Cemetery Road: a blog

Hi folks,

If anyone's interested, I've started a new blog.  It's part-truth, part-fiction - and I'm not going to say how much of each!  Some of it may be obvious.

It's a bit of fun, really - something to keep me going between other projects.  It helps me to get through the evenings and weekends, anyway - and keeps my fingers typing.

It's pretty much self-explanatory: the life of a middle-aged no-hoper.  Humorously cynical is the tone I'm going for.  Hope I manage it.  Not overtly about autism, but the indications are there.

Two short posts so far.  'My Heart is in Havana' and 'Shove Thy Neighbour'.

*CONTENT WARNING*

- strong, graphic language

- sexual references

- substance misuse

Cemetery Road: notes from a half-life

It's written under a pseudonym, too, so no identity divulgence...

Parents
  • Thanks for your encouraging comments, folks.  These tales may not add up to very much, but they keep me focused.

  • They're great Tom, keep them coming :-) 

    I'm just about to enrol for a series of short courses at northern college on verbs and nouns and stuff like that. I never learned those things at school and I'd love to learn them so nows my chance. You could join me Robert, all the courses are free, they're residential and all your food and accommodation is free and it's in a great setting. Check it out, northern college, near Barnsley. They have lots of other great courses as well. I'm going to do the writing courses as well. 

Reply
  • They're great Tom, keep them coming :-) 

    I'm just about to enrol for a series of short courses at northern college on verbs and nouns and stuff like that. I never learned those things at school and I'd love to learn them so nows my chance. You could join me Robert, all the courses are free, they're residential and all your food and accommodation is free and it's in a great setting. Check it out, northern college, near Barnsley. They have lots of other great courses as well. I'm going to do the writing courses as well. 

Children
  • That made my day, I love it and it made me laugh ~ always a good thing. 

    I find that I only learn something when I’m really interested in it. I don’t find learning a foreign language easy at all but I enjoy it, I’ve been at the French for years now and can barely say a word, but I don’t mind, I enjoy it and who knows, if I keep in going, maybe in another 10 years I’ll be able to speak a sentence.

    I love being in a room with others and being silent. I much prefer it to talking. And when I’m with nice people or my family I can enjoy their company much better when I can just sit and be quiet and just watch and listen or be in my little world or read a book. I like to be in company but mostly if I can be quiet. 

    Playing the piano sounds wonderful. I’ve neber been drawn to want to play a musical instrument. I did a bit of guitar and the recorder at school but I think I gave up on music when they gave me a triangle to play at school. I was mortified! Lol! I thought the triangle was ridiculous so I think I gave up on music after that, plus I prefer silence over music. 

    Through learning French, I have realised that I think I would progress further if I knew what nouns and verbs were so that’s prompted me to fulfill a big desire of mine. I’ve tried by myself to learn those stuff but I just haven’t been able to get it so far so I’m looking forward to the series of short courses I’m going to do on the subject. 

    I was supposed to go to the university today to find out more about the autism course but I couldn’t make it. I had a meltdown/shutdown and was stressing like mad over it and I realised, clearly, that I’m not quite ready for that yet so I’m going to work towards starting in September 2019 I think. I’ve got a lot to do before then, such as clearing away the last 50 years of my life. I’m getting rid of as much ‘stuff’ as I can so I’m living as if I’m living in my van. I’m going all minimalistic, because I want to but also in preparation for van living. 

  • I learned French many years ago, to a basic conversational level - but never used it, so largely forgot it.  My last partner was French, but spoke impeccable English, which she learned to speak through watching English TV programmes.  No one else in her family spoke English, so when we visited her parents in Normandy, they used to slip into French only and I sat mute and listened.  Pretty much like I am in an English conversational group!  I don't really have a facility for languages, I've decided.  I've tried other languages, but it's never stuck.  I forget the words very quickly because I have nothing to make a proper association - unless it's a word that's similar to its English equivalent, like bottle/bouteille.

    Apart from my degree, I've never studied for anything.  Nothing at school.  It was all largely lost on me.  I need the discipline of formal study, though, to learn anything.  Left to my own devices, I just cannot focus for long enough.  I've often wondered if it's some kind of learning disability linked to my autism.  ADD, maybe.  The exception, I suppose, is music.  I taught myself at 20 to read music because I wanted to play the piano.  I've played it now for almost 40 years, learning tunes bar-by-bar, and can play a few pieces - but nothing commensurate with all those years of working at it.  I don't really have a facility for music, either, to be honest.  I learn pieces by rote - but can't improvise.  If I'm playing a piece and make a mistake, I can never go on.  I have to stop and start again.  My 'party piece' is Cavatina - the theme from The Deerhunter.  I've played it probably thousands of times.  But it's rare that I can play it through without a mistake... and then I have to start again!  Although I know the different major and minor keys, I can't think 'in key'.  A young chap at work plays brilliantly, but can't read music and taught himself by ear.  Sheet music makes no sense to him - but he knows all the keys and their associated chords (and all the structures and inversions) almost instinctively, and if he makes a mistake he can soon cover it up and work his way out.  That's the difference.  Natural talent, versus learned ability.

    I'm much more right-brained than left-brained, so 'hard', logical subjects like maths and physics I struggle with (though I have good mental arithmetic abilities).  Words, though, are always things that have fascinated me.  I love word-play, ambiguity, double-meaning, puns, etc.  I'm also usually pretty sharp with rejoinders involving word-play.  I once re-wrote Hamlet's 'To be or not to be' soliloquy for dieters!  If you know it, here's my version...

    Tubby, or not tubby: fat is the question:

    whether ‘tis nobler in the mind to consume

    the sweets and mallows of outrageous feeding,

    or to take arms against a sea of cellulite,

    and by abstaining lose it. To diet?  To slim?

    No more!  (and by slimming to say we end

    the gut ache and the thousand caramel chocs

    the flesh will sag to!)  ‘Tis a consummation

    devoutly to be wished?

                                         To diet.  To slim.

    To slim - perchance to dream: ay, there’s the rub,

    for as we starve to death what creams may come

    when we have shuffled off this mortal flab,

    must give us pause?  There’s the dessert

    that makes calamity of so long abstinence:

    for who would bear the nips and chews of lettuce,

    the depressing crispbread, the gourmet’s contempt,

    the pangs of eternal hunger, the jaw’s decay,

    the indolence of orifice, and the churns

    that vacant corners of the stomach make

    when you yourself might your quietus make

    with a bare gherkin?  Who could even bear

    to shrink and sag under a boring diet,

    but that the thought of something after dinner…

    the undiscovered pantry, to whose shelves

    all serious eaters return, unmuzzles the gob,

    and makes us hap’ly scoff those things we want,

    then sample others that we know not of.

    Thus, chocolate does make cowards of us all,

    and thus the native hue of resolution

    is sicklied o’er with the tempting whiff of chips,

    and sticky buns of great size and density,

    with this regard their currants multiply,

    and lose the name ‘forbidden’.

    Yes... I know it's a bit corny!  But I find things like that quite easy to do, and am always surprised when people say 'How on earth did you do that?'  I think greater knowledge and education than I actually have would probably fuel my creativity, because I'd be able to make more connections in my head - another thing I seem to be good at.  But the internet has been a boon for me there.  I can do all the research I need to do - it's all there, at my fingertips.

  • I’m also learning French, currently at home by myself but I’m waiting on a beginners French class to pop up in my area. 

  • Haha well she was right about that because yeah, I go in health food shops JoyJoyJoy

  • My local college is the recently renamed Leeds city college.

    Over the past decades. I've...

    Completed.

    City & guilds C programming levels 2 & 3

    C&G introduction to teaching and training.

    GCSE bookkeeping & Accounting (A)

    'AS' level Physics (A), Chemistry (A), Biology (A).

    Second years were cancelled due to insufficient enrollments.

    Started and then life got in the way.

    'A' level Economics, Accounting.

    Introductory German.

    GCSE English language.

    At the Leeds Beckett university I started part time...

    Introductory French and Russian.

    Visual basic programming.

    Again life to in the way.

  • It’s a great place, I’ve done several of their courses 

  • A few more anecdotes.

    Back to my narcissistic cousin.  (Miss B).

    She lived with us several times from 1997 to 2007.

    On one visit she insisted that her dietitian recommend that she drank pure carrot juice every day.  It was for her skin complexion.  

    So I tried to get her carrot juice.  We went round all the major supermarkets and smaller grocery  shops.  No carrot juice.  Nearest I found was  blend of orange with carrot juice.  (This was before we had the internet).

    Then I suggested that we try the specialist health food stores.  She blew up at me.  Outside a health store in the street, she started shouting at me that she wouldn't step one foot inside one of these stores.  'only weirdos shop in these places',. How dare I suggest that we go in there!!!!

  • I'm also a book collector and I am self taught from my collection of English language and grammar books.  These are mostly intended for adults learning english as a second language.

    Had a look at the Barnsley college at Wentworth on the internet.  Google maps says it's 25miles away.