time I come into London I won't be sat around in a reception for over an hour because I'm ridiculously early for an appointment!
I would always prefer to sit around having arrived somewhere ridiculously early than to be caught in a situation where time is slipping away from me and I run the risk of being late. This doesn't always go to plan and I have friends who will happily speak of many times I have dashed into a restaurant/bar/party a lot later than I was supposed to arrive - inevitably with words spilling out my lips trying to explain the latest round of Helen vs the world. Truthfully I am just very bad at judging how long things will take; I can massively overestimate how long a journey may take me yet think drying my hair will take just a few minutes despite years of experience telling me it takes at least 10!
The understanding of the passage of time is something that can be linked to executive functioning - something that research tells us Autistic people can struggle with. I find my problems are not so much with the planning part of the process, as a former scientist I still have the numerical brain that makes all plans into Gantt charts and plots the most efficient path to completion of tasks. The trouble arises when the time I assign to each subtask is incorrect wildly knocking my plan out of sync! Even though this happens more often than I would like I still struggle to compensate and can't quite make myself change the next stage of plans quickly enough to gain back the time lost, although this is often because I have trimmed the plans to the point of not being able to loose anything - even if I'm running late for work I can't skip brushing my teeth or putting my shoes on! The few times I have tried to hasten my leaving the house I will find on my return that I have left lights on or my lunch is still sat in the fridge.
As we are forced into tighter and tighter schedules it's not surprising that more and more of my generation are eschewing 'going out' for nights in on out own terms. I feel I spend half my life trying to meet time constraints set for me: work deadlines, train departures, match KOs, assignment hand ins, even trying to remember to return phone calls at appropriate times for other people schedules!
Maybe as a society we need to slow down a bit and realise that not everyone can always keep up with the manic pace that is being demanded. Maybe we need to realise that each and every one of us is a human being who operates on their own processing speed and allow people just a bit of breathing space sometimes. Maybe one day we'll realise that we've made this world just a bit too hard for some people and have lost our way as a progressive society.
Maybe.
Maybe next time I come into London I won't be sat around in a reception for over an hour because I'm ridiculously early for an appointment!
Saturday, 14 May 2016
Taking time out to relax
Sometimes its easy to get so caught up in life and all the pressures unfolding around you that you stop taking care of yourself and listening to what your mind and body need.
I've spent the past 5 weeks living life at (for me) a fairly non-stop pace; trips to visit family, rugby games (home and away), postgraduate assignments and exams, autism research and advocacy work. All of this on top of my full-time job. No wonder I've been so damn tired recently!
So I decided this weekend I was going to take some time to myself, not the whole weekend as I'm going to the Diamond Wedding Anniversary of close family friends for some of tomorrow but for the most part this weekend has been about looking after me and getting some much needed rest.
Rest doesn't just mean sleep however, though I will admit it does play a large part for me (14 hours last night!), its about not having any social demands put on me. I watched the Saracens game on TV from my own living room rather than making the trip to Allianz Park to watch it with all the other fans who couldn't make the trip to Lyon. This was a choice I made very definitively earlier in the week when I realised just how exhausted I was getting and how close to breaking point I'd unintentionally let myself get. The fact of the matter is that as an Autistic person I have to be realistic about what I can manage and no matter how much I may want to do something I still have to consider all the ramifications and consequences before committing to a course of action. This is particularly true when I'm asked to take on/do something with little notice - I need to think through the ripple effect before giving a response; often saying 'no' is incredibly difficult for me.
I don't regret anything I've done recently and I know that certain parts of the stress I'm under are completely out of my control but I just wish that people could be a little bit more understanding of the concept of 'Autism Fatigue' and realise the implications that can have on me and my sociability - if I'm having a tough week please don't criticize me for not conforming to the social norm and saying 'good morning' to every Tom, Dick and Harry that I see first thing in the morning at work!!
I can already feel the change in my mental state just from a single day away from people and their subconscious pressures, hopefully the feel-good factor from todays win and the general relaxed approach to this weekend will be enough to see me through to half-term now!
I've spent the past 5 weeks living life at (for me) a fairly non-stop pace; trips to visit family, rugby games (home and away), postgraduate assignments and exams, autism research and advocacy work. All of this on top of my full-time job. No wonder I've been so damn tired recently!
So I decided this weekend I was going to take some time to myself, not the whole weekend as I'm going to the Diamond Wedding Anniversary of close family friends for some of tomorrow but for the most part this weekend has been about looking after me and getting some much needed rest.
Rest doesn't just mean sleep however, though I will admit it does play a large part for me (14 hours last night!), its about not having any social demands put on me. I watched the Saracens game on TV from my own living room rather than making the trip to Allianz Park to watch it with all the other fans who couldn't make the trip to Lyon. This was a choice I made very definitively earlier in the week when I realised just how exhausted I was getting and how close to breaking point I'd unintentionally let myself get. The fact of the matter is that as an Autistic person I have to be realistic about what I can manage and no matter how much I may want to do something I still have to consider all the ramifications and consequences before committing to a course of action. This is particularly true when I'm asked to take on/do something with little notice - I need to think through the ripple effect before giving a response; often saying 'no' is incredibly difficult for me.
I don't regret anything I've done recently and I know that certain parts of the stress I'm under are completely out of my control but I just wish that people could be a little bit more understanding of the concept of 'Autism Fatigue' and realise the implications that can have on me and my sociability - if I'm having a tough week please don't criticize me for not conforming to the social norm and saying 'good morning' to every Tom, Dick and Harry that I see first thing in the morning at work!!
I can already feel the change in my mental state just from a single day away from people and their subconscious pressures, hopefully the feel-good factor from todays win and the general relaxed approach to this weekend will be enough to see me through to half-term now!
Tuesday, 3 May 2016
Inescapable difficult situations
A large problem I face regularly with being autistic is that people can tell when I'm not happy with something I've been asked to do. Currently I'm faced with a challenge about how to cope with the way my university has decided to do 'revision sessions' for my Masters course - I don't like doing group work and I certainly don't like to do 'talk and share'. I don't want to be here, I am not coping well with this situation and am finding it really hard just to keep myself in the room when all I want to do is bolt and hide.
I hate the way people feel the need to force others into their way of learning / revising / coping. I have my way, it works well for me, doesn't always give the best results in terms of academic achievements but it allows me to survive the process.
Coping with stressful environments is always difficult when you have anxiety issues but when it's an environment that you're trapped in, and particularly if you're in the spotlight, it's so hard to know how to cope. My standard coping method is to blend in, to survive, to stay in control. In an inescapable spotlight environment however blending in is a bit harder and thus surviving can become a real challenge. Hopefully I'll be okay with this soon, it's a classic example of me not knowing in advance what would be expected of me and so not coping with a scenario well.
I hate the way people feel the need to force others into their way of learning / revising / coping. I have my way, it works well for me, doesn't always give the best results in terms of academic achievements but it allows me to survive the process.
Coping with stressful environments is always difficult when you have anxiety issues but when it's an environment that you're trapped in, and particularly if you're in the spotlight, it's so hard to know how to cope. My standard coping method is to blend in, to survive, to stay in control. In an inescapable spotlight environment however blending in is a bit harder and thus surviving can become a real challenge. Hopefully I'll be okay with this soon, it's a classic example of me not knowing in advance what would be expected of me and so not coping with a scenario well.
Saturday, 16 April 2016
Dealing with over stimulation in public
The trouble with doing anything really big and popular (like attending a Derby Day!) is that it's virtually guaranteed to cause a whole host of autism problems at the time and/or later.
The main reason for this is that, obviously, a lot of other people are wanting to do it as well so there are massive crowds to deal with, often lots of excitable children running around, generally public transport to deal with and fairly often nowadays a big publicity/marketing machine blasting out adverts and music at high volumes.
All of this leads to a massive drain on energy levels just to keep that 'public face' mask on - the one that looks happy and calm and isn't showing the intense pain that's being experienced at the time. I understand the need for big venues (particularly sports venues) to create and stimulate 'atmosphere' but I would like some acknowledgement of the cost of this on people like me.
Today's Saracens vs Quins game at Wembley was wonderful but there were moments when I could have done without the random blasting of pop music and the overly excitable commentator. Overall though Wembley/Saracens did pretty well at hosting an enjoyable but relatively autism friendly event.
By far and away the worst event I have been to in my life however was back in November when I went to the O2 arena to see the Tennis ATP finals (Murray vs Nadal). What I endured there actually drove me to tears and ended up forcing me to leave early as I simply could not bear to remain in that environment any longer. The whole venue was blue coloured (as it was sponsored by Barclays Bank who are blue themed) which meant that wherever there was lighting it was the blue shade that makes me automatically think of emergency services sirens which leads to low-level but consistent anxiety. Most of the problems I had with the venue (very airless and 'close') could have been overcome but for the damn graphics the event insisted on using every time there was a challenged decision - a pulse beat on the screen and at full volume echoing across the court. Now, maybe its just me but I hear a beat that sounds similar to a heartbeat and my heart subconsciously tries to mimic it, leading to an increased highly-anxious heartrate and my breathing starting to go into hyperventilation. All of this led to me needing quite a bit 'down-time' to recover enough to drive my brother and me home that evening, a recovery that was set-back by the fact that I had to deal with getting the tube from the arena back to where my car was parked in Westfield!
The issue of 'what happens afterwards' came to the forefront today as well, while the getting to Wembley wasn't too bad and dealing with crowds going in was surprisingly calm the exit, naturally, wasn't. Even though I stayed to watch the Sarries boys do their lap of the pitch and then wasted another 15 minutes or so faffing around finding where my friend had left his bike, still the crowds for the tube were horrible to deal with. I wish that there could have been shuttle buses specifically running people to the nearby major train terminals (Kings Cross, Euston, Paddington etc) to allow for those of us going there to avoid the tube, leaving it just for those who were connecting to other parts of the City.
I made it home in one piece mostly - a major headache and quite a considerable need for quiet, but in a lot better shape than from other times I've been into London. Despite how good today has been though I know I've still got recovery ahead of me, tomorrow will probably come with a strong desire for sleep and quiet processing time along with other side effects such as affected appetite, clumsiness and probably achey joints.
It was worth it though - Stand Up For The Saracens!
The main reason for this is that, obviously, a lot of other people are wanting to do it as well so there are massive crowds to deal with, often lots of excitable children running around, generally public transport to deal with and fairly often nowadays a big publicity/marketing machine blasting out adverts and music at high volumes.
All of this leads to a massive drain on energy levels just to keep that 'public face' mask on - the one that looks happy and calm and isn't showing the intense pain that's being experienced at the time. I understand the need for big venues (particularly sports venues) to create and stimulate 'atmosphere' but I would like some acknowledgement of the cost of this on people like me.
Today's Saracens vs Quins game at Wembley was wonderful but there were moments when I could have done without the random blasting of pop music and the overly excitable commentator. Overall though Wembley/Saracens did pretty well at hosting an enjoyable but relatively autism friendly event.
By far and away the worst event I have been to in my life however was back in November when I went to the O2 arena to see the Tennis ATP finals (Murray vs Nadal). What I endured there actually drove me to tears and ended up forcing me to leave early as I simply could not bear to remain in that environment any longer. The whole venue was blue coloured (as it was sponsored by Barclays Bank who are blue themed) which meant that wherever there was lighting it was the blue shade that makes me automatically think of emergency services sirens which leads to low-level but consistent anxiety. Most of the problems I had with the venue (very airless and 'close') could have been overcome but for the damn graphics the event insisted on using every time there was a challenged decision - a pulse beat on the screen and at full volume echoing across the court. Now, maybe its just me but I hear a beat that sounds similar to a heartbeat and my heart subconsciously tries to mimic it, leading to an increased highly-anxious heartrate and my breathing starting to go into hyperventilation. All of this led to me needing quite a bit 'down-time' to recover enough to drive my brother and me home that evening, a recovery that was set-back by the fact that I had to deal with getting the tube from the arena back to where my car was parked in Westfield!
The issue of 'what happens afterwards' came to the forefront today as well, while the getting to Wembley wasn't too bad and dealing with crowds going in was surprisingly calm the exit, naturally, wasn't. Even though I stayed to watch the Sarries boys do their lap of the pitch and then wasted another 15 minutes or so faffing around finding where my friend had left his bike, still the crowds for the tube were horrible to deal with. I wish that there could have been shuttle buses specifically running people to the nearby major train terminals (Kings Cross, Euston, Paddington etc) to allow for those of us going there to avoid the tube, leaving it just for those who were connecting to other parts of the City.
I made it home in one piece mostly - a major headache and quite a considerable need for quiet, but in a lot better shape than from other times I've been into London. Despite how good today has been though I know I've still got recovery ahead of me, tomorrow will probably come with a strong desire for sleep and quiet processing time along with other side effects such as affected appetite, clumsiness and probably achey joints.
It was worth it though - Stand Up For The Saracens!
Tuesday, 12 April 2016
Transport and London
I have a strange relationship with public transport, probably born out of the conflicting nature of my autism and my upbringing in East London. I was first put on a tube before I could crawl and so never really experienced any anxiety related to it until I was into my twenties. The problem, l discovered was not the tube itself but the attitude of the people using it, particularly at rush hour. The times I really struggled because I am terrified of the oncoming train (I have to turn my head away as they pull in) and so find it hard to cope with the commuter crush queueing for the next tube to appear. I like staying behind the yellow lines and waiting safely until the tube has fully stopped. Do that at rush hour and you'll never get on because every man and his dog is queueing right of the edge of the platform and pushing their way on to already heaving tubes.
I still massively prefer the train to buses however; the bus I find unpredictable and highly uncomfortable. I dislike any form of transport where I have to tell the driver to stop somewhere they're supposed to or they might not! I understand for the non standard stops but when it's one only the main stops and you fly past it because no one rang the bell and the driver didn't see anyone waiting it's a bit frustrating! There have been times I've been on a delayed train and wished it could just skip Knebworth and get me home to Hitchin quicker but the beauty of the train is that it doesn't, generally speaking it does what it says and gets you to the exact place you knew you would end up - it's not like the station moves halfway through your journey!
My favourite form of transport is a closely run race between being driven (not driving myself as that requires a lot of concentration!) and flying. I adore flying and always get ridiculously excited at take off, the rush for the acceleration is brilliant - the only thing I've ever experienced that's better is the free fall when skydiving!
I guess you could say I love movement, velocity and acceleration will always trump standing still with your face squashed against someone's arm (or worse!) On a plane you have a guaranteed seat, you have an alloted amount of room, you have order. On the train/bus at 5ft 4in I'm lucky if I can snag hold of something to help me stayed balanced whilst standing the whole journey (I prefer sitting on the floor but when you're sardined in that's not possible!)
The thing is, and the main reason I'm writing this piece, is the knock on effect this can have on autistic people like me. What is an irritation to a normal commuter is a massive anxiety issue to me, while others get off a packed train/tube ready for work I need time to breathe, stim and sort my head out otherwise I'm a triggered agitated mess for hours. This is the argument I have to use when justifying my choice to buy a first class ticket if I'm coming to London before 9am - at least in 1st class I've got a chance of making it in still calm and ready to work! I'm lucky that my commute to work is a 5 minute drive (or 20 minute walk in the summer) and I don't often need to come to London early in the morning but when I do its for something important that is probably, on some level, making me nervous anyway.
I love coming to London, I still feel at heart that it's my home and I have a great affection for Zone One and TFL, I just wish I could reconcile those feeling with the spin cycle my stomach goes through every time I approach a platform . . .
Tuesday, 29 March 2016
The consequences of a meltdown at work
We had a fire drill at 12.20pm today.
This was a rearranged one from last week - I had been told the original date/time and left the building 10 minutes in advance to ensure I didn't get caught in it (as I am allowed to do by our H&S officer) but when it got rearranged due to an unavoidable issue my only information was that they 'hoped to have it next Tuesday' - no confirmation, no time, and the first day back after a 4 day weekend . . . (I spent most of today thinking it was Monday, despite knowing yesterday was Easter Monday!)
So, its 12.15pm and I'm knee deep in a particularly tricky report I'm working on and quite frankly feeling fairly below par already as the weekend (being a family orientated one) was fairly tiring and I hadn't managed to get enough sleep Monday night as my brain kicked into overdrive at about midnight and didn't turn off til gone 3am!
12.20ish and the siren suddenly wails through the building.
Now, I'm actually pretty good at the first reaction part - I can compartmentalise my base reaction and squash it viciously whilst dealing with the 'getting out of the building' part but once outside all the rush of panic, sensory overload, claustrophobia (from coming down the stairs with a dozen other people) and general anxiety comes out in the form of hyperventilating and pre-meltdown behaviours emerging.
Its worth noting here that I'm incredibly lucky in working for the same organisation as my mother, and by sheer luck we were both working in the same building today so she was able to take care of me when I needed help with my recovery process.
The fact that my colleagues still don't seem to understand the implications of things like fire alarms on me is disappointing. Co-workers I encountered over the course of the afternoon seemed surprise that I was still suffering 2-3 hours after the drill, not realising that a post meltdown recovery can take hours. I actually never progressed into full meltdown as I retained a level of control during the incident but I was certainly on the very limit of my capacity for control and came very close to toppling over the edge into full blown meltdown at least twice.
It took me until nearly 8pm to feel fully 'normal' again this evening; only after eating junk food (dominos to the rescue) and taking a 2 hour nap on my sofa did I finally feel back to my baseline levels. I still don't know how I'll wake up feeling tomorrow - that will all depend on tonight's sleep quality.
The hardest part of the whole afternoon for me was trying to verbalise my pain to people - I have a multitude of different categories of headache but explaining the difference between 'dull top vice' and 'consistent mallet' to people can be interesting - especially when I'm tripping over my own tongue as exhaustion robs me of some of my fine motor control. I also lose control of some of my external 'masks' and allow my autism to show through more, become more abrupt and harsh with people and a lot more demonstrative of my displeasure - when you're in pain other people's feelings/opinions become a lot less important!
The tiredness is also a shock to a lot of people, they seem to think I can just 'shake off' a reaction and be fine 20 minutes later, they don't seem to understand that, a lot like a burn, sometimes the initial pain isn't the worst part and that the damage can still be developing over time. I'd like to see them moving at full pace when they have a brain that's occupied with self-preservation and healing.
The sad thing is that one day they will all realise what its like because a lot of what I describe my recovery process to be like is how my grandparents describe ageing - the frustration of not being able to think/move/react as quickly as before, the slipping of hand/eye coordination and motor control, the verbal mistakes, the brain 'blankness'.
Maybe one day research into Autism or brain conditions such as dementia or strokes may shed some light on how to help people like me in meltdown recovery. Until then I'll keep doing what I'm doing and try not to get myself fired in the process!
This was a rearranged one from last week - I had been told the original date/time and left the building 10 minutes in advance to ensure I didn't get caught in it (as I am allowed to do by our H&S officer) but when it got rearranged due to an unavoidable issue my only information was that they 'hoped to have it next Tuesday' - no confirmation, no time, and the first day back after a 4 day weekend . . . (I spent most of today thinking it was Monday, despite knowing yesterday was Easter Monday!)
So, its 12.15pm and I'm knee deep in a particularly tricky report I'm working on and quite frankly feeling fairly below par already as the weekend (being a family orientated one) was fairly tiring and I hadn't managed to get enough sleep Monday night as my brain kicked into overdrive at about midnight and didn't turn off til gone 3am!
12.20ish and the siren suddenly wails through the building.
Now, I'm actually pretty good at the first reaction part - I can compartmentalise my base reaction and squash it viciously whilst dealing with the 'getting out of the building' part but once outside all the rush of panic, sensory overload, claustrophobia (from coming down the stairs with a dozen other people) and general anxiety comes out in the form of hyperventilating and pre-meltdown behaviours emerging.
Its worth noting here that I'm incredibly lucky in working for the same organisation as my mother, and by sheer luck we were both working in the same building today so she was able to take care of me when I needed help with my recovery process.
The fact that my colleagues still don't seem to understand the implications of things like fire alarms on me is disappointing. Co-workers I encountered over the course of the afternoon seemed surprise that I was still suffering 2-3 hours after the drill, not realising that a post meltdown recovery can take hours. I actually never progressed into full meltdown as I retained a level of control during the incident but I was certainly on the very limit of my capacity for control and came very close to toppling over the edge into full blown meltdown at least twice.
It took me until nearly 8pm to feel fully 'normal' again this evening; only after eating junk food (dominos to the rescue) and taking a 2 hour nap on my sofa did I finally feel back to my baseline levels. I still don't know how I'll wake up feeling tomorrow - that will all depend on tonight's sleep quality.
The hardest part of the whole afternoon for me was trying to verbalise my pain to people - I have a multitude of different categories of headache but explaining the difference between 'dull top vice' and 'consistent mallet' to people can be interesting - especially when I'm tripping over my own tongue as exhaustion robs me of some of my fine motor control. I also lose control of some of my external 'masks' and allow my autism to show through more, become more abrupt and harsh with people and a lot more demonstrative of my displeasure - when you're in pain other people's feelings/opinions become a lot less important!
The tiredness is also a shock to a lot of people, they seem to think I can just 'shake off' a reaction and be fine 20 minutes later, they don't seem to understand that, a lot like a burn, sometimes the initial pain isn't the worst part and that the damage can still be developing over time. I'd like to see them moving at full pace when they have a brain that's occupied with self-preservation and healing.
The sad thing is that one day they will all realise what its like because a lot of what I describe my recovery process to be like is how my grandparents describe ageing - the frustration of not being able to think/move/react as quickly as before, the slipping of hand/eye coordination and motor control, the verbal mistakes, the brain 'blankness'.
Maybe one day research into Autism or brain conditions such as dementia or strokes may shed some light on how to help people like me in meltdown recovery. Until then I'll keep doing what I'm doing and try not to get myself fired in the process!
Friday, 18 March 2016
Rollercoaster week
What a week.
Its been Schools Autism Awareness Week for the past 5 days and I wish I could say I've seen much evidence of it but it seems to have largely passed my local area by, even my own school didn't really bother with it much except to allow me to run an afternoon/evening conference on Wednesday.
Despite the numbers of children diagnosed each year climbing and the ever increasing importance of autism awareness and reasonable adjustments being needed it still feels like a lot of school staff, employers, colleagues, general public don't really give two figs.
I worked incredibly hard to pull off our conference on Wednesday and while I'm very proud of my own achievements in that regard, I do feel somewhat let down by the attitude of my colleagues towards my event and the campaign in general - yet again autism is something that has been dismissed as 'not a priority' which disappoints me.
Its a pervading attitude that I worry is indicative of the way non-autistic people think of autism in general; its too easy for people to 'pay lip service' for a short while then go straight back to carrying on as they always had been with no regard for what we live with every minute of every day. Its not like my sensory issues come with a dial or pause button that I can utilise when it suits someone else.
They certainly wouldn't be allowed to 'get away' with 'forgetting' about the specific needs of a diabetic/nut allergy sufferer/paraplegic/blind person - in fact I'm pretty sure sometimes more effort goes into be considerate of my colleagues gluten/wheat/dairy intolerances than goes in to making sure I've got a sensory environment that wont give me an overload migraine every few hours!
Anyway, stressful week over - its time to crack open a bottle of wine, watch The Last Leg and enjoy the thought that I have nothing planned for the next 48 hours apart from watching the England team lift the Six Nations trophy!! (Lets make it a Grand Slam please boys?!)
Its been Schools Autism Awareness Week for the past 5 days and I wish I could say I've seen much evidence of it but it seems to have largely passed my local area by, even my own school didn't really bother with it much except to allow me to run an afternoon/evening conference on Wednesday.
Despite the numbers of children diagnosed each year climbing and the ever increasing importance of autism awareness and reasonable adjustments being needed it still feels like a lot of school staff, employers, colleagues, general public don't really give two figs.
I worked incredibly hard to pull off our conference on Wednesday and while I'm very proud of my own achievements in that regard, I do feel somewhat let down by the attitude of my colleagues towards my event and the campaign in general - yet again autism is something that has been dismissed as 'not a priority' which disappoints me.
Its a pervading attitude that I worry is indicative of the way non-autistic people think of autism in general; its too easy for people to 'pay lip service' for a short while then go straight back to carrying on as they always had been with no regard for what we live with every minute of every day. Its not like my sensory issues come with a dial or pause button that I can utilise when it suits someone else.
They certainly wouldn't be allowed to 'get away' with 'forgetting' about the specific needs of a diabetic/nut allergy sufferer/paraplegic/blind person - in fact I'm pretty sure sometimes more effort goes into be considerate of my colleagues gluten/wheat/dairy intolerances than goes in to making sure I've got a sensory environment that wont give me an overload migraine every few hours!
Anyway, stressful week over - its time to crack open a bottle of wine, watch The Last Leg and enjoy the thought that I have nothing planned for the next 48 hours apart from watching the England team lift the Six Nations trophy!! (Lets make it a Grand Slam please boys?!)
Tuesday, 8 March 2016
Burning the candle at both ends
One of the things I find hardest in the world is to say 'no' to something I really want to do when I know I just don't have the time or energy for it.
This seems to be a growing problem for me this year; on one hand I'm incredibly lucky that I'm being offered some amazing opportunities and have so much going on in my personal and professional lives, but on the other hand I am starting to worry just how much damage I'm doing to my health . . .
I would love to be able to bottle up the excess energy I have on some days, the quiet ones where I don't interact with the wider world much or the long warm summer days that are just so peaceful and content. If I could find a way to store this calm motivation and be able to access it on the tough days where I just reach the end of my rope that would be fantastic!
Unfortunately life seems to conspire against me at the moment and seems to take great pleasure in ensuring my peak work stress matches up beautifully with my Master's deadlines! I'm in the first of two years studying an MA in Autism Studies, part-time, distance learning and its getting pretty tough going. Maintaining the self motivation to keep up with the reading and required work for assignments is starting to be a real challenge, particularly given that I'm in the middle of a massive piece of work for my manager at the moment which is taking a lot out of me each day!
Of course it probably doesn't help that I spent the Saturday just gone out all evening at a charity fundraising event; a wonderful night but very loud and social interaction heavy - I was paying for it the next day in both alcohol and sensory hangovers!
Hopefully this weekend I'll be able to catch up on sleep and processing time to get my head back to where it should be as I've got a very important event next week that I'm really excited about!!
This seems to be a growing problem for me this year; on one hand I'm incredibly lucky that I'm being offered some amazing opportunities and have so much going on in my personal and professional lives, but on the other hand I am starting to worry just how much damage I'm doing to my health . . .
I would love to be able to bottle up the excess energy I have on some days, the quiet ones where I don't interact with the wider world much or the long warm summer days that are just so peaceful and content. If I could find a way to store this calm motivation and be able to access it on the tough days where I just reach the end of my rope that would be fantastic!
Unfortunately life seems to conspire against me at the moment and seems to take great pleasure in ensuring my peak work stress matches up beautifully with my Master's deadlines! I'm in the first of two years studying an MA in Autism Studies, part-time, distance learning and its getting pretty tough going. Maintaining the self motivation to keep up with the reading and required work for assignments is starting to be a real challenge, particularly given that I'm in the middle of a massive piece of work for my manager at the moment which is taking a lot out of me each day!
Of course it probably doesn't help that I spent the Saturday just gone out all evening at a charity fundraising event; a wonderful night but very loud and social interaction heavy - I was paying for it the next day in both alcohol and sensory hangovers!
Hopefully this weekend I'll be able to catch up on sleep and processing time to get my head back to where it should be as I've got a very important event next week that I'm really excited about!!
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