Disclaimer: To the best of my knowledge none of the people discussed in the article described are autistic or neurodiverse. That said their impressive attention to detail, commitment to research and obsessiveness are commonly found in autistic people. Also trains! My husband said I *had* to read the Guardian’s article ‘I’m proud to be called…

Now you might assume that given that I’m married that dating obviously wasn’t a problem for me. You would be wrong. Autistics have three trajectories for relationships: Perpetual singledom – that would be like my (great-) Auntie Margaret and my (great-) Uncle Jim. Brother and sister who never married and lived all their lives in…

So I’m sat with my daughter during her initial assessment for autism and she doesn’t want to be there. She doesn’t like meeting new people, doesn’t like not knowing what they’re going to ask her, knowing what she’s supposed to say. Typical autistic nightmare stuff. Even post-pandemic they’re doing all this via Skype. My daughter…

OK I’ve had enough of talking about the negatives of having autistic traits, so I thought I’d start sharing some positives. I have awesome attention to detail. Something that was picked up on by my art teacher during sketching classes, my Latin teacher when covering the finer points of grammar, and my physics teachers when…

… and that’s actually not uncommon for autistics. As a teenager I would get up in the middle of the night, having been unable to sleep to find a full-on insomniac party taking place in the kitchen. And by party I don’t mean a literal one obviously (did you not get the memo), I mean…

When I was a child I used to laugh much more. Then my mother pointed out that much of the time my laugh sounded incredibly fake and was actually cringey (well it was the 80s so those weren’t her exact words as cringey wasn’t an expression people used much, but you get my meaning). So…

I was going to just blog about bullying, but then I realised that I would inevitably touch on a couple of other areas so this is a three part blog post. Bullying While anyone can be on the receiving end of bullying behaviour, studies show that autistic students are 63% more likely to be bullied…

This is an expression I’ve heard a lot in recent years. I don’t know if allistics think it’s a figurative expression and that those who say it are exaggerating for effect, but I use it literally. When I come home from some social event I lie down for a good hour, when my relatives or…

In summary: No one knows! You have high-levels of self-disclosure of disability (including autism) among students both under- and post-graduate. And then the numbers of autists fall off the cliff when you look at academics. Did they figure they didn’t fit in and leave? Did they get pushed out? Did universities object to their lack…

I had an email this morning about my HESA details. In the UK the Higher Education Statistics Agency collect details from all the universities. I’d filled in my form before about my sexual orientation, my religious beliefs, the colour of my skin, yadda, yadda. But I’d gotten it wrong. You see I don’t see myself…