But the whole thing was that I was very fortunate, basically from the age of about 26, 27, I was more or less my own boss. I had my own department and I selected my staff and so on.In London I had a secretary who stayed with me for nineteen years. Well obviously I didn’t exactly mistreat her or anything like that. I expected a hundred per cent work. I didn’t like coming in late. I always made a point of being there before anybody got in. What used to infuriate me was if I wanted to talk to somebody, if they were having a private phone call. And if this went on after I counted one, two, three I would put my hand on the receiver and you know stop their conversation. But people understood that is what I On the other hand I was always very loyal to my staff.And also always I had always bosses who understood me and I never had any real compromise. Well I mean at my interviews to my directors always understood me. I never had any quarrels with them.

Can you remember when you were at school?

When I was at the age of about, I came to the school about five. I used to draw animals like giraffes and elephants and tigers and I used to do some people, men and women and London double decker buses and cars, lorries, trains and aeroplanes and houses, high rise tower blocks and churches. And then do some London landmarks including Big Ben, Houses of Parliament, St Pauls Cathedral, Tower of London and Tower Bridge, Post OfficeTower, Nelson’s Column, Trafalgar Square and Buckingham Palace and the City of London skyline and Canary Wharf and the London’s docklands. And also American cars like seventies and eighties. And some other – even a few years later Beverley Hills 90210, Jason Priestly Shannon Doherty, Jenny Garth and Nick Perry and the rest of the cast.

I remember when I won the school prize for French. I wasn’t the brainiest boy, very typical of me, school, typical of me now. Go through school, not outstanding, not brilliant, hated sport, didn’t like the contact, didn’t like cricket, didn’t like football. It is all this contact business. Fighting. I don’t like it. But we had a very good Latin teacher, Mr Perry, very nice man Mr Perry.And he got me a job in the school library which got me out of games. And I was in my element in the school library. I was just happy to have access to the books really. You know, it suited me fine there rather than play football.But in the fifth form when everyone gets a prize, I got the school prize for French because I was simply the best. I was the best in the class and probably best in the school, at French and I won the school prize for Endeavour. I am good at trying. Well that is what I have been doing all my life. You know, I am still the same person, who was good at French and good at trying.

And it has got me, where has it got me? You know, what am I? You know I am still wondering what to do. When you said to me how do you envisage the future, I mean I am still the same as I was when fifteen. I can’t imagine the future. I wouldn’t say I was stupid but there we are. Fifty years on [laughs]. Does any of that makes sense?

Well so far, this is like a little job, I’m doing right now. I actually started doing mythese talks and stuff about autism for parents and stuff. It started off as like a little something, I don’t know, someone said, Oh why don’t you talk it and stuff And I said, Alright then. I’ll give it a go And it started off as say a little group, like four parents and stuff. And then that slowly developed into like a big group of 27 parents and stuff, all just me talking and giving them advice about autism and stuff and how, you know, how it affects me and stuff and how they can help people with it and stuff like that. That, sort of is my job at the moment. That’s what I’ve been doing. Just out, you know, doing all sorts of talks and stuff and giving parents advice and stuff like that. So I just, so far it’s been going really well. I’ve got to just keep, keep myself in the open really and show them I’m there if they need it and stuff like that. You know, keep yourself going really. Yes.

Yeah, that’s it. I, I went onto an autism organisation where I worked for five years. And yeah, that’s really where my career started. I didn’t know it was going to be a career at the start. I had no idea, of that. It was just one of those things that, where I went in blind. Or in some ways I just thought it was a little hobby, initially, just doing a little speech about my life, and then go back to, you know, the volunteering work which I – don’t get me wrong, I learned a lot from that base. And then what slowly happened is that each year it, I was going to different conferences, you know, National Autistic Society What I done in the meantime was, okay, so I’ve got this autism diagnosis, what does it mean? How, and this is where I’m going to get to the fruit salad theme. So, got the diagnosis. And, you know, they’ve got the triad of impairments, and I thought well I want to know a bit more. You know, that’s great for a diagnosis, but it’s tapping the service.

And I connected with Donna Williams on Facebook about a year later, from her speech, so it was about 2010. And I started looking at some of the videos about processing, language, etc. And then I saw this image of the fruit salad, where she puts different things into different domains. So information processing, personality, mental health, learning and environment. And then it started got me thinking, autism isn’t one thing, is it? And she said “No. It’s a clustering of different things.” So then I started building up my own fruit salad, so I could contextualise each piece when I speak. And that’s what I’ve done.

Over the course of six years my old social worker sent me to five different like day centres for people with disabilities. Again, none of them really worked out. In one I was the only verbal person which as you can imagine was very boring. Another one was too far away and I didn’t cope very well with the travelling and the transition. One said that they actually couldn’t meet my needs, which again was really shocking because I’m obviously at the higher end of the spectrum, but they thought that my needs were actually too severe for them to meet. And now I’ve ended up at an independent day service, not like council run, which I attend four days a week, and do social activities with them as well. And, you know, I’ve been going there for nearly a year now, and they can meet my needs since. The first place I’ve found that has actually met my needs.