But, the key elements of autism to my mind, is that when you, when a normal person focuses on something and thinks about something they can often get quite interested in it. And often it’s something they’re actually not that interested in at all. If they just, they may be something very annoyed or angry about, an emotion, and it feels quite strong. But after a while they can just switch it off and have opted break from an emotion and do something else, they can usually do it reasonably well.

Whereas, certainly in my experience that’s the precise that autism really can’t do. That when I get interested in something it very much remains interested in me, I’m interested in it. And if I want to do something else it quite simply it remains with me, or remains consuming my thoughts. And although I can sort of, think about something else, at the back of my mind it’s always going to be burning away. And it’s very difficult to concentrate on something else.

And this could be true for any number of things. Like, I’m thinking in relation to employment. it’s very difficult for me to focus on anything beyond those menial, menial tasks, if my mind’s thinking about some other particular thing which is consuming me.

It can be something to do with social interaction, insofar as, it’s difficult to really focus on the conversation to a degree when you’ve got this particular you know, some sort of thought consuming me so strongly.

And so in this regard to my mind it’s very difficult to actually really care so much about other things and other people. I suppose it’s the old stereotype; autistic people are very self-centred. Well they can be to a degree, because not so much, because I don’t really care about anything else, but whether they’re interested, not necessarily themselves, but whatever particular thing that consumes obsesses them. It is, it gets in the way of just simply living a normal life of, of caring about things that other people do, and I’m guessing, this thing is much more speculative, but I suppose we have the sight we have because people are just formed that way. But if someone’s slightly different from that, then they’re going to form a slightly different way.

I was also, I was very obsessive, like I’ve been obsessive since about the age of three or four. Like just worrying about lots of different things, like getting, as a child, getting dirty, and wash my hands a lot, and that’s, as I still do, but it kind of comes and goes, but I’ve never been, because I’ve always had it and it’s so much part of me, it’s just something I’ve had to live with, so from a very, very young age. So it’s not something I’ve ever, it’s just something I know I have, almost like I was born with it. It’s not something, some people who have like obsessional problems they develop. But for me I’ve always had it so I don’t know any different. They just, I just accept it as something I’m always going to have, but try and keep it under control. But it does get quite a lot sometimes it gets a lot more severe than at other times.

But also I have like very strong, I’ve always had very, very strong interests but as a child, it was really being interested in food, like cooking and nutrition and I would also, I’d learn what, I would watch what people had in their lunch box and then memorise it, and learn it off by heart. And I just like tell my parents about whatever, every single detail of what people had for the lunch at school and what people look like and their birthdays, and just really obsessed with it. So that’s my main obsession as a child was food, and I could talk about nothing else.

Then again it moved onto the human body, and then the biggest obsession was the Titanic and that arose when I was 10, 10 and 11 and I learnt everything about the historical event, Titanic. All the details and the statistics about it, and then came the Titanic film and that turned into a massive obsession and I ended up seeing it, you know, over thirty times and I also became really obsessed with the actress Kate Winslett in it. So again I stopped being obsessed with the Titanic and became really obsessed with Kate Winslett and that obsession took over and I saw all her films. I knew every single detail about her life. I could think about nothing else, apart from Kate Winslett. I looked at all her pictures. She was my life, nothing else mattered, apart from Kate Winslett. I used to think that if Kate Winslett were to disappear I would have nothing left in my life, my life would be just be, my life would just end, because there’s nothing in my life that was more important than Kate Winslett. So that, that was probably the most extreme obsession I’ve ever had, and that lasted eight years.

And simultaneous with that was an obsession with child development and babies, and children, and I was so obsessed about it, I used to read parenting magazines from cover to cover. And that arose because Kate Winslett had a child, so I got really obsessed with children because, through Kate Winslett. I wanted to understand her experiences, and almost be like Kate Winslett. So, you know, I used to take notes in a notebook, every time I saw a pram with a child in it, I would take a note, saying what was the make of the pram, what was the child doing, what did it look like, I was just so obsessed with it [laughs]. So that was quite extreme.

SoI just became more and more isolated really. But I played a few times with some girls a year younger than me again. I tend to relate to people younger than me or older than me more than peer group. I don’t know why that is, I think it’s because I don’t know there’s something different about peer group, it’s just that I can’t deal with that well. But I mean, and that was also, that was when Kate Winslett obsession, just got more extreme. So I just retreated into that and that’s all that mattered, sonbsp;

I do get compulsions but I am a bit frightened to act them out sometimes, because it is a bit embarrassing asking somebody did I say the wrong thing?’There is something that stops me from doing it. I don’t know what. It is something inside which stops me from doing it. [3 sec pause] Something inside, I don’t quite know what it is. It is just a feeling. Then because I have not said it, I feel a bit bad because I have not mentioned it, I have not asked if I have done the wrong thing. It is very important for me to do the right thing at all times so I worry about that a lot. Yes. Quite a bit.

You say you sort of systematise your life?
Yes. I used to do that a lot.
Do you still do that now?
I still – I start listening to music and what I do is, I put maybe not the same album on once in a week, so I put them to a different side, so I start doing that and I have got this idea in my head. I listen to my own music, up until the 21st of the month and then put the radio and listen to all other music after that. There is something appealing about numbers. I am fascinated with numbers. And… what else do I do? So there is music.

When I wash myself I have to do it five times. Whenever I’m in the bath I do it five times, washing, listening to music, eating. I don’t know why, but I count the number of mouthfuls I eat.I just do it automatically. Eating. Obviously I started breathing. I think I started that about 32 years ago. I started counting my breaths on the bus. First I did it counting to ten. Now it is twenty, twenties a day. So I start from one, outwards to, I count to twenty, because I am like concentrating on the numbers. It is like a meditation. It is not like just keep counting. I need to be aware enough to start again from one once I get to twenty.It is like a meditation. A concentration type thing. I got that from a book, from like Heal your Life’ by I forget what she is called… oh I have forgotten what she is called. Heal your Life’ or something like that. I have forgotten what she is called now. It is a very interesting book.

And I am reading about the Hundred Things Everybody Should know How to do.And I think I have to forewarn the female population because once I get into the book where it has got about kissing and it has got about asking somebody out, so they are sort of forewarned, you know what I mean, yes. For the yes.So a little bit of systemising. Not too much that it causes me a problem [5 sec pause] but I do things in numbers.

I continue to apply for white collar jobs. I mean I think, obviously the fact that you’ve not been working recently and the fact that the most recent job is one from which you didn’t pass the probation period. That’s not something counts in favour of you as an applicant. So, but, that provides a difficulty. And also a tendency to obsessiveness means that sometimes you get bogged down in sorting out other areas of your life and you know, there are times for months on end when I haven’t looked for work. I mean I’ve been through something of a development in my housing situation, where my flat was being refurbished and I’d been moved out to a temporary so called decamp flat, and that has taken me about a year to go through all that process, which other people would have done much more swiftly, I’m sure.

And what about the hoarding why do you think it’s curious that your psychiatrist does include hoarding under the umbrella of
Well, well because I mean the reason I think it’s curious, if I read you know, literature aimed at the sufferer, I mean, it predominately talks about the social functioning etc. And I would see hoarding as more connected with OCD and I don’t have diagnosis of OCD. I have a diagnosis of quote obsessional symptoms. But my psychiatrist says that, you know, if there were any attention deficit problems which he doesn’t accept and the obsessional symptoms which he does accept. He lumps all, both of those areas under the Asperger’snbsp;
I was very much taken by surprise and I wasn’t aware that Asperger’s was considered to, you know, contain these other components. I mean I do understand now that it contains components to do with irritability and frustration, but no I was very much taken by surprise when he first said that the, any obsessional symptoms are part of, under the umbrella of Asperger’s. Yes, that took me by surprise.
And what do you hoard?

Well okay, books for one thing, sometimes items of electrical equipment, computer equipment. But books is a major thing. I would say there, they are the major things yes.

Is this a new obsession, disrespectfulness?

Mother’ Yeah, it’s been, yeah, a few months it’s been going on for hasn’t it?

Ian’ Yes.

And can you give me an example of when somebody is disrespectful to you?

Ian’ Well I think I was doing some work for my dad’s project at work. It wasnd I think because he was getting frustrated or something, he had a go at me and stuff and then I started having a go back at him. I said, I think I said to him, I said, don’t disrespect me, [name] You know, and then I stormed off. You know, what I mean. So that was it, I held a grudge against him until I sorted it out so.

What does it feel like holding these grudges?

Ian’ Eh. I don’t know. Justsometimes it feels a bit bad, but I do it, because you know, I feel that they are in the wrong. And they should apologise, no matter what they’ve said. You know what I mean, because at the end of the day, you know, I feel like I’ve done nothing wrong you know, I always think I’m always right. You know what I mean, and actually most people with autism do that. Even [name], he always thinks he’s right. No matter what [laughs], so we’re both as bad as each other really, it’s quite funny.

Have you found any ways of managing your obsessing about things?

Make sure I don’t do anything wrong. That’s all I can do. I make sure I check everything is secure, everything that may go wrong is made so it won’t go wrong, you know, to the extent of everything apart from the, the very unexpected, I’d say earthquakes or tidal waves, something like that. You can’t, you can’t really plan for that kind of situation if you don’t know it’s coming. So I can’t really plan for that. But you just remember to lock up your house, keep your keys on you, make sure they’re tied to your belt, make sure you’ve got everything you need, wallet, mobile phone, keys, in my case insulin pen. If you remember those then the one thing that may happen when you’re out is you may have a kind of a skip in your memory, you know, because you know, did I forget to lock the house? And if you just go back a little in your memory, search through it again. Confirm that you did lock the house, then it takes your mind off of that and you can get back to being annoyed by everybody else. So like, I suppose that’s a, I suppose when you’re going out, if you’ve got an obsessed thought going through your head and you can’t get rid of it, you can’t control it, but you can control being in the social situation, you kind of step outside it, and you go back to the feeling of being left out of the, you know, general social warmth. So, yes
You seem to be quite concerned about coming to harm?

Well, it’s, it’s not so much physical harm. it’s, unexpected psychological impact I guess. You know, something unfamiliar happens, something to which you’re not used to understanding, you know, going out and being approached by a some guy who ended up drinking twelve cans of Carling in a row, and then he’s going out swigging drunk that kind of thing. Very, very disturbing. It just, I just can’t handle those situations. I, I’ll normally I kind of walk around them, but even then you don’t know what’s going to happen. The guy may come chasing after you. Or he may just carry on his merry way, keeping a drink, and carry on walking. It goes so many ways, and you’ve got so many situations that can happen. I mean you could have a car which nearly runs you down. You could have somebody kick a football at your head. Or you know, somebody accidentally trod on your toes. All these different things happen. They have been known to happen. And you can’t plan for them all in your head. I mean your standard person would be able to, you know, keep calm and collected but have that sternness about them in order tokind of make sure that it doesn’t happen again. If you chucked someone like myself into that situation then we probably fly off the handle or sit down and hide from anything happening like that again. But there are hundreds of not thousands of those types of situations. Which is a bit of a nightmare, but again it comes down to avoidance, knowing where you are and knowing what you’re doing.

And half the time it’s to doit’s a comfort thing really, it really is a comfort thing. Sometimes, our obsessions become like sort of like a comfort really, for example if I had a really stressful day at school or something like that, I’ll just sort of play on my video game or something like that because it just made me feel comfortable with my obsession. I was playing this game over and over and over again because it just helps me feel at ease because it’s something I like and it’s, you know, I know how it responds you know, it’s very basic really and sometimes, a lot of autistic people we really, we’re great animal lovers. We like animals a lot and half the time the reason for that is, for me, or personally, is because they don’t talk back. Their social systems are very basic, you just, you go up to them, you stroke them, they respond you know, they respond more we can see it, whereas people they talk don’t they, about stuff, whereas animals they can’t talk, so they show it in physical form. So we can see it, which makes us more comfortable about it, because actually we can see what’s happening and stuff which sometimes really helps.

Or if somebody says to me, oh I will meet you at sort of like 5 oclock in the evening. If they sort of like, haven’t rung to actually tell me that they are still coming, like yourself. I mean you rung me to say you can’t find the place,but if somebody doesn’t ring to actually tell me that they are going to be late, I start worrying because they might have been involved in an accident or whatever, you know what I mean, I start to sort of get quite worried that these people aren’t going to turn up, and then I am sort of left on my own, wondering what to actually do. Whether to ring the police, whether to do that, because people with Asperger’s like people to actually be punctual and some people can’t cope if they are not there on the right time and things like that. Okay yes, I am a bit like that. I mean if somebody said oh 12 oclock I can cope with it, but if they don’t turn up say after about 5 minutes I begin to actually worry, because for instance, they might actually be involved in an accident or something like that, you just don’t know. But if they actually ring me like you didif they ring me like you did, it doesn’t matter because I know that they are there and going to come, they are just a bit lost [laughs]. You know what I mean.