Yes, it’s, I suppose that comes down to being too aware of the surroundings. Whatever’s happening it will catch my attention. There’s no may about it. It will. So sometimes when things get too much I kind of go off into, into a quiet corner where I’m in control of everything. When I’m in control of everything then I feel fine, it makes me feel less anxious, you know, I could go away, go away and play some video games, I know the ins and out of the rules and regulations of all that. I sit down and I can immerse myself in such activities for hours upon hours, with little or no regard to what’s going on in the rest of the world. I mean the world could just pass me by, not literally, I mean all the world doesn’t pass me by, but you know, what I mean. But you know, it’s, that is kind of a, that’s well that’s a safety net I suppose. If I kind of reside in there, then there will be nothing that can harm me, nothing that can, you know, make me anxious or worried or angry.

You know, if something goes wrong in the real world, then the best thing you can do is damage limitation and that’s quite difficult, because I’m not very well known for reacting superbly under pressure. And damage limitation would be acting under pressure and everything I do, needs to have some kind of thought behind it. And, when it comes to just pure, you know, split second intuition, then, that’s stumps me. That does stump me.

Is it always a worry you think about or is it maybe thinking about computer gaming?

I think it’s a mix between the two. You know, if my, because I might have accidentally, I might have thought that I’ve accidentally forgot to lock up the house. Then that’ll tick over in my mind. But then if like you said there was computer game or there was an event coming up or something else to that effect, then that would go through my mind as well. I mean even, even a song, just played on continuous loop goes through my head regardless of where I am. I suppose with that, it’s something that I know that would be some kind of safety point to it.

I mean you go into all these unfamiliar environments. You don’t know what’s going to happen. There might be some kind of punch up or, people getting insanely drunk and collapsing and all these different things which can kind of raise the pressure of the situation. And, you know, I suppose having that pre-emptive process going through your head, it takes your mind off that point in time. It takes you to something to which you can look forward or something which you may have forgotten or you might end up chuckling at something. I suppose the worry one would be separate from that one, because it would, everybody would worry. I mean if they thought they’ve forgot to lock their house. Some people kind of think about it for a moment, forget about it, put it to the back of their minds, other people kind of obsess over it. Other people kind of obsess over it. Some people obsess too much and I kind of fall into one of the latter two categories.

So it’s really once I left school and when I was at university, and the OCD, it was OCD an obsession kind of thing, but it’s kind of more washing hands and because I get very extreme if there’s something on the news, and I immediately apply it to me, and I won’t, all these phobias started to develop so I stopped travelling, you know, after the London terrorist attacks. I stopped travelling because I thought, well if there’s a bomb on a train, sorry on a bus, it could happen on a train. So I just got really scared and just And because I’m just phobic anyway, and when I was at school like with things like food technology, I took that very literally as well. So, just be, you know, obsessed with food hygiene to a kind of extreme extent, and just get it out of control. I think that just got more extreme.

And also when I started school I was really scared of the fire alarm, because I thought it meant the school was going to burn down. So I was screaming and screaming and refused to go to school for a while. So, and as I say I got really obsessed about the age of ten with washing my hands all the time, but yes, and when I started secondary school that actually disappeared strangely enough. And I don’t know why it was, maybe because when I first had a friend I felt more secure. I don’t know why.

Oh definitely, definitely. I would go to work tomorrow if someone could give me a job that, well it’s not really the job meeting my needs, it’s more the kind of like getting to and from the job, and obviously most jobs you get things like lunch breaks and stuff like that. So it would be having help to structure my time. And obviously it’s planning for the unexpected. Like a fire alarm going off or things like that and I have an absolute ridiculous fear of getting ill and germs and stuff like that. So being in like an office with lots of being coughing and air condition is kind of like my idea of hell. it’s just a germ factory really isn’t it?

Is this a fear you have had for a long while?

Yes, I have a really great psychologist whos trying to get me over my fear. She’s been trying to get me over my fear for four years. We’re getting there slowly. I do more now than I used to do and I wash my hands less and stuff like that, but yes, I’ve still got kind of little rules and stuff. A bit OCDish I guess. Very OCDish.

What sort of rules?

Things like, I don’t know, you’re not too bad now, you’ve, you’ve kind of like been accepted. But when my PA first started and stuff, if she had like a cup of tea or something then I’d have to leave that cup for like 24 hours so that any germs from her hands that had gone onto it could die before I then had to wash it up and disinfect it. And you know, Milton [disinfectant] is my best friend and things like that. But now I kind of like, just, you kind of like fit in now. You can drink out of my cups.

But you know, you know, I’ve had bad experiences with people my own age, so I don’t, I don’t like to be round them. I don’t like to go out where I could get hurt. This is where I’m safe. This is where I like to stay.

So would you go out at all at the moment?

I would. But I’d only do it if, for example, I was with my mum. Because I have to face facts, if someone ever tried to attack us, it would be her who would end up defending us, not me. I’m not good in that kind of situation.

Does it bother you that you can’t really go out?

I suppose it does. But then it doesn’t. I like to be on my own. I like, you know, solitude. But at the same time I ache for companionship, saying that actually sounds like euphemism. I ache, I want, I’d like friends, but I don’t want friends. Is very confusing.

What sort of things don’t you like doing?
I don’t likesome cleaning down the kitchen because its getssometimes a bit tired and boring because it means I have to do it there is some things, [friend] ask me to help to do some cleaning down the cookers and helping do some dishes because I wouldn’t mind doing it sometimes [laughs].
And is there anything else you don’t like?
I don’t like wild animals because they make me scared. So I don’t like earthquakes being hit and they make themselves scary. And I don’t want to be everywhere including around the world.
Is that all wild animals or just big ones?
Just big ones. AndI don’t like the horrible weather, lightning flashes andhorrible noise thunder because I don’t like the heavy downpour of rain.
So would you stay at home if there was a thunderstorm?
Yes. I stayed at home. And I was sleeping at night, there’s aI heard a rumble of thunder and I hate that lightning flash and sometimes I get scared.
Is that why you drew the picture of the earth quake?
Yes. I drew them sometimes, the earthquake. I watched the earth quake back in the seventies. It was very frightening and exciting because I don’t want it to be frightened.

I dropped a pencil down the sink at [school].
[teacher] says I can’t find it, it’s an old buildings. I can’t..
if I dropped it there [5 sec pause] she did say if I dropped it and then I can’t find the old buildings.

Peter: I feel, I wouldn’t say remorse, that is perhaps the wrong word, I feel like these are things I needn’t have done and life could have been a lot better if I had recognized that these are things, okay, Asperger’s it is not an illness, but it is
Myrtle: An affliction.

Peter: An affliction or something. There are ways and means of coping with it. Instead of just, you know, continuing and doing things, and believing that whatever you did was right. That this was my right to do this.

Myrtle: This is a word he uses a lot. It is my right.

Peter: You know when it comes to driving.I’ve lost my licence now for it, but that I couldn’t understand, couldn’t accept that somebody, for instance would not wait when there was an obstruction on their side of the road. To me, it was my right of way come what may and

Myrtle: There would be an impasse.

Peter: And I would sort of not have an impact but I could take the key out of ignition and put it on the dashboard and sit like this and just wait for what happened. I’d think well you are wrong; you’d better get out of the way.And I mean that’s behaviour you can’t continue.I realise that now, but this is only partly through counselling, partly through reading about it, and partly through Myrtle having infinite patience with me and with telling me you know calm down.

And that was your experience at university. Was it positive?

It was quite good, yes, I’m quite sure it was a bit high pressure. You know, the lectures were fairly high pressure, I couldn’t keep up with the poor writing speed. And you know, everybody would go out and be social, but I couldn’t do that really. And in the final year I was living with housemates. And at points I actually scared them, so I went to see the doctor about that and got put on antidepressants and hey ho I was on the way back to being a happy chappy human being.

In what way did you scare them?

Bursts of anger, use of quite a lot of expletives and just general hiding from social situations. I mean if they were in the midst of doing something, I’d get out theI mean if they were sitting down in their front room watching the television, I’d be upstairs fiddling about on the computer, because it just didn’t interest me, being around… because they were completely different. I was a male, accounting and finance student and all three of them were female English students, second year. So we were, we were on completely different levels, which was pretty much doomed from the start.

But I think the biggest difficulty, in, in the domestic environment is the sort of irritability that you get as part of the Asperger’s condition and obviously that can affect neighbours. It can affect even the fabric of the property sobut those are real, real difficulties and I find I currently live in a housing association property where it’s professionally managed and somehow the landlord copes with those difficulties. But I think in a private rented situation it would be very much more difficult.

And when you say that the irritability affects property
Yes.

Can you give me an example of that?

Well yes, I mean literally, I mean I get, not trapped, but I do suffer from a certain degree of obsessional thinking about you know, various conflicts that I’ve had with people, and you know, if you keep mulling ideas not particularly productively and somehow that raises your, your hackles, then I can end up compulsively punching a wall, and that, you know, and damaging the plaster work, things, things of that kind which obviously need repairing you know, so, things on that scale.

Well, usually the fears I fear isI don’t really have much of a fear. I think when I get angry it’s like a fear that I don’t know how to handle it. If my dad sometimes snaps at me sometimes, you know, I can get really, really aggressive with him, you know, and it’s because I don’t know how to handle it. Yeah. And obviously he finds it hard to calm me down. So I always go to my mum to explain things better, because he tries his best, I don’t think he’s as good as my mum is in a way, in that respect. I think it’s a man thing isn’t it? I don’t know.

So you sort of get really angry?

Yes. it’s his tone of voice I think, because probably it’s the way, I think tone of voices do make me think that they’re being aggressive towards me and I start to defend myself and have a go back. And higher authority I think, I’ve always had problems with. I think I always will. So like, if teacher used to shout at me at school I used to, I used to really have a go back. And I couldn’t understand why no one else did when they got shouted at. I thought to myself, are you a bunch of wusses or something?’ you know, stand up for yourself. Because obviouslyMum said the thing is, they that if it’s wrong. You know what I mean, I thought it’s like okay either way, you know. So I’ve always been like that, yeah. So es, and no, funny answer [laughs].