Restless

During the summer I became quite discontented with my house (sadly not the one above), which felt smaller and noisier than ever. Outside, builders shouted, drilled and listened to hideous power ballads. Inside, my wife, sons and cats occupied every room except the main bedroom.

At one point I started viewing property websites and looked longingly at houses with spacious kitchens and gardens larger than a bath mat. Many of them had a study and a shed - catnip for a middle aged man - plus the en suite bathroom that my wife has yearned for all these years.

To add to the temptation, the houses weren't selling for any more money than the value of our home. If we could buy one of these houses (and somehow lose our cats during the move), how much better life could be. I could have that book-lined study I'd always dreamed about.

But the bubble always burst when I clicked on the maps and realised that there is a simple rule to purchasing a property in this area: unless you're blessed with a large sum of money, you can either have a small house in a good location, or a large home in a less desirable one. Invariably, whenever I saw a house I liked, there was a catch.

Also, many of the larger houses I saw conformed to Patrick Hamilton's snobbish but amusing description in a book I'm reading at the moment, Mr Stimpson and Mr Gorse:

'The houses were squat, two-storied affairs. Their fronts had all been most oddly treated. It looked as if the builder had had some sort of infantile sea-mania for shingled beaches, and that, to indulge this passion, he had, having covered the external walls with thick glue, used some extraordinary machine with which to spray them densely with small pebbles.

In the front gardens of most of these houses there were, in addition to sundials, countless images of Gnomes, Dwarfs, Fairies, Goblins, and Peter Pans - the inhabitants of Sispara Road having, it seemed, a strong turn of mind for the whimiscal, the grotesque and the beautiful.'


So for the time being, I am staying put in the unpebbledashed, gnome-free streets of Lewes, resigned to living in a terraced Victorian shoebox, but grateful to live in a town that is full of delights, with solid, unpretentious housing.

In a vague attempt to improve my fitness and leave my cramped surroundings behind, I've been going on long walks around Lewes. I have a particularly good pair of shoes that were originally designed for postmen (if you look carefully, you can see 'Royal Mail' embossed on the side) and they enable me to stride around the town at a speed that burns off a few calories and gets the heart racing.

The other day I explored the ruins of the Priory of St Pancras, which was built roughly 940 years ago:

 

There's nothing like a good ruin to put things into perspective, whether it's a Norman priory in Sussex or a deserted office block in Detroit. Ruins are humbling, or should be.

Last night, the Priory of St Pancras looked particularly beautiful as volunteers had lit over a thousand candles, all strategically placed either on the ground or in the nooks of the stone walls. It was quite magical.

(My only reservation was over the decision to lay a double row of lights, as it looked like one of those makeshift landing strips that feature in war films. When, at one point, I heard the drone of a light aircraft, I was worried that its confused pilot was about to make a descent. But that aside, it was a magical evening.)

As the sun set, a choir started singing Carmina Burana and I felt incredibly grateful that I lived in a town that did things like this. If my pokey, Victorian terraced house was the price that I had to pay for living in Lewes, it was probably one worth paying.

Also, at a time when so many people around the world have been displaced from their homes, it seemed absurd to be complaining about something so self-indulgent and trivial.

But when the car exhausts and builders' hammers get too much, I can faintly hear the quiet call of the garden gnomes whispering "Shed, conservatory, en suite bathroom, study, parking space, large kitchen, guest bedroom..." and a part of me weakens.


P.S - In response to Joan's comment, I have a very short video clip of the choir, which I've added. I didn't bother trying to film anything in the dark, but I hope this captures something of the evening's magic. Oh, and did I add that it was all free?

Unkindled

My attempts to lead a well-ordered life have once again been defeated by animals. This time, I have a decomposing rat underneath the floor of my office and a hornets' nest in the building where I store my books. I'm not quite sure what to do, other than stay away until it gets colder.

I shouldn't have to wait too long. The weather already feels distinctly autumnal and it can't be long before the hornets begin to feel sleepy and the rat has become a dried husk. At that point I'll start working again and hope that I can secure enough stock to make the business viable.

Next week, I begin two years of driving my sons in opposite directions across the Sussex countryside to their respective schools. I'm not looking forward to it. Getting my older son out of the house will be a challenge in itself, without the added complication of rush hour traffic. I wish we had hover cars.

For some reason, I've recently grown tired of reading novels on a Kindle and have returned to buying real books. I've no idea why.

My younger son is delighted, as he has always been a staunch opponent of ebooks. I don't know why he took against the Kindle at such a young age, but my experience tallies with the anecdotal evidence of other parents, who have noticed how one sibling will prefer reading on a tablet device while the other will only accept traditional books.

My son says that he finds it satisfying to look at all the books he's read and I know exactly what he means. Some of my favourite reads of the last few years - Of Human Bondage, South Riding and Clayhanger are conspicuous by their absence from my shelves and I'm tempted to order cheap copies for the bookcase.

Have reports of the death of the book been greatly exagerrated? I've read articles claiming that the seeming inexorable rise in ebook sales is bottoming out, with only single digit growth in the US. It will be interesting to see what happens.

I have been out a lot during the last few weeks, but very little of it would make interesting reading. I had intended to write a post about a new Bridget Riley exhibition, but sadly I had to leave after five minutes as the paintings were giving me a terrible headache. I'm not sure if that was her intention.

Instead, here are a few photos from the last ten days:

 

When things are less malodorous at work, I'll try and find some amusing bookish ephemera to post. In the meantime, expect more moody shots of clouds.

Yesterday's Today

Yesterday morning, several people we knew stopped eating their Coco Pops when a disconcertingly familiar voice could be heard on Radio Four's 'Today' programme, talking about the late diagnosis of autism in children. It was my wife:



The interview was the result of a new campaign by the National Austic Society, which is trying to improve the appallingly long delays in diagnosing Autistic Spectrum Disorder (ASD). My wife was approached because our story was one of the worst examples that the NAS had come across.

I was quite shocked by this. I know several people with severely autistic children and nothing we have experienced can compare to the ordeal they have gone through. However, I was missing the point, which was about how long parents have to wait for their child's condition to be recognised.

In our son's case, a large part of his childhood has been lost thanks to the inexperience and prejudices of a few individuals in the Child and Adolescent Mental Health Services (CAHMS). In particular, I won't forget the following encounters:

* Being told that my son's rages (which included kicking a hole in the wall of his bedroom) and obsessive compulsive behaviour was simply the result of 'sibling rivalry' - a fit of pique at the arrival of his baby brother.

*The half-baked autism assessment where my son's understanding of metaphor would be tested with coloured cards: "I haven't got the actual cards and these are just black and white photocopies, but the object in this card's meant to be red..."

*The helpful advice that if my wife and I stopped worrying about our son and started relaxing and enjoying ourselves more, he'd also become less anxious. This was given at a time when my son's OCD rituals for each room in the house were so bad, he would spend hours on the upstairs landing, not knowing where to go.

*The person who said "I can tell just by looking that your son doesn't have autism."

*The individuals who recommended that we went on parenting courses or had family therapy, as our son's behaviour was clearly the result of something we were doing wrong.

In fairness to CAHMS, I know that they are underfunded and have to deal with some truly horrific cases, many of which have a higher priority than our own. I should also add that some of the professionals we met were truly wonderful, particularly during the last three years. I just wish that they had been more on the ball in the early years, for all our sakes.

If I suddenly found myself in a position of power, the first thing I would do would be to standardise the diagnostic criteria across the various health authorities, making the assessments more rigorous. I would also insist that all early years teachers had autism awareness training. Third, I would increase the CAHMS budget and recruit more nursing staff with autism training (I would rather have 25 nurses than 10 psychologists).

Spending more on mental health in the early years will, I've no doubt, save a fortune in the long term.

My wife found the interview mildly terrifying, but was delighted that autism expert Prof. Simon Baron-Cohen had agreed to take part. Our son is, thankfully, blissfully unaware that his story has now been heard by millions of people.

The Ghost in the Machine

A few days ago I received an email containing some of the data from my MRI scan in July. I was just expecting a picture of a brain, but instead I received something far more human:

Someone asked me what the zig-zaggy bits were. I explained that they enabled me to communicate telepathically with a man in New Zealand, called Colin.

I'm not sure what's happened to the hair. Perhaps it's not magnetic enough.

On a more sensible note, it's a rare privilege to be offered such an unsual perspective without having to endure the worry of a suspected illness. I thought I'd be repulsed by the physicality of seeing the ghost in the machine, but my brain seems to like looking at itself. It's a funny thing.

I've been thinking a lot about the brain recently, as I have started playing the piano again after a break of 30 years and it's extraordinary how many pieces of music have come back to me - not just the notes, but also the fingering. All of that information, lying dormant in a cluster of neurons.

The pieces I enjoy playing most are some arrangements by Bartok based on Slovakian folksongs. They're relatively simple pieces, written for children, but are a pleasure to play because they're quirky and unpredictable, with exotic harmonies.

Here's a 51-second clip of one of them. Needless to say, this isn't me playing. My version would be lento:

When not playing Bartok, I've been trying to get out as much as possible and make the most of what's left of the summer. Last week, I took my wife and sons out after dark to a remote car park in Ashdown Forest where, after checking that it wasn't full of people dogging, we watched the Perseid meteors light up the sky.

The first two meteors were tiny little flashes and we ooohed and ahhhed politely, feeling slightly disappointed, then suddenly a bright ball of fire streaked across the sky, leaving a trail of smoke in its wake, followed by a faint smell of gunpowder. At this point, my younger son buried his head in my lap and said that he was worried about being blinded.

I knew it was a mistake to let him watch The Day of the Triffids.

Later in the week we drove to Beachy Head, to watch the Eastbourne Airshow.

I'd never been to an airshow before and wasn't terribly impressed to see a solitary plane slowly ambling around Eastbourne. Neither were my boys, who complained that they were bored.

After half an hour, I went off to some bushes near the cliff edge to answer the call of nature and quickly looked around to check that the coast was clear. Suddenly, I heard a roar and a Vulcan bomber appeared right in front of me, emerging from underneath the cliffs. Sadly, I wasn't holding my camera at the time:

We had no idea that we were witnessing the Vulcan's final flight, but for many watching it must have been a bittersweet experience. The photo above doesn't do justice to the size and power of the Vulcan. Even my wife, who is the last person who would normally enjoy an airshow, thought that it was an incredible spectacle.

In other news, my book shed has a new addition to its menagerie of animals:

I found it wandering aimlessly at the bottom of a shelving unit. I think it might be a toadlet.

A man at a Finnish academic library recently returned an order to me because of a "possible microbial infection". He'd bought the 70-year-old book, which had been advertised as being in fair to good condition, for £6. To me, it just looked like a book that had been read a few times, but was still in pretty good shape.

What was he expecting for £6? Perhaps I should throw in a toad next time.