Autobiography

This is the page where I ramble on about myself and possibly give myself a huge case of swell head in the process.

I was born in 1986 in an RAF hospital as my father was in the Royal Air Force, those being the days when the Armed Services were allowed to have their own hospitals.

The first few years are a bit of a blur.  I'm told that this is normal for young children but I do remember some details absolutely clearly, the major one being allowed to hold my sister not long after she was born and suddenly realising that here was a different soul.  I know they say about the light coming on but that was more a chisel blow to the temple.  It had never occurred to me before that all these different bodies around me contained different souls.  I had assumed that what one of us thought, we all thought, what one knew, we all knew.  Part of me still wonders if, as a child, I walked on the edge of being telepathic.

Being a service family we moved fairly regularly until we settled for a good seven years in Saint Athans.  There I attended many schools as it took a while to find one where I would be welcome.  The first school I attended did not last long as my teacher, who was also the Headteacher for a time, made it plain that she hated "service brats".

The second school was a Catholic school and that lasted even less time as I was beaten up by the other children, including some of the higher years.  The Head teacher was unwilling to act about that because there was "nothing in the incident book".  The reason that there was nothing in the incident book was because I didn't realise how much damage I was sustaining.  Even the time one of the bigger boys slapped me in the face with his knuckles it didn't hurt much so I didn't bother to report it.  The fact that nobody mentioned the beautiful black eye I had that afternoon just made me think that it was normal for such things to happen in school.

I guess that my lack of pain sensation was the first clue that I was autistic, not that any of the medical authorities bothered to test for it, despite my Mother trying and trying to get someone to listen to her, when she said that there was something different about me.

It is strange but because what the bullies there did to me didn't hurt that much, I didn't count it as bullying.  The marks healed quickly so they didn't bother me.

My third school in Wales was Llanilltud Fawr Primary School (which I'm pleased to say is still there).  That school was lovely, mainly because of the efforts of the Headmaster Mr Evans.  A teacher first and a Headmaster second, he knew the names of every pupil under his care.  I must say that I was happiest in my schooling there as, if I was having one of those days when I didn't want to interact with anyone, I could sit on my own and draw doodles in the dirt and the other children just left me alone.  However, if I was having a day when I wanted to join in, because the other children still played the playground games like tag and in-and-out-the-dusty-bluebells, I could join in and nobody passed a comment.

I'll admit that sports day wasn't something I've ever looked forward to but I did, generally, enjoy my time there.

Then we move to Norfolk, Mother and Father split up and the world fell in about my ears.  Least, that's how it felt when I went to school.  I went from a school where being weird was an observation to a school where being weird made you a target in every sense possible.  That was where the name calling and the tormenting started, where I had to stop writing down the stories I made up with my sister and our toys as they were stolen and publicly ridiculed when the teachers weren't about.  And when I did complain to the teachers about what was going on I was told "oh just ignore it".

The old saying "sticks and stones may break my bones but works will never harm me" is a load of rutting garram!  Believe me, I should know.  Words, cruelly used, can break your soul and what healing can there be for that?  There isn't, again, I know.

The only good thing was that, when I was in Year Seven, I was finally diagnosed with Aspergers Syndrome.  Does that make up for walking through the point where I wanted to commit suicide and out to the place beyond that?  No it doesn't, not ever.

I managed to make it through the next six years and out the other side simply because I didn't want to leave a mess in the bathroom for someone else to clean up.  I struggled through half of an A level course and then had a mental breakdown.  The feeling that your head is going in fifteen different directions all at once is not a pleasant one.

I'd just about made it through that when my Mother's liver failed due to a medication mess up.  Eighteen months of not knowing if I'd wake up to find a corpse is certainly a moulding experience and not one that I would advise.

We just about recovered from that only to lurch from one family to medical crisis over the years.  All of it has presented a rather interesting learning curve.  It is said that the Chinese have a curse "may you live in interesting times!"  My reply to that is "I'm already there!"

With all of that behind me, I suppose that becoming a writer was the better career option, people tend to object when you kill them for real and it makes a terrible mess of the carpet.  Write about your villain killing someone because they are ticked off that day and it's entertainment and people pay you for it.  Yeah, definitely the better career option and it helps get some of the demons out of my head and stops them screaming at me.

Publishing my first book only happened with the help of the great man who then became my husband. After that I became a mother as well and that meant that my career stalled for about seven years. Now that our son is settled into a school that just about understands the help he needs, I think I might just about receive enough time to restart the career. Here's hoping.