Status:
Went to York Supplies today, the proper old-school hardware and gardening shop in Kings Heath. It was owned by the sort of people you’d want to own a hardware store, until they retired and sold it to the community as a co-operative, which means I own a share in it along with a few hundred other people. It’s the sort of place where they’ll sell you a single screw if that’s all you need, so of course you buy way more than a single screw. I got some keys cut, a broom handle, some pegs and a bottle of linseed oil. Fi got some double-sided sticky pads, a sprinkler rose for the watering can and a load of seedlings.
I had one of those moments where I slightly annoyed Fi at the counter and then obsessed about it for ages afterwards, until it turned out she’d forgotten about it in seconds. Classic autistic behaviour: “I have gotten this signal wrong in the past so this time I’m not going to ignore it.” Of course the next time I get this signal I’ll likely assume there’s not a problem and carry on oblivious to the other person’s distress. Yay.
A while back someone on my Mastodon feed asked for advice for autistics on meeting new people. I replied with some stuff about being a useful member of your special interest community (that’s how I met everyone in my zine scenes) but later I was thinking about how much of my socialising in my 20s and 30s was done while drunk. I was never an alcoholic, I think, because I rarely had booze at home, but every time I went to a social occasion I’d need a couple of drinks in me before relaxing into long enjoyable conversations. So I guess that’s my really bad advice for autistic people – build up a decent tolerance to alcohol.
It hadn’t really occurred to me until recently but it seems pretty clear that the beer buzz was neutralising all the anxieties about getting stuff wrong, allowing me to take the sort of risks that my sober self would shut down at the horror of. Sure, it could and did go horribly wrong at times, but you can blame that on the booze, especially if everyone else was drinking. Most importantly I made bonds with people, some of whom became friends for life.
Clearly this is not the best way to go about things, but I do wonder when I hear about “the youth of today” being relatively tee-total, how the fuck do they meet new people?
Reading:
- On Compost — Lovely essay by Fraser MacDonald for the LRB on my favourite subject. I was thinking I’d like to write something of this length and tone, and here it is, so I guess I don’t need to anymore (joke, of course I do).
- David Balfe on inspiring Blur’s Country House and tripping on Top of the Pops — I know Balfe from less than flattering portraits in Julian Cope and Bill Drummond’s autobiographies but I didn’t realise he was the fella living in a very big house in the country.
- Key outcomes from first summit on ‘transitioning away’ from fossil fuels — A meeting of “those that wanted something to be done” to avoid the usual bullshit prevaricating by the US, etc. Sounds like a good first step to something important.
- RIP Ted
Listening:
Music:
- 20 Mothers by Julian Cope — Back in the old days, before piracy and streaming, it was prudent to buy one album by each artist and play it over and over. This was my Julian Cope album. Happy to say it holds up well.