Obviously that won't mean anything to pretty much anyone reading this, but this post is mainly for me and on her behalf. Claire was someone I met back in 2008, and to cut a long story short, she seemed to be The One. And simultaneously The One That Got Away.

She was one of those people who everyone liked the moment they met her, and the first thing I noticed when I first saw her was this amazing smile she had. Something about that was hypnotising. We worked together for quite a while at a charity shop, and she was like a whirlwind of energy and positivity. Nothing seemed to get her down, and she helped me through some pretty crap times. But inevitably things didn't work out and she disappeared for a while.

(It wasn't the only reason, but her mum was a factor in that. She was fiercely protective of her daughter. It's not for me to judge - Claire hinted that something bad happened when she was at college, and maybe her mum was protective of her due to that. Honestly no idea. But from things Claire said, her mum had a habit of "interfering.")

Claire did turn up again a while back and we stayed friends - sometimes we'd bump into each other in the local town or she'd send an email.

I hadn't heard from her for well over a year, and then a few days ago someone in Halesowen asked if I knew that Claire had passed away. I checked her Facebook page and that devastating nugget of information turned out to be true. She died back at the start of March. One of those situations where you just can't believe it's happened, but of course, it had.

So she's gone and I never had chance to even say goodbye. And frankly it was heartbreaking to see that news. But it was at least comforting to see how many people had left messages on her page, saying how she had that amazing "radiant smile" and how much she helped other people over the years. Just one really nice comment after another.

So, goodbye Claire, and I'm so glad I had the chance to be your friend, however briefly.

I saw this quote on Another Site(tm) a few days ago and stuff:-

"Being late-recognized autistic means you spent some nontrivial part of your life not understanding that a lot of the friction you’ve experienced in life is due to disability you didn’t know you were compensating for. It makes for some really complex grieving."

And it hit bloody hard. At the time I had another tab open, and I was looking for books about the Magic of Autism. There are a few around for adults, but a lot of them are dry, dusty medicinal tomes that are of precisely zero interest. Many of the books I saw were either specifically for kids, or aimed at parents giving advice on how to help their autistic kids. And I am so very, very glad that kids today now have that chance to get help and advice, and parents can learn from those books and help their kids.

Because[1] until fairly recently, there was pretty much nothing. If you grew up in the 80s and 90s for example, autism was barely known about and kids at that point were just labelled as shy, lazy, difficult, problem children. If they had ADHD, they were off their head on the chemicals in the food, and the lucky ones were called hyperactive. There was a meme somewhere that said "Boomers claim there were no autistic kids when they were at school." And underneath it said "The autistic boomers" with a picture of Spongebob and a few other characters muzzled and tied up in a cellar.

I spent many happy years at school being bullied for reasons that in retrospect were very clearly tied in with being autistic. I was told that I was shy and needed to try harder to fit in. Make friends. Smile more. I was phenomenally crap at sports and PE lessons were a nightmare, but I was told to just "try harder" which... made no difference. Not surprising when you have 3 left feet and your arms take several minutes to realise that there's a cricket ball gunning for your head. Happiest days of your life, my arse.

My first boss was - and please excuse the expression - a total sack of shit with no patience at all. I don't know if it would have made any difference had he known that I was autistic, and I'll never know. I enjoyed the time I spent working at a library, but there were times when it was extremely hectic and overwhelming. Again, had anyone known, the librarian may have been able to say "take a break if it gets too much" but again, he didn't know. Oddly enough because neither did I.

I've been sent on various Jobcentre courses that were highly unsuitable for reasons linked to having the power of autism, and it was frankly hell. Whether the Jobcentre would have given a damn anyway is another matter, as they're hardly known for their caring attitude. But as it does officially class as a disability, I'd imagine there must be some laws in place that mean they have to make some exceptions and so on. Again, too late now.

And I had major panic attacks partly caused by getting overwhelmed by one thing after another. Which in turn was partly caused by a mother who thought she knew everything there was to know about phobias, insisted I clearly had agoraphobia, she'd be the genius who would find the cure, and the only solution was to get out there and face the fears. Which I tried, and that just made it worse. Shopping malls and extremely packed record fairs are wonderful places to go if you want a meltdown. Autism can't be cured, and if you break your limits, it has repercussions. In my case I was extremely ill from 1993 till about 2012 due to overwhelming stress, among other things. Sadly, 2012 or thereabouts was when my mum was no longer around - I don't really like to think of the obvious connection there, but there's no getting around it...

So yes, going back to that original quote, there's nothing that can be done now. "It is what it is." Even so, I wonder how different things could have been if they'd been able to spot what was wrong from a much earlier age. I might have avoided some 20+ years of constant panic attacks and nearly croaking from losing masses of weight due to being too stressed to scoff the nosh.

And the fact that it's an actual disability - and until July this year I had that disability and didn't know for 50+ years - is quite the eyeball opener. I'm glad I know - better late than never - but it does feel like I've suddenly been nudged into an alternate timeline and the previous me has kind of slipped away. I don't know... it's tricky to put that into words but it's a strange feeling. I guess I'm grieving to some extent for the person I could have been if I'd been given help.

And that is why I am so glad those books for children are now around, and that they're given much more help, and generally the chance of early diagnosis is a lot higher now. They can avoid some of that and have a better chance of becoming who they're really meant to be.

(To be fair, I don't know much about what "help" is available now, but there must be something. It surely can't be a case of "you're autistic, best of luck!" And whatever that help may be, I'd prefer to know long before Prime Minister Farage takes over in 2029 and closes the entire NHS down and has me euthanized.)

[1] I was told never to start a sentence with "Because" but I'm a creature of Khaos so I do not care.

These thinks were thinked last night after I woke up from a weird dream and couldn’t get back to sleep. I hoped to bore myself back to sleep, so now you must suffer the same fate.

The last few years, I’ve had countless dreams where I’ve been wandering around a city, trying to find one specific shop. The target shop always changes, but the city always seems to be roughly the same layout. And yet every time I manage to get completely lost there.

For some reason I always know (in the dream) that the city I’m in is a UK place called Wolverhampton. I haven’t been there since 2012 and the dream version never looks remotely like the real one. But somehow I know in that dream that it’s Wolverhampton and I’m gonna be stuck there because I don’t know how to get back to the bus station, thanks to being lost.

And despite never managing to find the place or person that I’m supposed to be looking for, every damn time I end up in either a record shop or a comic shop, neither of which really existed and yet they always feel extremely familiar.

What makes it weird when I wake up is how, in those comic/record shops, they’re full of items. There’s stuff on that shelf all with titles and covers, merchandise that never existed, bands that don’t exist. I even heard a Beatles tune that never existed and it sounded amazing, but can I bloody remember a note of it once I woke up? Ha! No chance.

So how is that sleeping squishy brains seem able to create all that detail (even outside, all the things you’d expect such as other people, traffic, lamp posts, drain covers, even blades of grass etc are there) and yet now I’m awake, I wouldn’t stand any chance of actually drawing a comic shop full of dainty items. Or thinking up hundreds of band names and album covers. Yet a dozing stupid thick brain manages to make all that appear in 60fps at 4K with surroundsound. Bizarre.

A new and reasonably shiny Nightlights album is almost finished. I've still got to piece together the cover art, although that shouldn't take too long. And tonight I need to listen to the masters of the songs on nogginphones. But once that's done, maybe in a week or two it'll be ready to put onto Bandcamp.

I realise this announcement, for pretty much anyone reading it, is slightly less exciting than getting slapped in the face with a wet fish. But it's the best I've got right now. It's either that or more posts about that autism diagnosis, and although there are things to say there, I don't want to be a pain. So, music it is!

Sooo.... I was officially diagnosed as autistic a couple of weeks ago. "Whoopdedoo, so are lots of other people" etc. After all, 0.8% of the UK = many many billions. Odds are this post will be of very little interest to most people who read it, but it's partly for my own reference, and partly because I've got so many thinks rattling round my head that I need to get them out somewhere. And right now, there isn't really anyone I can ramble to about it. Family haven’t been told with one exception, and friends are going through a lot of their own issues so I don’t want to hassle them. So I’ll hassle Dreamwidth instead.

I'll stuff the rest into one of those "cut" things, if it works...

( Abandon All hope Ye Who Enter Etc )

Innit.

On Tuesday I went to fetch a calico cat, called Princess. Her previous owner is too ill to look after her any more, which was very sad, but she wanted Princess to go to a good home. So I decided to help out.



Here she is dozing after a day of exploration. She is extremely shy, and hides every time anyone enters the room, but she's making good progress. She's climbed out from behind the curtain plenty of times, and yesterday when I was watching Spiderman 2, she curled up on my lap and went to sleep.

She's roughly 2 and a half, so quite a young mew at the moment, and full of curiosity. =^_^=

Friday last week was quite a night to remember. We (as in, the band I'm in, The Moons Of Jupiter) were the support act at an amazing venue called The River Rooms, in Stourbridge, and we were there to support a Depeche Mode tribute band called Black Celebration. They have a pretty sizeable following and do an excellent job, but we didn't actually expect many people to turn up before they were on stage. So we expected a small audience at best.

Well... the actual gig went great, and the venue owners gave us access to the full lights and even the dry ice machines, so it all looked very professional. And as it turned out, there were well over 250 people there, which I didn't find out till afterwards, and in a way I'm kinda glad I didn't know at the time! For a support act, we actually got a really good reaction, so all in all I'm very pleased with how it al went.

And thanks to Jeff from the Black Celebration band for being so welcoming and friendly when we turned up. He had a good chat with us about the music, Depeche Mode, and the synths, so that was really appreciated.

Stolen, half-inched, taffed, nicked, grabbed and generally claimed from loganberrybunny and howsmyenglish  Bwahaha etc it's mine now and so on and so forth.

What’s the coolest thing you’ve ever seen in nature?
That's a tricky one because I'm one of these people that is constantly in awe of what nature does, and can't wrap my empty head round how it manages it. I suppose as an actual place or event though... well, over 120 years ago, a local area known as New Hawne Colliery was simply that. A huge mineworks, and they devasted a huge amount of the local scenery. Maybe it was vital at the time, maybe not. I'm not getting into that side of things. Just that the mines closed around 1920, give or take. And since then, although it's taken the best part of 100 years, nature has claimed it back against the odds. Trees and bushes have grown there, wild flowers have appeared, there is wildlife all over the place that have made it home again - rabbits, dragonflies, even rare butterflies apparently, although I never saw any. It's near impossible to get through the place now as it's so overgrown, but that's a good thing. It keeps us humans outta there.

What national or international events that you lived through do you remember best?
In recent times, stinky Covid. In not so recent times, September 11th, which terrified the butt off me even if I don't live in the USA. For a moment, the world felt like it had completely flipped its pancakes. And they never flipped back.

Does technology make us more alone?
No. Thanks to technology, specifically the internet, I've found so many friends that I would quite simply never have found otherwise. I know the internet, certainly in the form of smartphones, is blamed for wrecking society. But as long as it doesn't become a total obsession and social media etc don't take over your life, it's absolutely a force for good. Also technology meant I was finally able to achieve my dream of making music - something I just couldn't have done before because hardware synths cost staggering amounts of money, way beyond what I could have afforded. And that in turn has led to more friends or reconnecting with old friends from school, and so on.

How much do you trust online reviews?
Depends on the situation. I'll very often check Trustpilot if its a company I've never used before, but even then sometimes it'll depend on using a bit of common sense. As far as reviews for films or games is concerned, I don't trust them much because some of my favourite films have pretty naff reviews. I'll judge by what others have said about it, ideally people I know, if at all possible.

What are your experiences with severe weather?
To be honest, it isn't really something we get that much of in the UK. Not generally anyway. In the 80s we did used to get snow that was so deep, we had to dig tunnels through it to get to school. But tell kids that now and they'd never believe you. Probably the grimmest weather I remember was the flooding and rain back in 2007 (I think...) which I didn't experience directly. But my parents were driving back from Wales or somesuch, and witnessed the sight of three people literally rowing a boat across a field.

What are your favorite commercials?
Not a clue. Apart from an occassional online advert that I'll almost exclusively ignore, I haven't been deluged with the honour of commercials since the 90s. Most of my favourites would be from the 80s, mostly because a lot of them were for sweets and toys/games, which at the time were more important than oxygen.

Do you believe in intelligent alien life?
There's a distinct shortage of it left on earth, so there had bloody well better be some out there somewhere. Out of the trillions of planets that must be floating around lazily in space, we can't be the only ones with life on.

Would you like to ride in a car that drives itself?
No.

Have you ever interacted with the police?
Once as a kid, when someone broke our window and the local community plod turned up, and he turned his steely gaze on me and asked if I knew who had done it and if I'd pissed anyone off. Which was nice.

The only other time was when I was in WHSmiths, checked for an art magazine that they didn't have, and hurried out the shop because I knew I would be in time for the next bus. Next thing I know, two pairs of trotters on the shoulders and they insisted the WHSmiths manager had seen me acting suspiciously in the shop. So they searched every pocket, my entire backpack, and begrudgingly had to admit I'd stolen precisely sod all. Meantime, passers-by were there tutting away as if I'd done something wrong. Which was nice. Especially as I was having particularly nasty panic attacks back in those times, so that didn't really help.

Do you worry a lot about germs?
NO! I LOVE 'EM! THEY'RE MY BEST FRIENDS. THEY ARE SO CUDDLY AND WARM.

I don't know the exact date that this was released, but February 1984 was apparently when it first appeared on the shelves so it's effectively 40 years... 40 DARN YEARS ARRGHH... since Talk Talk released their second album, "It's My Life." 9 songs that are kind of 80s synthpop, but somehow a bit more than that.




For me, Talk Talk is The Band(tm) and I've been a fan since 1991. Their music means a huge amount to me, to the point where I can say - without wishing to dwell on details - that I may well not be around if it wasn't for their songs. I first stumbled across them via their 1986 song, "Life's What You Make It" and that in turn led me to checking out a random 7 inch single, "It's My Life." Which I absolutely loved, but after that, I decided to track down their albums in order.

So... although the first album knocked my proverbial socks off, it was this second album (It's My Life) that absolutely cemented my love of the band. I was and still am a very big fan of synths, and this album is awash with them. The debut album was as well, but they were solid slabs of synth, whereas on this album it's done more subtly. They're more like textures rather than blasting synth leads. And hearing this after thinking the debut album was excellent, it was like "holy donuts! This is even better."

(And although synths still played a role on later albums, they mostly trimmed them out of the songs, so this was the last time they used them significantly.)

The bulk of the synth sounds were created by synth boffin Ian Curnow, and he used techniques with synths that nobody had done before. I can't remember exact details, but somehow he linked two Jupiter 8 synths together and found that by adjusting dials on one, it affected the other, creating the weird semi-guitar sound that is used on several of the tracks. Something that could be done fairly easily on modern keyboards now, but was a nightmare to do back in the 80s.

Sadly the main mover and songwriter for the band, Mark Hollis, died back in 2019. That hit me hard, because although he'd long, long since retired from the music scene, I always had that tiny little thought that maybe one day I'd meet him, maybe chat with him, or perhaps even work on a bit of music. (Very very unlikely, but while he was alive, I always had that tiny shred of hope.) Alas, it was not to be, though I do have a very nice hand written and signed letter from him, which I keep very safe.

We (that is, me and him) did a cover version of a Depeche Mode classic called "Halo". If anyone wants to give it a listen and stuff. :)