In 2016 I had a breakdown, or depressive episode; I don’t think it was the former as, I remained at home while my mother took care of my son, who was 6 years old at the time. A friend recommended a psychiatrist whom, as a result of the compensation that I had received after a…

It was daft of me to plan to have a rest. During the week, I foolishly allowed a plan to develop, because Daniel was supposed to be staying at his dad’s on Saturday night. I was going to drop Daniel off at the play scheme, then have a sports and therapeutic massage followed by an…

Day 21 I am very different since my brain injury. On December 4th 2007, a funny thing happened to me on my way home from work, and I never got home as the person I had been again. I particularly struggle with hormones. It took me 30 years to see that it was puberty that…

You couldn’t make this stuff up. My son and I are not alone in having had a most arduous time of things over the last academic year – in which, not only has the Local Authority failed to find my son a school place, it has also failed to provide appropriate interim tuition until 9…

“April is the cruellest month, breeding Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing Memory and desire, stirring Dull roots with spring rain.” (T.S. Eliot – The Waste Land, 1. The Burial of the Dead) I have been feeling very afraid this evening. Over the past few days, I have felt as though a fog has…

The day is grey and rainy, requiring headlights on, although it’s April. There is not much traffic on the way to the Playscheme, but I can’t help feeling that the cars passing, and the drab wet people, look almost funereal. I feel the same. It’s Britain; the same place where, up north, tightly terraced streets…

Even Joseph Heller couldn’t cook this one up. I don’t wish to disrespect another creed or race, but I can’t help thinking that, if the above headline were the case, there would be outcry from several quarters. But my son is just a white, middle class high-functioning child with ASD. High-functioning? As long as it…

I’m finding stress difficult; relentless. When the clocks went forward on Sunday it threw me. I woke up to find that I had lost an hour of the day, and this set me immediately at odds with everything. It was also Mother’s Day, so it seemed typical to find that there was insufficient time in…

It seems that there is no school which will actually take my child. Correction: there is no school prepared to offer my son even an assessment, despite the information in the EHCP being about two years old. I recently had an email from the case worker saying that yet another school is unable to offer…