Actually I still kind of, I’m quite a sort of book-wormish type person, and I very much got lost in my own fantasy world. And I had so many imaginary friends, actually, ridiculous. I think I probably have the amount of imaginary friends on my own, than probably the rest of the population of my town does. So [laughs] and they were not exactly normal imaginary friends either. They were never human, ever. One of them, well some of them were dinosaurs, most of them are dinosaurs. I like dinosaurs [laughs]. Diplodocuses. Pink Diplodocuses. I don’t know what goes on in my brain [laughs].

And why do you think you had so many imaginary friends?

Because I didn’t have any real ones. But and I always found that like, the world, I could create in my brain, was so much more interesting, than the one that I’m actually in. I’m under no disillusion that I did get lost in this world, because I didn’t like the one that I was in. Like the interesting, some of the worlds I created in my head, they were hugely like, just random things. Like I’d have like, before I got the interlike because I didn’t get the internet until I was about year ten. I wasn’t aware of like fan fictions, fan art and all of this sort of stuff, but I still sort of did it in my own way. To a scary degree to what people actually do. it’s a little odd, but I’d sort of get lost in like Lord of the Rings worlds, or in Harry Potter or Spiro the Dragon. And I’d just create my own little world and my own little characters to go into these worlds. it’s kind of sad that I didn’t even stop playing at ten to twelve. I was like thirteen, just because it was fun, and it was something to do. I sort of slowly changed. Like obviously there was like the more heavy pretend stuff you do when you’re younger and then I kind of got lost into the Sims. I was very, very into the Sims at oneI mean I was like addicted to it. And then it grew into video games, the more fantasy style ones, like RPG type games. So like, Final Fantasy and Kingdom Hearts and things like that. And it was when I got into Kingdom Hearts that I sort of become more who I was, who I am now. Just because I could lose myself into this world, and through this world and these characters I created I sort of built myself up and then I made friends through that and it sort of developed from that.

You mean real friends?

Real friends. Yes. I didn’t. I don’t believe… Like I never thought my imaginary friends were real, but I always knew they weren’t real, but I liked to pretend they were.

And did you talk to your friends about him much when you were younger?

Not really. I didn’t think it was ever that big an issue. If I had friends over from school I would explain that yeah, that’s my brother, he will just do his own thing. He won’t talk back because he’s autistic. But I never had, I was never bullied or anything for it. It was, not really a big deal. I guess I was quite fortunate that people around me were so understanding.

Okay and why did you feel you had to tell them about it whenever they would come over?

Just if I was being picked up from somewhere and my brother was there with his thumb in his mouth and or if he would kick off in a supermarket, or if he would start screaming or getting upset for no reason, I would just let them know that he doesn’t understand things.

Do you ever have to explain Harry’s autism to your friends?

Yes, I did explain it. I mean when he was first diagnosed I said to all of them, oh, because they’ve all met him before. I said, Oh, Harry’s been sort of been diagnosedrdquo; But all my friends think he’s great, they think he’s really sweet. But yeah, none of them, it doesn’t bother any of them or anything. I still have them over and stuff. My best friend [friend’s name] really good with him, she loves him, and he loves her as well. He really likes [friend’s name].

Oh they’re really confused because when I describe him they, they think I’m wrong, I’m being cruel speaking of him how I describe him. And I have to explain that whenever they see him or they’re invited into the house, they see him when he’s happy and friendly. They don’t see the stranger sides because it would be cruel to have them around. So they don’t really understand properly where I’m coming from. Occasionally, as I said, I’ve got a very close friend who knows everything. Occasionally he gets a snippet of my brother’s strangeness. Years and years ago it was cold one night and we went to sit one play swings in the village, and I went into my brother’s wardrobe and got my friend a jumper. He wore the jumper and came back, and my brother was furious and shouted at me that having done that very loud. I laughed and said if I had asked he would have no or something like that. And just occasionally they will get a peek at what I’m talking about that makes them realise that this is not quite normal.

My close friends I sometimes talk to it about, but I don’t, like if it, I don’t think I’ve ever turned round gone, Oh yeah, by the way, I have three relatives that are autistic If it just like comes up in a casual way. Like, it’s only with my close friends. I won’t, I don’t talk about it with people I just meet or anything. But I mean they’re just sort of like, they’re on the same standing as me they don’t think it, like they don’t look at me and go, Oh your family has issues or anything. They, I mean like they’ll meet my mum and they’ll meet my brothers and they’ll go, actually yeah they’re pretty cool. So it’s nice, I mean, because I’d hate to be associated with people that had a lot of prejudice and think it was a bad thing to be on the spectrum in any way, shape or form.

So when you’ve got new friends in the sixth form at your new school and you bring them home, do you explain that there’s anything wrong with [brother’s name]?

No.

You don’t do anything to prepare people?

No. I mean, now chances are he’ll be sitting reading or on the computer or doing something. He won’t really, he might say hello, but he won’t, he won’t really… I mean my best friend knows that he has, he’s on the autistic spectrum, but that’s just through conversation and also through knowing him for quite a few years now, rather than just coming round a few times or something. But in terms of someone new coming round I don’t really, I don’t say anything. it’s not obvious. And it’s not there’s nothing that they couldn’t do around him, that they would do to someone they hadn’t met before orI justit wouldn’t, yeah [laughs].

Yeah, my friends have actually been incredibly supportive around it. I mean when I was younger I didn’t go blabbing it about and stuff. I didn’t like… there was certain people, they wouldn’t make comments deliberately about him, but I didn’t like it when people made jokes about autistic people as such when I was younger. That used to make me quite angry, and had quite a few scuffles as a result of it and things, but no one would be directly like horrible about it, and I was never really embarrassed to talk about it. it’s not like one of those situations where you don’t want anyone to know. And yes, no one really thought anything different of it. My friends they’ve been amazing, the ones who live round here. And they love him. He gets on so well with them, and he still even Facebooks with some of them and exchange computer games with them and stuff, so my friends have, yeah they’ve been great with him and stuff. And I’m still very open about talking about it. it’s nothing I’d shy away from talking about at all. Something I’m quite proud of having a brother and I’m quite happy that I’ve looked after him and things. Very open about it I’d say.

If I’m going out with my friends, for like a night out or something, not on the town, or anything, but just to the cinema, and he feels comfortable with them, I’ll invite him along. Because, a close group of friends know about [brother’s name]. I explained, you know, what he’s like, and if he was to run away, you know, just to be calm round him, don’t judge him, don’t look at him, or treat him differently to anybody else. So he comes out with me on little trips out. But yeah, he likes doing that. He only does it occasionally, but if he’s in the mood it’s fine. So we go out.

That’s good. And you said there that you’ve told a close group of friends about him?

Yeah.

Why do you think you told them about him?

Just because [brother’s name] feels that he’s not accepted if someone knew that there was something wrong with him, they wouldn’t accept him, and I felt it was my, as a sister, to kind of just prompt them to say, you know, just don’tbecause I think they feel quite bad as well, because they know there’s a problem, but they don’t feel they know how to react with it. Like how to treat him. And I just said, Well treat him like a normal perso. Because he is a normal person. Just doesn’t function the way we do [small laugh].

And how do they treat him now?

They just treat him like one of the lads really. Like, they’ve all got mutual interests. Like my friend [friend’s name], he does karate, martial arts, and [brother’s name] absolutely adores that, although he hasn’t got the confidence to go to a group. Karate Kid films and stuff, they’ve got that in common and The Inbetweeners. They love that. So they’ll joke about that. And it’s nice. Yeah, I’m quite lucky to have a group of friends that understand [brother’s name].

Yeah, and have your friends always understood?

I wouldn’t say they’ve always, there’s been the few that have. But people that I’ve known that, you know, that have been to the house a few times, they wouldn’t speak to him, because they wouldn’t know how to treat him or whatever. And I found that quite sad. So, you know, every group of, well anyone that comes to the house that’s my friend, I’ll just prompt them before we go in, and just say, You know [brother’s name], he is a normal person. He might seem a bit rude, but he’s not rude. That’s just him. And he doesn’t know how to socialise

Well as I said when I was younger, I obviously couldn’t have friends around and because I didn’t really have, because obviously I didn’t have my brother to grow up with, my social skills are terrible really [laughs]. You know, really bad when I was younger. And I was bullied a lot like all the way through school. And it still hasn’t really stopped but I just don’t care anymore. And it’s just sort of a knock on effect, that caused that and then this causedand it just escalated. So yes, for all of my primary school I was bullied because I was, just like I was like that weird kid that no one really, like no one got to hang around with, so no one really got to know. Because I’m, also because like what was going on at home, I was always like slightly more emotional. So I mean, and I was, you know, how you get these kids that just cry over everything. I was one of those anyway so And at about year two I started getting bullied, like it was just sort of like typical picking on just a random kid and then it just slowly progressed until it peaked in about… Actually no, it didn’t peak, it sort of went up, down a bit, and then up again. But in like year four it got really bad and it didn’t help that I got my hair cut like into, you know, a stupid bowl cut thing and I looked like mushroom [laughed]. Obviously that made, because my hair it was went [explosive sound] and I just got picked on for that, and like everything got like so much worse. And then it sort of went down again and then it picked up again. Then my hair started to frizz as well. It wasn’t just big it was frizzy as well, and I got called Hagrid. I still cannot tolerate that, I mean I still snap at people calling me that, because it had that much of an impact. And some of the stuff that happened to me in my primary school was horrible. Like they put daddy long legs in my lunch box. I don’t even understand that. I don’t even know how they caught them to be honest but, and the school didn’t really care.

When I was younger, I used to really get annoyed. I found myself asking why, why has he got this? Why can’t he be normal? All my friends would know he was different. And I’d overhear my friends talking about him, taking the mickey, and that, that was hard to hear. But I looked at other brothers and relationships they had and I often thought why can’t I have that relationship with my brother? Why can’t we be normal and go out and play football, and not worry about whether he’s going to have an outburst? Yeah. Yeah, yeah, it was hard at times, especially growing up, yeah, definitely.

And when you overheard your friends taking the mickey out of him, how did you react to that?

This sounds really harsh, but I didn’t know whether to have a go at them, or have a go at my brother for being different, you know, that was…

Sometimes I feel I do miss out on maybe like childhood sibling friendships and that. Because some siblings are like really close and you know, there’s ties there like, you know, they’ll always be together, be close and all that lot. They’ll be practically like, I would say like a friend, because sometimes as friends you may say, oh we’re like sister, but in other ways I’d be like oh we’re really close friend, like that and the other way round, because I feel like, you know, my relationships with my friends are closer than what, is what, which I have with my siblings. Yeah, there’s just the closeness I could be with my like brother and sister, whereas I see like my friends they’re really close, whereas I’m less, so