The strange case of being me

Reading A boy made of blocks about how a father gets to cope with his autistic son made me think again about myself. Of course when I was a boy there was no such thing as autism - it hadn't been invented. Sufferers were diagnosed otherwise e.g. introverted, unsociable, selfish...

Today we went shopping at Chermside, a huge shopping mall in Brisbane. Typically both K and A managed to purchase almost the whole shebang whilst I came away with nothing. At one stage I was sent off by K to find A who was in another store a ways away called Daiso - I couldn't find Daiso and no-one I asked had heard of it: I could feel panic arising - like, what if I can find neither K nor A; what if people think I am senile (they probably do anyway)? Needless to say I eventually succeeded in my mission but it made me think.

Some sites maintain that every one of us is on the autistic spectrum: We all experience key symptoms 'just to varying degrees' whilst another site decries this saying any such admission depends on redefining autism. I decided to take an online test and got the result of: A higher than average score that is above the clinical threshold. 80% of those diagnosed with autism or a related disorder scored 32 or above in this test like you, but that score doesn't mean you definitely have autism. Thus I might or might not be autistic. I admit that my answers to some of the questions might have been a bit biased because I know what I would like to be, but it looks like I definitely am at least something.

I am of course painfully aware of Jerome K Jerome's self diagnosis - but another malady I might suffer is dyslexia (which I can spell with the help of Google) about which I have posted before - particularly when it comes to strings of characters e.g. a telephone number or an order-code. I can attempt to memorise a written string in order to type it on the computer only to be fully aware that I cannot recall which order the characters come. If I were to make the mistake unwittingly it would be one thing but I am actually aware that the characters have somehow got out of order in that brief time they were held in my mind. This problem occurs mostly with digits but can also affect my spelling for which I am notorious. Although prevalent, I have learned to manage my "dyslexia" e.g. by splitting a telephone number into several manageable parts and transfer part by part, or using a spell-checker. A plain dictionary fails when I cannot even think how the first few letters of a word go, and sometimes I am so far out that even the Google search engine fails to recognise it!

So I took an online test and got a score of 140, where:
A negative score (less than zero) = Very low possibility of dyslexia
0 – 75 = Moderate possibility of dyslexia
76 – 150 = Strong possibility of dyslexia
Above 150 = Very strong possibility of dyslexia
If your score indicated a strong possibility of dyslexia you may want to consider being fully diagnosed by an educational psychologist.  Er... no.

So what? you ask. The what is fear, guilt and embarrassment e.g. when I fail to recall someone's name, of when I fail to do the accepted small-talk thing, or when I feel just so very different to what I perceive to be average. Sure, there's good reason for anyone to try to overcome their limitations and this I do to varying degrees. Like when I draw a diagram of a conference table and try to write down delegate's names as they stand up and announce themselves: in this task I rarely have time to do the job properly and anyway the whole thing is upset once the delegates leave the table and start to mingle.

As a child I have a strong memory of my mother driving my older sister and me to one of her friend's birthday party and on arriving I would not even get out of the car. I threw such a paddy that my mother eventually gave up and took me home. I have always hated parties - I mean - what are parties for? True there is the remote possibility of nice things to eat but in such surroundings? And thus I never had either my own 18th or 21st birthday party.

I cannot and have no desire to dance. I do not enjoy either watching or participating in competitive sport. I will play but am not good at word games like Scrabble or Boggle. I cannot act on stage or impersonate. And yet as a teenager I sang a duet, and on another occasion a solo, in a school concert, and was applauded. I could do this because I enjoy singing and thus it was "me" and whilst doing it in front of the audience I was not performing, I was being me (although the initial having to stand up in front was scary).

Which is why I like running barefoot alone.  Now I have mostly overcome the strange comments I can be myself, have time to think, no pressure to perform or compete, no need to remember strings or how to spell. No need to talk. No need to try to be someone I am not.

Oz report 3 GOR day 3

Strictly the next few photos belong to Day 2, evening thereof, but I figures the Day 2 post was getting a bit long.

Evening light at Port Fairy beach

Our second Airbnb

Breakwater with lighthouse in distance

Lone evening paddle surfer, Life of Pi?

Having eaten, slept and leisurely eaten again we checked out the lighthouse on Griffiths Island, which marked the most westerly point of our Oz trip, before embarking on the journey back to Melbourne and our third Airbnb.

Between Port Fairy and Warrnambool is Tower Hill, a volcanic feature best described by the map below, a nature reserve and the subject of a famous painting. Not famous to me, mind you. We drove the one-way road entering by the westerly isthmus where we saw two emus, but this was a place with many nature trails that might occupy a whole day exploring. Maybe next time. But will there be a next time? It is sobering at my age to wonder whether I will ever get to see places I visit again.

Tower Hill à la Google Maps

Eugene von Guérard’s famous 1855 painting of Tower Hill

Westerly isthmus

These two emus posed just for us

View of the lake as we exited Tower Hill

Our route from Warrnambool to Geelong follows the A1 road which in turn follows the Warrnambool railway line, single track in broad gauge (5' 3"), stopping at Camperdown for lunch and to check out the Leura Maar, another volcanic feature. Indeed the whole of this vast flat plain across which we travelled is dotted with the remnants of inactive volcanoes. I imagine a desolate and fiery landscape those many thousand years ago. Conveniently there is a paved road that takes us virtually to the summit of Mt Leura, but to surmount the conical Mt Sugarloaf required walking which we were apparently not up to in this instance. Maybe next time...

Leura Maar, we parked at the red marker, those lakes are also craters

In Oz you must always do as instructed

Read all about it

The dreaded hooded picnicker

Mt Sugarloaf

Train on the Warrnambool line

With a view from the top

Lake Corangamite (not to be confused with Vegemite), and other inactive volcanoes

The original crater rim referred to in the plaque

The plaque referred to above

Thence to Colac where we had a McDonald's loo break...

Lake Colac

And then to St Kilda suburb of Melbourne for our third Airbnb experience extraordinaire complete with rooftop infinity pool.

Infinity

Melbourne and Yarra River

Panic

Let him that glorieth glory in this

The 7th floor apartment, Airbnb No.3

Melbourne at night

Made in Australia

Day 4 was spent in Melbourne's Victoria Market and apart from a single photo place marker I make no further comments. Although the lunch was good. And so ended our fantastic holiday within a holiday.

Queen Victoria Market

Ethnic lunch

Melbourne trams are everywhere

Oz report 3 GOR day 2

Great Ocean Walk

Day 2 of our fantastic Great Ocean Road break starts from Wild Dog Valley in Apollo Bay, Victoria. From here the GOR meanders inland, making a brief comeback at Castle Cove and then inland again until Princetown.

Rolling hills just west of Apollo Bay

At Castle Cove I discovered the Great Ocean Walk which does the coast bit whilst the GOR is inland, and I ventured a few hundred metres along its total length of 104 km before acknowledging the constraints of the remainder of my party.

Castle Cove

A very small part of the Great Ocean Walk

From there my camera deemed nothing worthy of note until we reached the 12 apostles. These are actually neither apostles (but lumps of rock) nor are there 12 of them, the missing ones having long since eroded and collapsed into the sea. The whole outfit is a huge tourist trap although I think we got away with not spending a cent. For $570 per person we could have been flown by helicopter way above the apostles and related landmarks.

$570 per person

Some still standing, some fallen apostles

Having "done" the apostles K and I agreed to walk the cited 30 minutes to the Gibson Steps originally carved in the limestone (apparently not sandstone) but now concrete. On the way we almost tripped over a fox. Honest. Foxes around here, like everything else, are apparently used to tourists. The two limestone stacks between the 12 and these steps are not apostles, being called Gog and Magog, names that seem somewhat arbitrary.

The fox we almost saw (private joke)

Proof of how close we were

Gibson steps

The beach at the bottom with Gog and Magog

A little further along the GOR we come to the Tom and Eva Gorge - follow the link to find out who these two were, now immortalised in these two stacks, and where you will also see that we somehow missed the beach below my next photo. Sad - the water there might have been warmer!

Tom and Eva

A cave nearby

Looking East from the Razorback

A yet a little further along the great road we come to London Bridge, another "must see" but frankly more of the same. Not that it wasn't worth looking at. The signage tells us that London bridge has fallen down as indeed the left hand arch did 25 years ago. It seems that the whole of this coast is at serious risk so that Australia is slowly shrinking, dissolving into the sea.

London bridge

And finally to our second Airbnb, an upstairs apartment overlooking the beach at Port Fairy. The view from our bedroom was just amazing. Thank you K! Pictures from the beach will have to wait until my Day 3 blog post.

View from our bedroom

Oz report 3 GOR day 1

So much excitement has sort of eclipsed my last Oz report. We flew to Melbourne on staff travel and "did" the Great Ocean Road. Because our intended flight was full we had to reschedule at the outset and take a zeroth night in the Ibis very-budget at Melbourne airport. You can of course click on the photos to enlarge them.

Three men in a boat at Ibis

Thereafter K had organised Airbnb for each of three nights and I have to say this is the way to go as I think you will agree...

Simple map of GOR

The GOR starts at Torquay, 113 km south of the airport, where of course we had to sample the beach. Indeed the whole coastline of the GOR appears to me made of this soft orange rock which looked to me like sandstone. Note the virga trailing from the clouds. An inscription on the boardwalk helpfully informed us that Antartica lurked 6000km across the horizon which we figured might explain the sea temperature.

Torquay

From Torquay to Appolo Bay the GOR generally hugs the coast apart from convoluted and tortuous bends and gradients to negotiate water courses. One such exception is at Cinema Point where we are told that returned First World War servicemen built the Great Ocean Road as a tribute to their fallen comrades.

The next port of call was Lorne which boasts a pier (which we did not frequent as it looked rather tacky) and (fleetingly) a topical inscription on the sand.

The pier, Lorne

We dutifully added our own rock stacks at this location. Mine was of course the best, but then it fell over... Strange but that name was also left here.

So many beaches that I lost count. Wide seas, large skies, gorgeous weather.

And so to Apollo Bay the destination of our first Airbnb. First we checked out the local Fish'n'Chip place where we sampled Flake, apparently the Oz equivalent of the British Rock Salmon and a euphemism for Shark. Had we known... We wandered down to the quay, passing an interesting sign and still more interesting graffiti thereon, and found a fishing vessel garlanded with powerful lights which we learned attracted squid. Now why, I ask, would anyone want to attract squid?

And so to our first Airbnb a ways up the awesome Wild Dog Valley, complete with parrots, deer and goats on the property and the Karmic goat farm nearby. The good thing about Airbnb is that you have the place to yourself. I have never liked regular B&B which remind me of my first digs in Banstead on getting a job with the BBC: the landlady was a lonely older person who kept calling me to see if I wanted a sandwich or a drink when all I wanted was solitude.

Wild Dog Valley, Apollo Bay

Our first Airbnb

Wild dog valley

Look what K found!

Karmic - They make soap from the milk

More valley

The landlord keeps a flock of deer