And then when I moved up to secondary school, I thought, oh you know, it will be good, because, you know, there won’t be the same people and so they won’t know that I am the one that gets teased. But it just carried on basically, you know, with more people. Just kind of same reasons really. I was just really painfully shy, and for the first three years at least, I didn’t really have any friends.And I just used to kind of I mean like the only things I really liked were English lessons, but I hated it when we had to read out of the books, you know, I just couldn’t do it.

I think my ability to hold together conversations, seemed to plummet at this point, I don’t really know why. It became much more complicated for me. That’s quite speculative, but suffice to say the level of pressure I felt being in a conversation increased substantially perhaps, I suppose children accept abnormality much better when they’re younger, but when you get to sort of say the age of 15, people are starting to develop individuality and you know, a lot of changes going on and that perhaps demarcated me. And for whatever reason it just became very difficult for me to talk to people, to the point whereby I’d often get these really very, very bad headaches in school. I would just sit there and as soon as the class started, I’d just get this really bad headache and couldn’t concentrate.

But, you see, I was pleased and because I did well at GCSEs, I decided to stay on at school to do A levels. But yes, and I mean I did well in A levels as well and I enjoyed A levels, because I actually discovered when I started to do A levels that because I chose the subjects and the only subjects I was doing actually learning was fun. So beforeI mean I do like learning and stuff. it’s just I prefer doing it on my own. I don’t like being told what to learn because if I’m not interested in it, I don’t want to do it. So but yes, A levels I did English, history and theology, and I did well in those. I got two As and a B. So then I went to university, at [town name] university, and I did history and that went really well. I mean I got a 21 in that, so I was pleased with that.

But I think, I mean since then I mean I’ve just discovered that I really enjoy learning. it’s just at school I wasn’tI think it’s just different at school because you have to work in groups, and there was really low expectations about what I could do. I just wasn’tschool just didn’t suit me. It wasn’t till I got into A levels that I started to actually find learning fun.

Because there’s nothing more wrong than sometimes at school that teachers sort of, they see that something is wrong with you, and they immediately assume that you can’t do anything. That you can’t do that, you can’t do this, you can’t do that, and that’s a completely wrong perspective for going about it. Being autistic just means I find certain things harder than other people would. It doesn’t necessarily mean I cannot do it. It just will take me a longer process to sort of be able to do that certain thing. But mostly it’s to do with repetition. I have to repeat something consistently for me to be able to do it then afterwards. Just do it, just like that.

And about 7 years old I started dissociating, which is, it goes without question, doesn’t it. It was a, it was a coping mechanism really for that kind of interaction.

What do you mean by associating?

Dissociating.

Can you explain what you mean by that?

Well, it’s a mental health condition where you take yourself away. I mean normal dissociation is what we all do, day-dreaming. And that can last for minutes and then you’re back in the room. But what I was doing was slowly that was becoming more than minutes. That was becoming, you know, five minutes, ten minutes, hours. Just completely shutting off, as a way of coping with – I suppose in some ways, a perceived trauma, ofof being, you know, just constantly criticised. But one learns. And that, I don’t feel sorry for myself, and I don’t consider myself a victim, it just happened. And the only way one can learn from things is by understanding what went wrong, and then trying to make amends to it. So – and that’s for any child, it’s not just a child with a disability. Any child. You wouldn’t do that to any child. And if you can learn from that, you know, ‘is this really okay? Is this boy going to remember this in twenty years’ time, and talk about it? What can we learn about it?’

So, from that perspective – I don’t think they were trying to harm me. I don’t even think they were trying to bully me. I just think they’re trying to understand me.

I mean, in Year 7 I developed a condition called somatization disorder. Which is where the person has like a pseudo pain, that they believe is real. And they get distressed. Of course what this was, was emotional pain coming out through and I used to go into reception and I used to say, you know, “I’ve got tummy ache, I’ve got a toothache, I’ve got a headache.” And I’d cry. But what I was really saying was is “I’m not happy at this point.” And I still get it now, with emotional trauma. My dog died not that long ago, about a week ago, and I got a pain down my arm and I got a pain in my teeth. It’s a pseudo pain. It’s somatization. It’s amplification. It’s how my emotions come out. And the only problem was is that obviously teachers talked about this behaviour. And I can always remember the science teacher, you know, he was getting ready to do an experiment in the middle of the room. And it, it’s almost like something out of some sort of BBC comedy sketch. He said “Paul, the boy who’s always crying in reception, go and get that flask.” Brilliant. That’s gonna do my self-esteem the world of good. And he had this smirk on his face. He knew what, I mean, this is a bloke, he was a junior teacher.

I was very good at English and French, pretty useless at everything, well mediocre at everything else. Maths, absolutely terrible. I was always very bad at maths, and I still am. And I think it is because you can’t actually tell whether you are right or wrong. If I write an essay or write a letter, or write a piece, I can tell whether the words are right or wrong. If you give me a column of figures to add up, just ask me to add them up, I can’t tell on sight whether they are right or wrong and it is something to do with that. It is notas people will say it is obvious. People say mathematics is logical. I can remember trying to do something in maths which was an awful thing. I think it was something to do with decimals or something that you sort of A + B brackets squared over H3T equals what is it? And there is a whole lot of x’s and x’s and As and Bs go on the blackboard and I can always remember the teacher said to me, Because it is a negative we turn it all upside downWhat is logical about that? [laughs]You know. I just couldn’t, I don’t know, it just didn’t register with me at all.

On the other hand French and English I always liked the idea of English, and the fluency of it. The French was the same. I noticed at school I never liked sport and it is something to do with, I think it was George Orwell who said, Football was a war, without bullets Wasn’t it?And it seems something to do with the conflict. It is the idea of confrontation, of physical confrontation. I don’t like being touched. I don’t like physical confrontation.I don’t like confrontation generally I think it is pretty fair to say.

I mean when I was at primary school I did receive a statement, what is called a Statement of Special Educational Needs in year 6. But that was mainly listing things like discrepancies with verbal and performance IQ. So they did an IQ test, and the verbal one was high but the performance one was low. And they couldn’t work out why that was. So they called me an enigma, because they just didn’t know what it was, you know, what the reasons were, or the reasons why I was good in certain subjects and then not so good in others.

So I mean I was good, you know, in certain areas of English, like spelling and that sort of thing, and writing. But then with comprehension I wasn’t so good, I mean fiction. And I was really poor at maths as well. And also things like practical skills, visual, spatial skills were very low. I mean my ability in that area was very low. But I didn’t, as I say they didn’t actually diagnose me with anything then. So I was quite, I mean I’ve read the statement since, and I’m quite surprised why they didn’t, but I don’t think much was known about Asperger’s backs then.

What could the teachers have done?What do you think, looking back, what would have helped you in school?

Not being so bloody awkward. [laughs]Things like, say my little brother’s in school at the moment. He is ADHD and like, to help him concentrate he likes to like you know mess with something, I don’t know, like a piece of string or a pen or something like that. And you know, if it is something like a piece of string or a piece of elastic then he won’t be disrupting anyone, but the teachers take it off him anyway, because you know it is not normal. I swear some of the teachers are the most AS people that I know, it is all so, so inflexible. You know everyone has to be the same and do the same and if you change that then they throw a little hissy fit. So I think just be a bit more, like if the teachers were a bit more accommodating that would have helped a lot.

I think my art teacher, every time I went out to speak to like my friends or somethinghe would phone up, he would phone up mum and say, Oh well, Luke is outside speakingLike you know, He is speaking to someoneAnd mum would just go, SoAnd he would go, Ah, he is cured And he just really didn’t get it. But just things like, you know, if someone say needs to have the homework written on the board and say for it to be wrote at the start, sorry not the start of the lesson, but say ten minutes before the lesson finishes rather than five minutes when the bell has just gone because he needs to concentrate on that, you know, to be able to do things like that without being so inflexible all the time, that would have helped a lot. Hm.

What sort of support did they give you at this school that helped?

Well I had speech and language therapy lessons or I would go in once a week,well the person would be in school and I would have like a lunch time session with them once a weekand I would go in one on one and we would talk about homework and sort of social situations andstuff that had happened during the week and then another thing was I would have someone who would help me with the school work in the lessons, they would help me with homework and writing and sort of making sure that everything was consolidated, I think, is the word, into easier sort of to remember notes, and I had thatfor the whole time I was there. Maybe it was a different session to the speech and language therapy and it would be in the morning before assembly orit would be like a, it would be a single periodmaybe once or twice a week.

And then there would be, and then for exams I would have someone to write for me, and someone..someone to make sure that everything was correct, so the scribe would write for me and check things over with me and let me check my grammar, and I think that during my exams, helped me become more sort of vocal andI guess that is maybe where it came from. I mean I guess it is also partly because they were small classes. I mean the maximum class was about 12 during GCSE and then it dropped down to about four for AS.SoI mean it was, you know, you got a lot of time with teachers and everything and

I became, at that stage like I say I was pretty cynical but we found out about a secondary base that like in a school not too far away from [town] and that was you know a mainstream based, like a base within a mainstream secondary school and there was a like sort of support basefor children with quite high functioning autism and Asperger’s syndrome and [5 sec pause] my parents were really keen for me to go, butI was kind of quite cynical. I just thought oh this is just going to be another idea, another flash in the pan and it isn’t going to really work.

I think my parents were quite worried about me at that stage as to what I was going to do and things like that because you know theoretically that could have been, you know, theoretically I was almost at the stage where I was thinking about doing something which I really shouldn’t have been thinking about doing. But I went to this base and for the first year I didn’t really go to any mainstream classes or any you know any maths or that, and for that reason they kept me back here just to basically ensure that [coughs], the transition from school to school was as stress free as possible and I could ease into, and get a secondary school environment.

And I was quite fortunate in the fact it was one to one staff, staff to pupil ratio.That was excellent, that was excellent for me. You know they started working on things like social skills and all these things that were you know associated with Asperger’s syndrome, but also the other thing that you know when people look at the core symptoms of Asperger’s syndrome, you know, the triad and things like that, its all very well, it tells you a little bit but it doesn’t really tell you anything about the other problems, like the self esteem and all these types of things and they worked really hard in building my self esteem and making me confident enough so that I could go into these classes and things and when I first went in I was may be seven [sniff] or eight months into the base and they were sort of like James you have got to start thinking about going into classes now. And I tried everything possible to avoid it.

But they just started working this tactic where they made life as boring as possible so I really eventually went into classes and I remember, I just remember the first day there when I went in, I was like shaking and almost in tears because I was really nervous about the first time I went to a class but I did it and I stayed there for the whole time [sniff] and you know it is quite interesting because you are a first year and everyone, everyone sorts of looks at you around, you are this new boy and they all know I was from the base so it was quite difficult for them. It is quite strange for them, so they are all looking at you, you know like basically you are a bit of a zoo animal because they are quite, because they quite confused really and they don’t really understand about Asperger’s syndrome or what autism is really in essence.

So that was quite a big point and then gradually basically the classes built up and [sniff] I went to English, andscience, basically it started building up until I was at about 75% timetable, which was excellent for me, which was perfect for me and there was enough time for you know for a chill out thing in the base so that I didn’t ever become too stressed out. Soso that was good. You know, I really, you know I really thought that I finally felt that we were making progress after the diagnosis butyou know.

I mean that is not to say there wasn’t a good few ups and downs through the whole thing and there were times where I at one time I went to go a 100% into classes and it was you know, I had to sort of take a backward step and things

Can you sort of sum up what it was about the base that allowed you to obviously make the progress you have made. What was it they actually let you do or

I suppose they call it cognitive behavioural therapy. Just sort of stuff like learning social skills, you know, really working, you know really working quite hard on the social skills aspect and the organisation, [5 sec pause] really working on that sort of thing. Self esteem, I would probably say that’s the three things; self esteem, organisation, and social skills. Really, [coughs] making you feel that you could go out and have the [coughs] confidence to speak to people and just providing support day to day. Making like, knowing that some days like if it was too stressful to go to classes then they would understand that and they’ve got quiet rooms, little rooms forr you to go and work basically if you ever get stressed and it becomes a bit too much. You know if the environment gets too much you can go to a quiet room where you can calm down and sort of destress so to speak

And that was massivefor you know, for myself and many other people in the base that here we have an opportunity. I look at a lot of people in the base and I look at myself and I know that is a massive factor. Like constantly like, well I know all bases aren’t perfect but I know looking at the place that I went to that they were you know, doubtlessly always looking for things for specific help for people with autism and Asperger’s syndrome and ways to improve things, looking at the environment, the classrooms were painted with non-reflective paint, blinds to ensure there was no reflection through the window, not put ticking clocks in, and little things, using carpets so there is no reflection. And now even I came back and visited recently and now there’s things like exercise equipment in the base and they have got a Nintendo wii to help people exercise and keep them moving and improve their coordination.

So just things that are just looking at, I suppose it is just relentless, the base, what they do is just well for me the relevance is they look at every aspect and try to see what there is to improve you know. So I mean those specific things, even things down to looking at diet and I don’t mean that in the gluten free sense, like I drank cans of Iron Bru every lunchtime, you know, sort of looking at every little possibility like what is affecting my behaviour so they made me come off Iron Bru, well it turned out it wasn’t due to the Iron Bru but that’s just an example of, you know, of really looking at everything you know, just addressing your every need and it was just that, you see that compared to the academy, not that the academy is bad, just that they didn’t really have the opportunity or the resources to help in the same way the base did and I think that is probably what made the base so good.