Sainsbury's and the ASD mob

It's no secret that I have Aspergers. Technically it doesn't exist any more, so I think I am now described as having ASD - Autism Spectrum Disorder. There would be no point in trying to keep it secret: I am an odd duck, and always have been. My oddness, though, is quite quiet: no dramatic meltdowns and no massively noticeable behaviours.

I hate crowds and crowded places, and in crowds go into survival mode. I am so ill-at-ease that I seem to shut down and focus solely on getting out alive. My Asperger's main strategy to deal with this is to make me avoid crowds wherever possible, and this means trying to steal a march on crowds by getting to places before they do. I do this all the time.

Yes, I know, Weird. But there it is.

Armed with list, I head off to the supermarket for the weekly shop. I am always there before the doors open, and so are a whole bunch of other people: the SAME people.

Each day of the week (i never go on Sundays because of the tourist hordes) there is a distinct and different group of people who come on the same day every week. A very few, like me, are disorganised and appear on different days of the week, but each weekday has its own devotees. It's rare that there is someone new. Waiting with trolleys for the doors to open at 0800, we chat. We know who doesn't chat and don't involve them. 

It gets worse. 

In a vast empty carpark - before they have even turned on the sign that flashes up your numberplate and how long you have got before they come to take your wheels off - we all park in our favourite spots, all over the place. You'd think that we would park nearest to the entrance. Forget it. Some prefer to park at the farthest end, and walk, in all weathers, to the store.

I was going to say that this is like behaviour in men's urinals, where the unspoken rule is that you always go to the urinal farthest away from the person or people already there. This can be a complex algorithm at busy times, but trust me: this is a rule. If someone stands next to you when there is space further away, you tend to zip up quickly and uncomfortably and get out of there. 

But the carpark behaviour is different. A minority of the early mob park in adjacent bays: most park carefully apart. All these people like to park in particular spots. None of us parks randomly. Why ? Who knows ? I'd really LIKE to know.
  
I have two favourite bays to park in, both apparently irrational and both completely necessary. Actually there are reasons. What are they ? Easy: both have only one adjacent space, thus reducing the chance of damage from other parkers (except that there are none at this time in the morning), and both require minimum manoeuvring to get out of the car park (though it is always possible to drive in forward and out again forward).

I am guessing that all the others have their own undisclosed and similarly loopy reasons.

Did I mention that there is a higher than average incidence of nodding dashboard ornaments which I put down to stimming. And just for clarity, no, I do not have dashboard ornaments. Definitely not.

We crowd avoiders tend to chat to the staff, and many of us know the staff by name. There is always a lot of chat at the checkouts, not with each other, but serially with whoever is on the till. You never seem to get this at busy times. We appear to personalise the shopping experience in an anonyomous shop by removing large groups who roll up later.

It struck me the other day that maybe all these early shoppers have ASD. The parking is so striking that if you gave me a plan of the carpark, and an indication of which vehicles were in 20 spaces, I could tell you immediately which day of the week it was. And it would be very easy to do the same from seeing who was hovering at the entrance waiting for the doors to slide back.

Now if that isn't weird, what is ? 

Oh dear, oh dear.

Re cycling ....

I'm crackers about cycling.

Way back in my twenties I sort of made a deal with myself that I would cycle as far as the moon. No, not back as well. It was just a target. I thought a round figure of 225 000 miles would do it.

Now 65, I am almost there.

Well, I did say I was crackers. Here's proof.

But I have always loved bikes, and have ridden all sorts. Tandems, scooters, side-by-side bikes, recumbents, bikes with trailers, mountain bikes, road bikes, unicycles .... Somehow bikes are like boats: if you want to feel unhappy on a bike you have to be really determined.

Happy cyclist with new bike

De-haired happy scooterer with grandson

Oh, and when I said unicycles I was cheating a bit. I have a unicycle, and a red-hot desire to ride it, but so far after 8 years I can only do a metre before I fall off. It's harder than it looks, and I have the scars to prove it.

No, I don't carry the posts with me....

A nut for all seasons

But the thing that's oddest is the change in cyclists. Cycling has always been a working-class sort of activity, and while cyclists are feted in France, Italy, Belgium and Spain, they have always been rather looked down upon here in the UK.

Cyclists here have enjoyed great camaraderie. Whether a ride-to-work cyclist in standard clothes, a ride-for-fun cyclist in bike clothing that you can wear happily on the street, or, like me, a lycra nutcase, cycling has always been a friendly activity.

When I started riding, an acquaintance was a guy aged 90, still in wool shorts and with a single gear on his bike. He was always giving a cheery wave to cyclist a couple of generations younger than him, and they would happily wave back.

When you beak down at the road side, some cyclists will stop to enquire whether you need anything, and if you do, they are happy to help.

But most don't stop, don't wave.

When I was a young guy, and hopelessly uncompetitive in every way, if I saw a dot in the distance that might just be a cyclist I had to catch it, pass it, and give a big cheery hello as I went past. It was just compulsive.

It's a lot less friendly now than it used to be, and some of the young riders are intense, earnest and taciturn. Now that I get passed a lot, it's noticeable that younger cyclists tend to sweep wordlessly by.

There are exceptions. I was passed by a young guy on a smart bike - the super-mega-light kind that you have to weight down at night or risk finding it on the ceiling in the morning - who said not a word. I was pedalling hard at the time so was a bit annoyed at being overtaken so easily. I gave chase, caught him up, and passed him. My heart was exploding and my legs wanted to die, but I passed him. He stayed behind me for a while, and then moved effortlessly alongside. He reached out and patted my back - we were doing about 30 miles an hour at the time. He grinned. "Hey you're doing great, old timer. Going far ?" I didn't have much puff to waste on chatting, but we had a friendly exchange, I admired his bike, and he pulled effortlessly ahead, breathing gently and not even breaking sweat.

It was a lovely moment and I treasure it. He wasn't being patronising, just warm. It made me feel like part of the cycling fraternity. A slow part, but part nonetheless.

Destined for the flames

Thank goodness I have wood-burning stoves !

All by accident I stumbled upon the most disliked item ever made in wood.

Not even oranges rescue it.

Too chunky, not bowl-shaped, too tall, too short, too lumpy (lumpy ?), too....

Well basically these wooden bowls are not well liked. In fact they are not liked at all (except by me, who am ridiculously easy to please) and rival my line of wooden clocks in terms of disapprobation.

Then again, the clocks are right up there - sorry, down there - with the wonderful balancing card rack,

the circular shelves with lurking unicycle

the ball-out-of-the-wall shelf incident (the maths was REALLY hard)

and the weird star, which has taken refuge at a friend's house. (Thanks, Diane.)

Oh yes, and the key rack, which my grandson uniquely admires 

You think I should surrender my tools now and make the world a safer more aesthetic place ?

You have to keep trying.

No, this is not a giant mutant orange. It is the smaller bowl, that's all.

Oak bowl, Take 2

This is the modified bowl I was working on today. I am just not sure about the design.

It was great fun to do, but does it work ?

One lovely thing is that the oak is so smooth straight off the blade. The scroll saw does leave an amazing finish.

For the geeks out there, I used a plain-end, 13 TPI, skip-tooth blade with reverse teeth to avoid tear-out on the bottom of the pieces.

The timber is old oak from furniture made 100 years ago, and 15 mm thick.

The pictures here give a sense of size, but the large bowl is not stuck together yet, and tomorrow's job is to sand it all down, take out any work marks, and glue it.

It will be done by the end of Friday with a bit of luck.

PS Finished on Thursday. Not sure if I like the result or not. Yes, good fun to do, but would I give them house-room ? The jury's out.....

Bowls in evening sun

Yesterday's first attempt, and today's larger modification

From the side

How the pieces stack

Complete with Pepper's Ghost

 

Finished and oiled

Nested

Oak bowl

Fun to do, nice to touch, useless to keep things in

Better view, but still useless

This bowl was designed by Steve Good, and I made it yesterday in an idle hour.

My Bloganonymous American Son (BAS) had seen a complex folding fruit bowl at a show in Colorado, and mailed me a video link to how it had been made. It looked terrific but needed more time than I had available, so I scuffled around until I found some bowls that looked as if they might be do-able in less than a fortnight.

And this is the result. 

I cut it on the scroll saw, glued it overnight, and treated it with hot linseed this morning. I like the feel of the wood when the linseed has dried. The oil isn't tacky to the touch at all, you can feel the smoothness in your hands, and it doesn't look as if it has been sprayed with yacht varnish.

The base is too small and the rake of the sides too steep, so I have been modifying the design to give me a more generous bowl shape. I quite like the way the wood makes the angles. 

I don't have a CAD package, so do my drawing by hand. This pattern had a nightmare quality to it. It turns out that there are subtleties in the design which hadn't struck me. Doh !

This is the modified bowl so far:

Pattern drawn out and stuck to the oak

It is stuck on a piece of oak here. The wood is covered with masking tape to keep adhesive out of the grain, and the pattern is glued to the tape with spray adhesive. The line on the tape at the right is just a warning of a duff bit of grain I had to avoid when sticking.

And here is the thing roughed out on the bandsaw and ready to take to the scroll saw.

Perimeter rough-cut with the band saw

This is as far as I have got this morning, and the sun and bike are beckoning. Like any other project, a whole lot can go wrong. But if it works out, I will post the finished product later this week.

Maybe I should post the results whatever happens. Watch this space.



 

A bomb ? You brought me a bomb ?

Jason was a wiry boy, short for his age and cheeky. Delightfully cheeky. He had exuberant hair not unlike my own, but his would have made Medusa fear she had a rival. Jason was in my class.

At that time, my class were housed in a hut across the yard from the main school. It was like shack in a bad cowboy film. There was a wonky stovepipe poking out of the roof, the window frames were falling out, and the whole thing was constructed of wood which had probably looked smart when it had arrived as a temporary classroom 70 years earlier. Inside, the floor was rotting through in places, and it re-defined the word ramshackle.

One Monday morning I was sitting at my desk counting the dinner money before the day got started for real. My class were doing what passed for silent reading. Jason arrived, late. This wasn't unusual, and nobody batted an eyelid in those days. He came in, already wrestling with his parka and walking across the classroom, sleeves flapping.

"Mr H,"' he yelled. "Wait till you see what I have got to show you". 

"Go and hang your coat up, Jason."

"Yes, but just wait till you see what I have got to show you."

I carried on counting, neat piles of coins across my desk. Jason came back, and there was a thump as he banged something on my desk. I remember the irritation as several piles of coins toppled over. I looked up. Jason was beaming proudly, expectantly. His eyes were sparkly, mischievously happy. He was so delighted I thought he might explode. I looked down at what he was so pleased with, and saw a hand grenade.

It did not look quite like this one. I could see straight away that the pin was missing, and the lever was sticking out almost at right angles to the grenade. It was held together with rust. I did not know a lot about grenades, but it looked to me as if this was bad news.

What to do ?

Without consulting me, a plan swung into action. I closed my hand round the grenade hoping that if the lever could not go further, then the thing could not possible blow up. I never did discover if this was true.

Telling the class rather sharply that they were to get on quietly, I edged out of the door and across the yard. Jason was standing in the doorway, no longer delighted, but slightly irritated himself.

"Mr H, where are you going with my bomb ?"

I confess that I was not in the mood to answer.

I went to see the head. (Incidentally, he was a lovely man who was like a father to me and gave me lots of chances to develop all sorts of wacky ideas). I knocked on his door and waited. There was some shuffling, and what might have been a newspaper folding. The wide door swung open. There was no conversation. I held up the grenade, and he pointed to the front door. I slunk off, still clutching the bomb. He shouted after me "Take it to the police station."

The police station was round the corner from school, and one of those small places where you have to ring for attention It was hemmed in by houses that seemed to be intent on overpowering it. The car park was littered with a few ill-parked Panda cars. I walked across and rang the bell. Nothing. I rang again and eventually a constable came to the door.

It was another wordless conversation. I lifted the grenade and he did the pointing. "Take it to the bottom of the garden," he yelled. I did, while he watched from the safety of the station. The bottom of the garden was as far from the police station as it was possible to get, and as close to private houses as I could possibly be without actually calling for breakfast.

I was beginning to feel that something had gone wrong with my day. It was not half past nine yet on a Monday, and here I was in a police station garden while my unsupervised class would be doing who knows what with all that dinner money. The officer yelled helpful suggestions, the main one being to cover it with leaves. Well, it was spring, and no leaves were in sight. In the end, I dug a completely inadequate hole with my hands and put the grenade neatly into it, covering it with soil like a large and slightly nervous cat.

I retreated.

Back at the hut Jason was indignant. "Where is my bomb ?" he demanded to know. I explained that the police had it. "Can I have it back at the end of the day ?" Jason was used to the concept of confiscation, and figured this would be the usual game.

I talked to Jason while the head rang his mum.

Jason had been camping that weekend in Clumber Park. Jason, his older brother, mum and dad, all in their small camping van. It was an adventure weekend.

At some point on Day 1, Jason and his brother had noticed some fins sticking out of the ground under a bush. Neither was much interested in reading, so they missed the yellow band that said "High Explosive", and went off to find a spade. While digging the thing out of the ground (clunk, clunk), they came across the grenade, and several rounds of ammunition, machine gun ammunition.

What to do ?

They were savvy enough to guess that Mum would not be happy with the find. They smuggled the grenade and the ammo into the camper wagon, and hid the anti-tank rocket (yes, that's right) under it.

(When Mum found out from us what had happened, she went white. I always thought this expression slight OTT, but yes, she went white. I thought she was going to keel over like a dead budgie.)

Home safely, they had set to, cleaning the ammo with brass cleaner, and taking the grenade out to play with in the garden. Playing turned out to mean chucking the grenade around the garden, more or less at each other.

(Cue Mum: turn white again.)

By mid-morning the bomb squad had arrived to collect Jason. They already had his brother from the secondary school. They whisked them and Mum off to locate the exact spot where the munitions had been found, and to recover the anti-tank rocket.

When Jason came to school next day, he brought a picture with him. It was him standing beaming in the crater left where the team had exploded his bomb, and they had taken the photograph for him. They had given him and his brother quite a talking to.

Jason talked to the class - all were excited and he held their attention brilliantly. Then we did creative writing about the incident. I think we started by talking abut what we had each seen the day before and it went on from there. We made the press, much to Jason's further joy, and the weeks' work on the bomb was some of the best the kids did.

Envoi

In the staff room, Tom, an older teacher formerly in the tank regiment was less than impressed. 

"You are a bloody fool,'" he said, unnecessarily brusquely, I thought. 

"Fancy taking the damn thing outside. You should have got the kids out and let it explode. We needed a new classroom and you missed the chance of a lifetime. Bloody fool."

Thanks, Tom.

Shopping list

Pretty low on yogurt, so am planning to be there when Sainsbury's opens tomorrow.

I asked S if she wanted anything, and would she make me a list if so ? 

Here's what I got:

BACOFOIL FOIL not too long to fit in the drawer
Sainsbury's Plain White Flour NOT BASIC
Smoked salmon x 1
poached salmon x 1
FLORA ORIGINAL 500 gm
Bread
Milk
Small croissants
Butter x 4
Freezer bags
Sainsbury's Mature Cheddar 4 strength x 2 not basic 

Now, apart from the obvious omission of 36 yogurts, which is so easy to fix, this looks like a highly technical list to me, full of nuance and beartraps for the unwary shopper, ie me.

What to make of lower case and upper case ? Look at the different emphases. Is there any chance of coming back with the right stuff ? The odds do not look good.....

This is a proper shopper's list, and probably well beyond my clearance level.

In the past I have actually been removed from shopping detail for slipshod purchasing, but have been rehabilitated. And now this....


At least my yogurts will be right, and they really brighten up most of the fridge.

Sainsbury's BASIC plain yogurt, red and white x 36 50 p a pop. Yum. Can't wait.

 Watch this space.